How do you get the best work? Wrong question. The real one: Will you even recognize it, and act on it, when it’s right in front of you?

Most don’t. Culture and structure get in the way.

Here’s what you need to fix the environment:

Curiosity. Are you putting yourself in the path of new ideas and talent? Are you building an environment where curiosity is rewarded, not sidelined?

Flexibility. Have you designed teams where silos don’t matter? Where it makes no difference if brilliance comes from inside or out, only that you can move on it.

Trust & Relationships. Strip away structure and what’s left? Trust. It’s the glue. It ensures your partners are aligned on goals and that your relationships run deep enough for honesty. About where the bar is and whether you’re hitting it.

Open, confident leadership. Not about reaching a fixed point. About how you walk the road: take in information, make smart calls, pivot fast.

Shameless plug: I am excited that our Brand Summit this November will kick off by tackling this head-on. Not as an abstract debate, but as a leadership challenge. The brands that thrive will 

Expanding Menu of Talent Sources

Before we talk about organizational design, let’s level-set what “best work comes from” really means today:

  • In-house teams – fast, brand-intimate, and increasingly capable.
  • Agencies – broad skills, scale, but often stretched thin.
  • Tech/Media partners – specialists with data and a strategic point of view.
  • Consulting firms – structured frameworks, transformation expertise.
  • Influencers/creators – cultural fluency and authentic reach.
  • AI – efficiency, augmentation, and scale, not replacement.


None of these sources alone is “the answer.” The challenge is building an organization that can identify, integrate, and empower the best of all of them. So, lets break down how to build this organization.

Curiosity at the Core

Great marketers are insatiably curious. Forget the industry trades, waiting for your agency to hand you a POV –  it is about other sources. Think tech, culture, the economy, etc.. The most effective leaders I have met ask naïve questions that others are too insecure to raise. They push their teams to do the same.

100% of the marketers I talk to who do not have practice this are frozen doing the same thing year after year.

Examples shared with me:


Flexibility in Structure

True flexibility also comes from how you structure teams, contracts, decisions, and relationships.

Rigid upfront deals left many brands stuck during the pandemic. The ones who thrived had unallocated funds, modular scopes, and leaders empowered to act fast. They built cross-functional teams that could plug in new talent without endless approvals, and trusted partners so shifting work didn’t feel like betrayal.

Questions you should be asking:

  • How are you building a structure that is capable of responding to great (potential) work that is right in front of it? 
  • How does marketing, legal, and finance (etc.) work together?
  • Is your company working towards a common goal and allowing departments to maneuver accordingly?


If your organization cannot rewrite the playbook here, you have bigger questions to ask.

Trust and Relationships

Transactional relationships create safe, average work. The best work comes when trust runs deep—inside your team and across partners. Trust is what allows someone to push back, to reset the brief, to raise the naïve question that cracks the problem open.

Without trust, you only get what was asked for. With it, you get what is possible.

Three examples of trust:

Creators. The best influencer programs are built on real relationships. Creators who feel safe pushing back on briefs deliver stronger stories because they know their audience better than the brand.

Teams. Junior employees grow when they feel trusted to ask “dumb” questions. Leaders who balance clear direction with open conversation create the conditions for insights and meaningful work to emerge.

Partners. One marketer told me she evaluates AI-based vendors on trust, not features. Partners who say “no” when something is not possible earn credibility, because they are setting real expectations.

Confident, Open Leadership

The best leaders are decisive without being rigid. They hold strong convictions, but they adapt as facts change. They know the road is not fixed; it shifts with new information, new talent, and new possibilities.

Confidence is not doubling down on old models. It is being clear in direction while staying open enough to pivot fast when a better path appears. Leaders who can do that, who can recognize the best work and create space for it to flourish, are the ones who pull ahead.

The Challenge

The best work already exists. The test is whether your organization is designed to recognize it, integrate it, and amplify it. The brands that win will do four things differently:

  • Audit your org’s barriers: procurement, culture, leadership mindset. Where are you blocking nontraditional sources of talent?
  • Build curiosity into the system: carve out time for teams to question, debate, and explore.
  • Rethink relationships: invest in people (inside and out) beyond the transaction.
  • Rewire budgets/contracts for flexibility: small moves in structure can unlock big moves in creativity.


The work is out there. The question is whether you are ready to make real change?