Great stuff-really pleased to see this come up.
I 100% agree with Deeferdog that briefs should be short and serve a real purpose, tailored to the venue and day. It is human nature to not pay attention when the other guy endlessly regurgitates the standard brief.
And I 100% agree with globalstream that the key to good crew co operation and workload when unusual things happen, is cockpit flows and ultra concise checklists.
Unfortunately and as you say, so much depends on how enlightened the ops inspector is. I had a Chief pilot who put a huge amount of effort into producing airline style flows and checks, but it was ruined by an idiot inspector from the dark ages who demanded he add a mass of non- essential junk to the procedures and checklists. Conversely, elsewhere we had an inspector who advocated just briefing stuff that was special about the day which could get us into trouble, and checklists which likewise, just covered essentials; the non essentials covered by flows.