Good work matters
2026
One-to-ones with the people who care where strategic insight goes next
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Good Work Matters sees Quallie.Ai spending time with some of the most interesting and informed human beings in strategic insight. There's no agenda beyond curiosity. Understanding what's on their minds and how, when talk of change and uncertainty is a constant refrain, they make sure solid craft and good work prevail.
Inside Good Work Matters
Andy Crysell
Partner at Stripe Partners
Founder at Culture Studio
Founder at Studio Øutlier
Head of research at See Research
Founder at The Outsiders
Director at Davies+McKerr
Founder at The Good Side
Illustrations
Andy Crysell has founded, grown and sold two agency businesses – including the cultural insights and strategy consultancy, Crowd DNA, which became part of the Strat7 group in 2020.
Now a non-exec advisor, author, charity trustee, mentor and investor, he divides his time and work between New York City and London.
Nuance is a word that gets used a lot these days, but not necessarily so often applied. Case in point: discussions about generative AI, its role in market research and the persistent sense that you really must pick a side.
On one side sit those accused of barking at the moon: rejecting AI out of hand and supposedly self-sabotaging themselves into obsolescence. On the other, the res-tech evangelists – often with vested interests – insisting it's their way or no other way. It's noisy out there. It's reductive, too, and heavy on the false binaries.
Being somewhere in the middle can seem dull by comparison. But really, it's also the most logical place to be. It's there – in that middle ground – where you tend to find people getting on with high-quality, strategically-minded insight work.
They're navigating change, but then they always have been. They're bringing AI into their practices – that's table stakes – but they're just as focused on what will actually future-proof them: avoiding a race to the bottom, protecting craft, defining their own irreplaceable version of the work in the AI era.
That's the framing which shaped these interviews for Quallie.Ai's Good Work Matters report. We weren't interested in distant predictions or grand, paradigm-shifting forecasts (beware anyone who claims to have those nailed down; the future has a habit of creeping up on us unexpectedly).
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From the editor
Andy Crysell
"Recurring themes surfaced: the need to protect time for curiosity and immersion; to keep critical thinking firmly human;
to exercise taste; and to maintain a deep connection to the work."
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Instead, we wanted grounded discussions about now and the near future. We were deliberate in speaking to people in leadership roles, with a say over the direction of travel, while remaining close to the realities of projects and client relationships.
Throughout, recurring themes surfaced: the need to protect time for curiosity and immersion; to keep critical thinking firmly human; to exercise taste; and to maintain a deep connection to the work and the questions being asked of it.
AI was part of these conversations, but not all of the conversation. Just as important is what AI shouldn't be doing. No one we spoke to was interested in outsourcing judgement or offloading cognitive responsibility. Quite the opposite; that concerns them. After all, work that is technically yours, but which you feel emotionally distant from, is difficult to defend, to own and to communicate with conviction
These, then, are interviews with people thinking carefully about how they hold on to substance as the conditions around their work continue to change. We called this report Good Work Matters, and that belief runs consistently through every conversation.
We hope the interviews that follow resonate with you – in agreement, disagreement, or somewhere in between.
"No one we spoke
to was interested in
outsourcing
judgement
or offloading
cognitive
responsibility. Quite
the opposite; that
concerns them."