“He who chooses one voice to think for him should not be surprised when his world shrinks to its echo. “He who chooses one voice to think for him should not be surprised when his world shrinks to its echo.”
Most of us learn this lesson early in childhood: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Yet the older we grow in corporate corridors, the more we forget it.
Because the truth is - sometimes the basket isn’t chosen by reason, experience or capability. Sometimes it is chosen by hierarchy. By habit. By comfort. And, occasionally, by someone else’s… favourites. I learnt this the hard way.
Years ago, while working in a global organisation - one that prided itself on process discipline and research rigor - December used to be the month of budget reconciliation and “future-proofing the next FY.” Like clockwork, everyone scrambled to use up the last remaining budgets so that next year’s allocations wouldn’t shrink. A familiar ritual in corporate life.
Then one fine morning, out of nowhere, four to five research briefs materialized. Briefs that had never been discussed. Not strategically aligned. Not even connected to the annual roadmap.
And before I could digest the sudden avalanche of requests, my boss - being the boss - had already “pre-shared his refined version of the brief” with his preferred agency.
Not discussed with me.
Not evaluated.
Not benchmarked.
Just handed over like a pre-decided political ticket.
Now, I’m not the kind of person who rebels for rebellion’s sake. I’m a researcher. Give me context, logic, and alignment, and I’ll run the marathon barefoot if needed. But what frustrated me wasn’t the fact that he had a favourite agency. It was the blindness of choosing one single partner for everything, regardless of:
Fit
Expertise
Problem-solution alignment
Historical performance
Or even basic methodological relevance
Anyone who has spent time in research knows this truth: Every agency is good at something and average at something else.
Some are brilliant with segmentation.
Some thrive in U&A.
Some tell powerful consumer stories.
Some are surgical with quant.
And some… well, some are good at just taking the brief and nodding.
Yet here we were - putting all our analytical eggs in one very shaky basket. And this wasn’t just a research problem.
This is a leadership problem.
A decision-making problem. A corporate culture problem.
The Illusion of Efficiency
On the surface, favouritism masquerades as efficiency:
“Let’s go with someone we know.”
“They understand us.”
“No time to evaluate multiple partners.”
But underneath, it creates:
Blind spots - because the same lens keeps repeating.
Groupthink - because no one wants to challenge the default.
Inflated confidence - because familiarity feels like competence.
Lowered standards - because comparison quietly dies.
A business built on one partner, one perspective or one methodology is a business building a house on stilts. Sooner or later, the tide rises.
The Cost of Misjudged Comfort
What hit me hardest wasn’t the politics. It was a deeper, more professional question:
o Why would someone willingly reduce optionality?
o Why would someone choose comfort over correctness?
o Why would someone prefer predictability over performance?
Because when leaders choose favourites, they inadvertently kill three things:
Meritocracy – the right partner never gets a fair chance.
Capability-building – teams stop learning how to assess quality.
Intellectual diversity – different approaches never enter the room.
And the result? A very expensive echo chamber.
A Portfolio, Not a Pet Agency
Research portfolios must behave like investment portfolios.
You diversify.
You hedge.
You evaluate risks.
You match expertise with objectives.
You don’t pick one stock and dump the entire salary into it.
Because the problem isn’t choosing one agency. The problem is choosing only one agency for everything. It’s like going to a cardiologist for a broken spine because “I trust him.” Trust is good. Capability-fit is better.
The Leadership Lesson
That episode taught me something about corporate maturity - not just my own, but organisational maturity too. Great leaders don’t hoard partners. They curate ecosystems.
They don’t personalise decisions. They professionalise them. They don’t treat vendors as extensions of their comfort. They treat them as extensions of their capability. And most importantly - they never mistake preference for strategy.
The Final Word
If there is one universal truth that corporate life keeps teaching us, it is this: “Putting all your eggs in one basket doesn’t make you efficient. It just makes the omelette inevitable.”
The world rewards diversification. Business rewards optionality. Research rewards methodological pluralism. And your career rewards the courage to say: “We owe the problem the best partner, not the most familiar one.”
“Comfort is the most loyal prison; it convinces you the bars are made of wisdom.”
Don't ever Put All Your Eggs in One Basket?
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