Keynote topic
Chris Hirst – Culture Transformation Keynote Speaker
Chris Hirst is the former Global CEO of Havas Creative Group who took the network from mid-pack to record growth and profits by changing behaviour, not values posters. His culture keynote gives HR, CEO, and transformation buyers an operating model their senior team can actually use – so the culture work shows up in the seating plan, the hiring pattern, and the calendar.
Most culture speakers sell language. Chris sells behaviour. He ran a 10,000-person, 100+ country, $1bn P&L network and rebuilt its culture in public, on a P&L, against deadlines. The Havas turnaround is the proof – mid-pack to record growth – and the keynote unpacks how it was actually done. No values workshop. Real seating plans, real hiring calls, real resource reallocation. Practical clarity for senior teams that need to move.
Or speak to the team directly — ChrisHirst@clash.cc
Why the right voice
Ran a 10,000-person culture turnaround on a $1bn P&L
Chris was Global CEO of Havas Creative Group, responsible for 10,000 people across 100+ countries and a $1bn P&L. Under his leadership the network moved from mid-pack to record growth and profits. He is the author of No Bullsh*t Leadership (Profile Books) and No Bullsh*t Change (Profile Books), and his third book Indispensable (Macmillan Business, paperback forthcoming 11 June 2026) extends the same operating view. The keynote anchors on the Havas culture turnaround and his Culture as Concrete model from No Bullsh*t Change: culture starts liquid and sets hard, so leadership has to act in the window where it can still be shaped. The Leadership Equation – Impact = Clarity x Action – is the operating equation he hands the room.
- Ex-Global CEO, Havas Creative
- $1bn P&L · 10,000 people
- Best Business Book 2020
- Shortlisted Global CEO of the Year ’22
“Chris is an exceptional leader with an ability to simplify what is complex and galvanize action.”Google
On stage
Why the room goes quiet.
Footage from leadership conferences and board away-days. No slides theatre — a practitioner who ran the thing he’s talking about, distilling it into language a room can act on.
What the room walks away with
What teams take away — and use on Monday.
Senior leaders leave with a working definition of culture that survives a Monday morning. They know that culture is what their team sees them do under pressure, not what is written on the wall. They have a concrete checklist: who got hired in the last quarter, who got fired, who got promoted, where the resource went, who is sitting next to whom. They have language for the difference between values theatre and culture work, and a sharper view of which lever in their own org actually changes behaviour at the level of the work.
- 01
Culture is behaviour under pressure – the seating plan is the floor, the values document is the wallpaper.
- 02
Run a culture audit on your own behaviour: who you hire, who you fire, who you promote, where you put the resource.
- 03
Apply the Leadership Equation: Impact = Clarity x Action – culture work fails without both.
- 04
Treat culture as Concrete: liquid in the window of change, then setting hard – act in the liquid window.
- 05
Retire any culture workstream that has no behaviour attached to it.
The contrarian bit
Why most culture programmes never reach the floor
Chris saw it from the inside at Havas before the turnaround – a mid-pack network with decent values language and the wrong operating habits. The poster goes up. The workshop runs. The seating plan, the hiring pattern, and the calendar stay exactly the same. The floor reads the calendar, not the poster.
His framing in No Bullsh*t Change (Profile Books) is sharper. Culture is behaviour under pressure. The values document is the wallpaper; the seating plan is the floor. At Grey London, where he was CEO before Havas, he gave the culture a name – Open – and the first move wasn't a workshop, it was pulling down the office walls and rebuilding the seating into client-centric teams. Visible. Fast. Wired to the work. Culture as Concrete: it starts liquid, then sets hard. Leadership acts in the liquid window.
The senior team begins running an audit on its own behaviour. Who was the last person we promoted, and what did that signal? Who is the loudest voice in our exec meeting? Where did we put the resource last quarter? Culture stops being an HR programme and becomes an operating accountability with a name against every decision.
Questions
Culture Transformation — booking Chris.
Yes. Chris reads the culture brief with the CEO, HRD, or transformation lead – stage of programme, which values workshops have already run, what the front line currently believes – and adjusts the examples and framework emphasis. The Havas turnaround and the Grey London Open culture are the anchors; the audit moves are written against the room your senior team will actually walk into on Monday.
Still deciding? Talk it through with the team.
Booking
Bring this keynote to your leadership moment.
In-person, UK · virtual & international on request · the team replies within 24 hours.
Back to Chris’s full profile“Chris is an exceptional leader with an ability to simplify what is complex and galvanize action.”— Google
Represented by Clash Creation · clash.cc