Chris Hirst – Culture Transformation Keynote Speaker
Direct answer
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.
Want to ask about Chris? ChrisHirst@clash.cc
Stage presence
Buyer confidence
Room-ready delivery
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.
- Former Global CEO of Havas Creative Group
- Best Business Book of the Year winner
- Trusted by Google, PwC, Verizon and global leadership teams
What Your Audience Leaves With
A usable frame for the decision in front of them
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.
Topic focus
Culture Transformation
The Problem
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.
Key Takeaways
What Your Audience Leaves With
Culture is behaviour under pressure – the seating plan is the floor, the values document is the wallpaper.
Run a culture audit on your own behaviour: who you hire, who you fire, who you promote, where you put the resource.
Apply the Leadership Equation: Impact = Clarity x Action – culture work fails without both.
Treat culture as Concrete: liquid in the window of change, then setting hard – act in the liquid window.
Retire any culture workstream that has no behaviour attached to it.
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