This takes me back 20 years (!) to when you and I put the 'flexible and responsive' regime in place at Youth Development. We needed that initial change to gain the freedom to have conversations with our providers and communities, and we still needed another four years to learn how to participate in them, and convince our partners they were real.

But one other thing I recall, relevant to this piece, was how we had to carefully manage contract numbers vs contract management staff, maintain a balance of meaningful vs transactional contracts, so we didn't look over-staffed for the workload. Because relational models take more resource but get punished under transactional governance frameworks.