Company Culture Requires a Risk-Management Approach
Culture is increasingly at the heart of today’s biggest corporate scandals, and dysfunctional corporate culture often manifests itself in unethical and even illegal behavior. Harassment at a major network? Fueled by a culture of sexism. Fake accounts at one of the country’s largest banks? Driven by a leadership team that believed in performance-at-all costs and led others to believe in it, too. Often described as a company’s most precious asset, culture can just as easily be an organization’s biggest liability.
Managing cultural risk to ensure that a company’s business practices are ethical and values-driven requires diligent stewardship, and the same degree of urgency, attentiveness, and investment that is applied to issues of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, or any other business threat. We call it cultural vigilance. By tracking key cultural dimensions over time, companies can address emerging issues before they become crises and negatively impact corporate reputation.
Join Peter Duda, co-lead of Weber Shandwick’s Global Issues & Crisis Practice and Sarah Clayton, an Executive Vice President with United Minds who designed the firm’s CultureShift offering, for key insights into guarding against cultural risk, and best practices for responding and recovering when crisis strikes.
Location:
Weber Shandwick Minneapolis
510 S Marquette Avenue, 13th Floor
Minneapolis, MN 55402
|
Agenda
|
|
5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Networking (includes appetizers and beverages)
|
|
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. Presentation
|
|
7:30 – 8:00 p.m. Q&A
|
Speakers:
Sarah Clayton
Executive Vice President with United Minds and creator of Weber Shandwick’s CultureShift offering
Sarah helps CEOs and other senior leaders design and execute transformation strategies that improve organizational performance. She specializes in driving culture change in support of business objectives, and led the development of United Minds’ CultureShift offering.
With more than 15 years of experience leading end to end change management programs, Sarah has advised clients through M&As, corporate restructurings, leadership transitions and enterprise wide technology adoption. Her expertise includes crafting the case for change, aligning leadership, managing resistance, enabling people managers, activating bottom up advocacy, designing and facilitating training, measuring progress towards change goals and organizational research.
Previously, Sarah was a management consultant with Deloitte Consulting, where she supported Hewlett Packard’s acquisition of EDS, helped Ansell Healthcare redesign its global HR business processes and partnered with Levi Strauss to train and enable employees throughout its SAP adoption.
Other clients have included PepsiCo, Cisco Systems, Johnson & Johnson, Essilor, Olympus, Fannie Mae, FMC, Celgene and New York Life.
A regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review blog, Sarah has also has been a speaker at Glassdoor.com and Society for Human Resource Management events.
Her career began in politics, where Sarah served first as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education and then transitioned to the White House to support First Lady Laura Bush on education policy and programming.
Sarah holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts from Brigham Young University.
Peter Duda
Co-lead of Weber Shandwick’s Global Issues & Crisis Practice
Peter is an Executive Vice President/Management Supervisor in the New York office of Weber Shandwick and co-head of the agency’s global crisis and issues team. He has counseled clients in a wide variety of industries on media and communications strategies relating to such complex and sensitive issues as high-profile litigation, government investigations, regulatory enforcement, corporate reorganizations and restructurings, M&A transactions, hostile takeovers, labor relations, trade disputes, product liability, management transitions, corporate positioning and corporate reputation management.
An expert media trainer, Peter has prepared senior executives in the U.S., Europe and Latin America to effectively communicate with the media.
Peter has provided strategic communications advice to domestic and international clients in numerous industries: financial services (TIAA, AXA, Cerberus Capital, Prudential Financial, Mass Mutual, MasterCard, CIT); healthcare (Abbott, Novartis, Pfizer); food/beverage (PepsiCo, Unilever, AB InBev, YUM!, Campbell, Nestle, Chobani); energy (ExxonMobil, Shell, Falcon Oil and Gas); infrastructure/manufacturing (GE, Honeywell, Ingersoll-Rand, SPX); technology (Qualcomm, Verizon); and consumer products and services (Electrolux, Mattel, Kenneth Cole).
Before joining Weber Shandwick, Peter practiced law in Chicago, Illinois. He holds a J.D. from Loyola University Chicago, where he was an editor of the law journal. He also received an M.B.A with distinction from DePaul University and a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
Cost
Minnesota PRSA Members: $20
Non-Members/Guests (General Admission): $30
Students: Free
Retired: $5