Don't Argue With the Gut. Redirect It.

Everything in the creative business is subjective. Not some projects — all of them, at every level. There are workshops, business cases, KPIs, and they matter; they give us logical ground to stand on. But at the end of the day the decision to go with something, or to not quite like it, is a subjective one. And the higher up the chain of command you go, the more nakedly true that becomes.

A CEO will not sit down and carefully study the context. They do not have the time, and creative questions are exactly the kind they move past quickly. So they decide from the gut — intuitively, from experience. And here is the thing worth respecting: that gut is earned. They reached the top because of their decision-making. They trust it because it has worked. Arguing against it with one more slide is arguing against the very instrument that built the company.

More Information Will Not Save You

When a decision-maker at the top has doubts about the work, the instinct on our side is to explain. To bring more rationale, more research, more justification — to defend the logic. It feels like the responsible thing to do.

It is the wrong move. If the original impression is doubt, more information does not clear the doubt. It adds noise. They do not suddenly see the work differently; they just see more of it, stacked on a feeling that has not changed. You cannot argue someone out of an intuition by burying it. You are defending — and defending is the one posture that guarantees you stay stuck.

Go to the Ground With Them

I train jiu-jitsu, so here is how I think about it. When someone drives at you to take you down, the losing move is to brace and push back into the force. It is easier — and far more effective — to go to the ground with them, and flip them on the way down, so you come up on top and they end up on the bottom.

Apply that to the CEO with a doubt. Do not fight the takedown head-on. If his gut is pushing in a direction, lean into the push. Ask about the direction. Get curious about what is behind it. The redirect is a question, never a counterargument — and that single distinction is the whole method. Adding information is bracing against the force. Asking is redirecting it.

What the Question Actually Does

Asking does more than gather intel. It does three things at once.

It acknowledges their decision-making — which, for someone at the top of the chain, matters enormously. It shows you value their opinion rather than merely tolerating it. And it earns you the information underneath: why they think this, what they are really reacting to. Keep this in front of you the whole time — it is his company, not yours. It is his baby. He will always know more about it than you ever will. That is not a weakness in your position; it is the reality you build from.

So ask open-ended questions, when you have the chance — and you must respect that the chance is narrow, because a CEO's time is short. But if the questions are good, something happens. You go one layer into his thinking, then two, then three. And only once you are down there, standing in his actual reasoning, can you ask the question that moves things: and what do you think — would it be entirely out of the picture if this were a different colour here? You could not have scripted that question in advance. It is built from what he just told you. That is why it works.

The Reward Is Time

Here is what most people miss about this. A CEO moves fast through creative questions because, most of the time, they are being asked to referee a defense — to sit and receive justification for work someone has already decided is right. That is tedious, and they escape it quickly.

Change what you are offering. Show genuine interest in his thought process, ask the questions that prove you are actually listening, and he gives you something back: more time. He leans in. He goes into the game with you. He starts to value your feedback, because you have stopped being one more person defending work and become someone worth thinking alongside. Curiosity buys you the scarcest resource in the building.

None of this removes the subjectivity. That was never the goal — the subjectivity is permanent, and pretending a framework dissolves it is a fantasy. The goal is what you do knowing it is there. You stop arguing with the gut. You redirect it. And though the sharpest version of this plays out in the corner office, it holds for any decision-maker who calls the shot on instinct — every business owner, every client with the final say. Go to the ground with them, and come up on top.