If achieving success is difficult, maintaining it must decidedly be more so. But try telling that to independent creative agency Rethink – which has, for the fourth consecutive year, claimed Strategy’s Agency of the Year and Design Golds, while snagging a fourth straight medal finish in Digital and adding another in a category new to the agency: PR.

For Rethink, it’s all the by-product of an intentional strategy to drive creatives to do the best work of their careers – even through the pandemic, and notwithstanding borders and other boundaries. And it all stems from one simple fact: “Rethink is never going to sell.”

Those are the words of Sean McDonald, national managing partner and CSO at Rethink, who says it’s a fundamental difference-maker for one of the world’s largest and most-decorated independent agency networks. “The typical way an independent agency would think is: ‘How can we expand?’ because they want to grow so they can be worth more. Rethink is not motivated by growth. We’re not planning to expand, we’re planning to improve,” McDonald tells strategy.

It’s an interesting sentiment from one of the managing partners of an agency that has opened its first international office in New York City and expanded its total headcount by more than 35% in the past year alone – growing from a team of 235 last fall to approximately 320 as of press time. But McDonald is insistent that this growth is driven by a desire for improvement, rather than a higher valuation.

“If we improve, we have better relationships, which means we do better work. If we have better relationships and do better work, we have better careers,” he explains.