The head of one of the largest PR firms in the world tells a story of dining with Sir Simon Rattle, then-maestro of the Berlin Philharmonic. During dinner the prominent PR chief asked Sir Simon, “Do you consider your orchestra to be the best in the world?” Sir Simon’s response seems to be in jest but was delivered seriously: “We are when we play together.”
The moral: Even one of the world’s finest ensembles can seem unwieldy to leadership when its 100+ members, for various reasons, fail to perform as part of a whole and instead have their own ideas about how to do their jobs.
Building a Corporate Culture
CEOs in myriad industries can empathize with Sir Simon. Corporate leaders whose firms have acquired companies or instituted a reorg, perhaps most of all. To foster the creation of and adherence to a corporate common thread, Weber Shandwick last week unveiled CultureShift, promising to anchor “employees around a shared purpose, values and set of behaviors.”
Making like a management consulting firm, the new unit aims to help businesses after a merger, restructuring or adoption of a new operating model. Yet Weber also touts CultureShift as a proactive measure, “fortifying organizations against market, generational and societal changes by anchoring employees around a shared purpose, values and set of behaviors.”
Kate Bullinger, EVP and global head of employee engagement & change management, will lead the offering with help from, among others, Alison Quirk, a veteran C-suite consultant who joins Weber as a senior advisor.
Development of UnitedMinds’ Acquisition
Our management consulting remark above was intentional. CultureShift, the firm says, supports the company’s “investment in its management consulting capabilities.” This began with the acquisition of United Minds, a business strategy-consulting unit based in Stockholm.
In a perfect world, Ketchum might be CultureShift’s first customer. Celebrating its 90th birthday, the firm said last week its N. American business will reorg this Friday (June 1), placing clients in the middle of 14 industry teams with support from communications specialists. [In the graphic you can see the communications specialists toward the bottom.]
Also taking a page from the consulting firm book, the new structure is aimed at offering clients “unencumbered access” to Ketchum’s talent, fostering creativity and enhancing nimbleness, the firm said in a statement.
14 Industries Encircling Clients
Looking at the graphic representation of the new structure, you can see the 14 industry groups encircle Ketchum’s N. America clients.
Newly appointed industry managing directors (named in the chart) lead the units and report to presidents Mike Doyle and Hilary McKean, who report up to Ketchum partner/president/CEO Barri Rafferty.
Several offshoot groups also are shown on the chart. For example, you can see Cultivate (top, right of the graphic), which is aligned with Food and will be led by Alison Borgmeyer. Toward the bottom right is Health Services, aligned with Health. Kelly Calabria leads it.
Also atop the structure is a chief innovation officer, who’s yet to be named.
Dual Roles
Some of the 14 industry managing directors also were office leads. They’ll now be industry managing directors and marketplace leads for their offices, Ketchum’s Susannah Sheppard, senior manager, brand experience, tells us.
She adds some of the communications specialists “will be embedded within industries, the others will be grouped as core specialties that client teams can tap.”
The chief innovation officer position will play a leadership role in driving innovation and product development across the communications specialist groups.
Ketchum’s global businesses will begin organizing themselves similarly to its N. America unit in 2019.
