Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Weber Shandwick’s website has a wealth of information at https://webershandwick.com/.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

– Forget Power: How to Lead in a World of Chaos & Complexity with Michelle Harrison

– How Great Leaders Are Made: Insights from The Economist’s “Boss Class” – with Andrew Palmer

– To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Followers with Ira Chaleff

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Susan Howe is Chief Executive Officer of The Weber Shandwick Collective (TWSC), the leading earned-first strategic communications and consulting network spanning 60+ global markets. Under her leadership, TWSC serves Fortune 500 companies across every major industry sector, earning coveted recognition such as PRWeek’s Global Agency of the Year and PRovoke’s Global Agency of the Decade, as well as being named to Ad Age’s Agency A-list and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. TWSC has 225+ Cannes Lions and counting.

With more than two decades of leadership at TWSC, Susan has been a key driver of its growth in her roles as President, Chief Growth Officer and Chief Collaboration Officer, overseeing global operations and fostering collaboration across regions and practices.

As a passionate advocate for inclusion and women in business, Susan is a member of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women community. She also serves on the boards of the Sheppard Pratt Foundation and the Northwestern Alumni Association. Susan is a graduate of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and was recently inducted into the Medill Hall of Achievement, the highest honor awarded to Medill graduates.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Co-creating our future. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf. The founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute where we help leaders be future ready. Helping us in that mission today is Susan Howe, CEO of Weber Shandwick, the leading earned first strategic communication consulting network spanning 60 global markets.

We’ll be talking about the evolving challenges and innovations in public relations. First of all, Susan, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Susan: Hey Maureen, so good to see you. Thank you for having me.

Maureen: Thank you for joining us. You, you have an incredibly busy and prominent role, and we are looking forward to hearing your perspective.

Susan: It is a time of change that is no doubt. So as the world moves fast, we keep up

Maureen: well and you not only keep up, but your work is setting the pace for a lot of other [00:01:00] organizations.

Susan: Gosh, thank you. We are, we’re really lucky. This, uh, as you said, I’m at Weber. We’re a leading consultancy helping clients navigate communications challenges and really our mission is to evolve the communications industry to create.

The pace to lead the industry forward in service of solutions for our clients. So incredibly lucky to partner with 50 of the Fortune 100, just major industries. All around the world, and I think we all are experiencing this incredible pace.

Maureen: Yeah. I can’t imagine our world is fast and yours is faster right now.

Susan: Well, I mean, being in media, I would argue that we’re in many ways the same world because the formats, the [00:02:00] ideas, the tools, the technology, the solutions, the insights. Probably there’s a lot of. Similarities and really the only way you could describe what’s happening today is simply change.

Maureen: Well, and to your point about being in similar fields, the Innovative Leadership Institute.

Uh, aside from the podcast is helping leaders stay future ready, which means navigating the current reality as it’s evolving every single day. Uh, and. It’s hard enough to keep up with the external stuff and then I have to think about how do I lead and continue to evolve my leadership. So to your point where people are working at a pace that beyond which humans were designed to work,

Susan: and I hear that from clients so [00:03:00] much right now, we’re.

Very privileged to be advisors to so many leaders, and as we help them navigate the stakeholder demands, the employee, uh, mindset, so much of what I hear is about how communications needs to begin. From this grounded knowledge place, and that comes from your own strength of leadership. So while the world swirls around us, how do you find who you are, both as an individual leader, what your company and business stands for, what value you wanna put into the world, and then how do you share that story most effectively When.

The [00:04:00] mechanisms and the channels are moving

Maureen: at pace. And so in that way your work and mine are absolutely interconnected. ’cause as you were talking, I was thinking about doing yoga this morning. How do we connect with I did too. I did too. So, so my morning starts early with yoga. I did too. So that I’m sane and I’m assuming you do a similar.

It’s a way to ground and connect with what I value.

Susan: I, I, I mean, we could, we could, we could change the trajectory of this pod to be about yoga. That may not be what the listeners signed up for, but I actually think it’s an incredible ancient practice that is perfectly suited. To enable us in this incredible period of transformation for me, absolutely.

How you [00:05:00] ground into yourself is what makes your leadership abilities. Thrive. I think there is a parallel, parallel to organizational health as well. When our clients, uh, and teams we partner with really understand their mission, the value they’re putting into the world, it creates the same kind of groundswell and foundational anchor that enables the ability to.

Survive in change and also uncertainty.

Maureen: I am not at all surprised that you have, I love that you also do yoga. I’m not at all surprised that you have a practice because as we think about the leaders we most admire, almost all of them have something that helps them ground [00:06:00] themselves. And, and navigate the complexities of the reality.

’cause if I’m not grounded, I go into an organization and create the, the wobbliness that happens from leaders who are just not as solid as they need to be. And in a time where the world is wobbling, it’s easy for. People to also respond too quickly. It’s actually an you, you talk about earned, it’s an earned skill or an earned, you earned your staying centered by getting up early and probably dragging yourself out of bed to a yoga studio rather than sleeping.

Susan: Yeah, no doubt. I think that if you, if you begin where you. Want to end and how you want to behave, it always makes it better. I, I think [00:07:00] that right now what we’re hearing from our C-Suite clients is that the pace of information coming at them, the speed in which decisions have to be made, it requires a different skillset and.

Mindset. And so often our role is helping provide insights as outside counselors and advisors, giving them access to points of view that can help inform how they should bring their communications forward. And yes. Being a sounding board and a mirror to what are they earning in the, in the business environment.

But I also think, I guess that truly being rooted and [00:08:00] grounded is also a huge ability creator to make innovation happen. I think when I. Reflect on the companies that we partner with that I admire in this space, who are really leading innovation. Many of them know themselves so well that they’re able to then iterate, innovate, drive, change, because they’re beginning from.

A place of solidness.

Maureen: Dan, I’m gonna do a beep. Something just happened that disconnected my, um, my speakers.

Yeah, I just re-plugged everything in, but it’s gone to my internal camera. I still

Susan: hear you fine. I still hear [00:09:00] you fine.

Maureen: I see. Okay. It looks like it’s,

Susan: I don’t have that. I have lots of, I have many geeked things. One is, one is not audio.

Maureen: Okay.

Susan: Ariel, do you have any notes for me while you’re, while we’re resetting? Well

Maureen: you reset. I’m gonna log off and back on ’cause I, I don’t wanna waste our time.

Susan: No problem.

Maureen: So Susan, what are the biggest, uh, challenges facing public relations today, and how is Weber Shandwick evolving itself to meet those challenges?

Susan: I think that it’s actually a great time to be in communications and be in the. Public conversation that is earned. [00:10:00] Because when you think about how media has changed so rapidly, the art of effective storytelling, understanding your audience, motivating your communities actually is at an all time high.

The way that people consume news and information. Has changed not just in the last six years or six months, but the last six weeks. And the arc of the media networks is evolving rapidly, so it’s a great time to be in the field. I guess some people could look at that as a challenge because it means you need to always be thinking about what’s next, studying the industry.

Adapting to the networks, and I’m using lower cl, lowercase and there [00:11:00] adapting to the changes. But for us, I think it’s a moment of excitement. We know that we’re providing so much value to our clients, bringing them the insights both from what’s happening in the media environment, but also about the.

Stakeholders they’re trying to reach. So the kind of work that we do really spans the GA gamut. We support clients with corporate advising. What should they stand for and say, uh, all the way through to the marketing side of the equation where we’re helping them promote products and services and differentiate themselves.

So going way back to answer your question, I view the challenges as an opportunity and kind of the conversation we’ve been having all along already this afternoon, which it is the pace of change. [00:12:00] You can choose to be exhilarated by that or exhausted. I do believe it’s a choice, and I would say our collective mindset here at Weber is to.

Dive into that, learn from it, and continue to provide counsel,

Maureen: and that mindset has to come from you.

Susan: Well, I’m very lucky to be part of an incredible leadership team. You may have seen I have really built my career at Weber. I’m coming up actually next, in the next few weeks on 29 years. So I am. One very, uh, lucky person who’s been part of an amazing team over those years.

Our culture is very, very deep, and we have leaders who I think, feel the same, the same choice of embracing the uncertainty, [00:13:00] embracing the environment. And innovating through it, and absolutely I want to set that as my agenda, but it is also the heritage and legacy of, and really the deep culture of our operation.

Maureen: So what do you do as a leader? You’ve talked about yoga. How do you in the office reinforce this mindset of you? You talked about yoga being a long held tradition, so building on the traditions of what leaders do. So we still need strategy, we still need vision, and yet I think about doing. Leading a strategy session for a TV news station several years ago, uh, and that strategy didn’t unroll as they had imagined the world overtook them.

How do you [00:14:00] balance that sense of strong foundation with the idea that the world is, you’ve said moving in six weeks, things have changed. Uh, in with, with the addition of ai, I imagine your entire field is continuing to evolve at an accelerating pace.

Susan: Absolutely. I mean, AI is, is a huge topic and I’m, uh, shocked that we made it however many minutes into this discussing without it coming up.

I, I will definitely circle back around to that because I think it is. A tool, and I think we have a differentiated offer to support clients, but, but thinking more broadly about strategic foundation, and we have a very clear North Star in terms of solving for our clients throughout some of the most challenging business conditions [00:15:00] and delivering solutions for them.

But we also have. Um, an incredible depth and breadth of specialism. So what I think sets us apart and what makes us able to continue to grow and thrive, even with all that’s happening in the world, is the expertise of these amazing minds coming together in unique ways. So when I think about. Both our heritage, our legacy, and the way we’re looking to the future.

It is always about bringing on expertise when needed, having true subject matter gurus to help introduce us to different facets of how communication communications is changing and. [00:16:00] As we set strategy, we always are inviting the inputs from many, many perspectives around the globe. So we have a diversified business.

That’s an incredible benefit in times of change, but it’s also an incredible benefit in terms of bringing different points of view, different specialisms, different capabilities. And having those into a giant melting pot cauldron. Mm-hmm. Um, of what the strategy will end up being.

Maureen: I, I love the image of a cauldron actually, that I’m thinking of my Halloween of childhood and.

But, uh,

Susan: teamwork is magic. Teamwork is magic. I, I, yeah. Um, maybe cauldron isn’t, isn’t, isn’t quite right. But you get the, it’s a

Maureen: beautiful, [00:17:00] beautiful image of, um, distilling different perspectives and perspectives that each one on their own would be brilliant. And when you. Smash them together. Unless they’re distilled, like bubbled and you know, really integrated, they can’t work together.

That distillation process is required to, um. Crystallize what becomes the magic and the differentiator between truly world class firms and solutions and really good, but not brilliant. And in some cases, as we, as we watch the, the bifurcation of organizations, there are a lot of organizations that are good today that won’t exist in a [00:18:00] year.

Susan: I mean, what a beautiful way. You just reflected my thoughts and I love it, but I think it’s absolutely true. We get to set the culture, but we also get to drive our own agenda and mm-hmm. Driving our agenda means we need thinkers who are analyzing the political environment. We need thinkers who are experts in the capital markets.

We need thinkers who are healthcare leaders. We need thinkers who are brand marketeers. We need thinkers who are analysts. And when you put all of that together, you end with some answers. Not always the answer, but some answers to how can we help shape our client’s narrative and ultimately impact their business?

Maureen: And I wanna make this distinction, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re not just accepting their strategy, you are [00:19:00] feeding into their strategy and helping formulate in the best of cases. I realize you’ve got a range of clients.

Susan: Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s such a wonderful, we are so lucky the kinds of partnerships that we have with clients and absolutely there are many clients who have held.

A very successful business strategy for decades and beyond. Mm-hmm. In, in those cases, uh, our role may be related to telling the story and, and what are the channels and what are the communicate communities to activate. But there are also times when we really help them drive their own transformation and unearth.

The points of view that may exist in the operation that need to be celebrated and elevated. So it, it’s, it’s a wide spectrum as you could, would imagine with a, a, a consultancy of our size. [00:20:00]

Maureen: Well unearth and unearth in your clients and then partner back to this cauldron that, that you bring perspectives that they may not have, right?

That if they’re in healthcare, ’cause you mentioned healthcare, they may not be deep in finance, they may not be looking at glo. If you’re in healthcare, you’ve gotta be looking at global politics. But, but. Thinking about your level of analysis may be much deeper than any specific client because of your scope and span.

And,

Susan: oh, sorry, Marie. Sorry.

Maureen: Go ahead. No, no, no. Well, and that will also bring significant value to clients beyond traditional pr.

Susan: I thank you, and I absolutely believe that one of the great joys of [00:21:00] consultancy and being advisors and partners to clients is the incredible privilege we have of seeing so many different businesses in action and how you’re able to, mm-hmm.

Learn and meld and apply from a broader perspective. And as you say, we also have mirrored that in the team that we very deliberately built that has these diverse perspectives, all kinds of different thinkers. And I do think that that. Is valuable to clients in a particular way and, and I do think that we are much more today than, you know, what was originally called traditional pr.

And I’m, I’m proud to work at a communications agency and to work in pr, but I also feel that what we do today is really help clients [00:22:00] earn their place and. When you think about how the media environment has shifted, we know that earning, earning a reaction, earning an engagement, mm-hmm. With the community, earning your employees trust, that is something different that’s evolving every day.

Maureen: I, I love the idea of earning and earn employees trust, stakeholders. Trust, clients trust. And I had a conversation with, uh, uh. Large global company yesterday because they are on our podcast occasionally, and the difference between sponsoring and earned, and right now they are, we don’t have sponsors, so they’re all earned.

And what does it do if we add sponsorship in and does it diminish the idea that we have earned our place and are telling our story rather [00:23:00] than. We are an op-ed or a a paid feature. Uh, and so it is interesting the idea of how do I earn. Trust and earn credibility in the current media space.

Susan: I mean, there are dozens and dozens of studies, including some that we ourselves have done that show when you hear recommendation from a friend or you mm-hmm.

Listen to your favorite podcast host like Maureen, how you. See the information is different than when you see it in a paid space. And of course, the media ecosystem is such that those things can often work, work together. But we believe that to earn value, you must contribute value. And when you’re doing that, it amplifies the impact.

Maureen: So how [00:24:00] do you contribute value?

Susan: How does Weber contribute value? Great question, and, and I, I feel super proud of how we contribute value because I know we help our clients with some of their most rigorous business challenges. And those business challenges can be driving sales for a product they can be helping navigate.

An issue. It can be about helping them identify the next market that might make sense for them. That’s value that we put in the world. I think we also put value into the world by the team that we have created. We’re 3000 people strong around the world. We are energetic, curious individuals. I think that there is a lot of magic, uh, not to go too deep there, uh, in, in [00:25:00] being a workplace that is committed to excellence and development.

The, the way that we talk about ourselves, it is a reflection in terms of being an employee, uh, a team-based, uh, entity. It’s a reflection of how we also talk about the client work. The client work requires a diversity of skill sets, understanding sector expertise, but that also is career enabling. When you think about the opportunities you can find, being in a global organization where you may work today with one sector, you may be willing to move to another location.

You may be able to develop a new capability. We believe that. Our employees are also growing because of the way that we have built this built Webber. [00:26:00]

Maureen: Well, and so to that end, you’ve described, um, reinvention not as a one-time transformation, but as a way of life, and that philosophy shaped your leadership approach.

You’ve talked about teams. People being able to move between teams, between locations, between roles, it, and so how do you instill that mindset across a global organization? Because I assume for some people that’s a no brainer. Of course they want that. And for other folks that’s outside of their comfort zone.

Susan: Yeah, absolutely. We are committed. As an agency to continuous reinvention. We talk about it in every setting, in every forum. Mm-hmm. We even describe ourselves internally as the agency of the future, but this is decades in the making. Mm-hmm. [00:27:00] And I think it comes from the very lucky spot to be in a leadership.

Place for a long time and continuing to innovate. We invite innovation and we expect in innovation, and in fact, we also evaluate people on how they are innovating. It is very special to me, having been here so long. And, and I am, um, in baseball parlance, um, a homer, which is, I I’m for the home team. Mm-hmm.

Um, and I am very, very obviously, uh, loyal to Weber Shamwick after 29 years. This is an amazing place. But one of the things that is most, uh, special to me is when I visit offices all around the world, you see and feel this culture, I think that we attract. A certain kind of talent. And I think the people [00:28:00] who love the energy we put into the work and the embracing of change are the people who stay the longest and who have the most success.

So there is definitely a culture that embraces this mindset.

Maureen: What. If you were to put two or three words to the mindset, I’ve heard innovation, I’ve heard collaboration, I’ve heard stakeholder, and meeting our stakeholder’s needs. I’ve heard future ready or some variation of that. I’ve heard magical. I’ve heard I’ll say synthesis instead of cauldron.

Um. Um, how do you describe your culture?

Susan: I mean, it, I really, I do have two words and I use them often, [00:29:00] and they may seem incongruent because the first is relentless, restless, relentless for reinvention, and that is who we are and how we’ve always been, what is next and equally strong. Is collaboration and we set a strategy long ago that we would win by working together versus operating in silos.

When you talked about that great synthesis of having a healthcare mind, plus a brand mind, plus a policy mind, plus an analytics mind, we have always said we will win by deliberately encouraging behaviors and not creating boundaries. To collaboration. So you may think relentless and collaborative may not go together because they could seem at odds.

There’s an edge to one and perhaps a softness to the other. [00:30:00] But I say they fit beautifully. And I say actually, the way that we have done it really makes them mirror each other and build upon one another.

Maureen: So I’m looking as you speak to our seven mindsets for, um, successful leaders. And one is unwavering commitment to right action.

So if we think of the Collins, Jim Collins, tenacious and humble, that tenacity and. Unwavering commitment to doing the right thing, I would put in the relentless category. And then, um, innately collaborative is one of the others. And so it’s interesting to see those reflected. In your language so strongly.

Susan: Yeah. And [00:31:00] it is innately, but it’s also planfully. So I think that’s important to note. Uh, you, there are some people who are born collaborative. Certainly they’re best sharing their toys and, and building things together. But we also have designed collaboration and I think that that permeates a culture.

And I also think that it enables. Who stays, who thrives, who grows. So, um, yes, absolutely there is what, what, what, how you begin. But also what we purposefully design.

Maureen: I love the idea that there is, uh, because I agree. Uh, people will often throw out these words that sound right. Like everyone says, we want our customers to be happy, but have we designed it in.

Or are they words on a plaque at the front door, or even worse on [00:32:00] the voice, on the, the message that I have to listen to on hold for 15 minutes telling me how important I am when it’s good that I am, you know, not able to grab somebody that is saying these words to me. And so the, the. Building the structure that you were the chief collaboration officer, that there is such a thing that I assume it’s built into the performance appraisals.

It’s built into all of the um, projects, project structure.

Susan: Yeah, right. Honestly, that was the best title of all time. Uh, I think it was first of its Kind c-Suite to be Chief Collaboration Officer. And, uh, my predecessor, Gail Hyman, who is an amazing, uh, leader, who I learned so much from working beside her for many years.

Uh, she, uh, created the role with me and mine to create more systematized structure for collaboration. And it was, it was at a critical juncture when [00:33:00] again, the industry was changing. PS right now, it’s happening every, not six weeks, not six months, but often is changing. She recognized the need for change and, uh, empowered me to develop systems and structures for teaming that I believe help lead us forward.

Maureen: So, as we said, we would come back to ai. We talk about the rate of change. I’m curious, one, do as you look forward, and so let me give an example of something I heard from a senior executive yesterday from one of the. Top 50 companies in the world ish, that kind of range. Um, head of enterprise architecture, he said at one of the large companies, they’ve combined the CHRO role with the [00:34:00] CIO role.

I’m not advocating that, by the way. Wow. But the idea that at some point in time, he’s saying in the next six months that. AI agents will become employees, and we’ll have teams that are agents and humans. And so now many of us use tools like Copilot or Chat, GPT or something. It’s part of our job, but it’s not.

Uh, an entity driving itself. And, and as we think about that as a data point for, um, as I think about how do we optimize our presence when, when people are doing, uh, copilot searches instead of Google searches, all, all the things that need to change, how are you? Even starting to navigate that, it seems like upending of [00:35:00] how parts of your work are, other parts won’t change as much, but parts of your work will be significantly influenced by this.

Susan: Oh, um, absolutely. This is seismic, but again, in an exciting way. I generally think, um, and frankly. Everything in communications has upended time and time and time again, and we could go through the history. I, I know that we will continue to lead because the way that we are leaning into really best in class solutions and tools.

We are testing, innovating, partnering, using every single day ai, and I think that it is. Making us smarter and faster, that is value to our clients. Mm-hmm. I also think that the humans still have the edge, and so I know that the [00:36:00] insights and the expertise we bring on top of an amazing tech stack that is fully loaded.

It’s a combination that will unlock more so we’re, we’re thinking about it every day. We’re also deploying tool support and in the encouragement once again to our teams to innovate. And I find, as I have said, our legacy has been this restless, relentless innovation, the way teams are bringing AI to life.

You can just see how it’s gonna expand our horizon. So, uh, a couple examples in the communication space. One is cultural insights to find. What is the co cultural conversation and AI gives us a chance to read so much [00:37:00] more of what’s happening in the community to help our clients exactly pinpoint where their story crosses culture, and that always makes something more relevant and interesting.

We’re also helping protect clients. We talked a lot about stakeholders and we’re able to use AI as synthetic personas. How will different audiences receive messages that we are creating and putting into the world? And I do think the Ag agentic workforce is ahead, and I think that teams that have an mindset for adaptability and growth are the ones that will continue to thrive.

Maureen: I love that. I love the embracing and the synthetic. How do I test my messages with my AI versions of [00:38:00]

Susan: stakeholders? Different groups.

Maureen: Pick, yeah, pick the demographic. Yeah.

Susan: There are a lot. There are so many ways, and again, our culture has always been about create. Bring it forward. Let’s do it. Let’s go surface, scale, move on.

And, and PS something else is gonna come again. This we are not done. The, the next chapter is around the corner. I don’t know what it is, but maybe my ai, Susan could, uh, could predict it for us.

Maureen: Your A a I. Susan will predict something where we don’t know how accurate she’ll be, but she will predict

Susan: we, we still need the humans.

We need the humans to get at the edge.

Maureen: Well, the other place, at least for me is humans. Trust humans. Some humans trust AI may be a little overly trusting, but it when it’s time to implement a change, I’m going to trust [00:39:00]you, Susan, my boss. When you say something that’s gonna be different than ai. Susan saying something, Shirley.

Shirley. Because you’ve been reliable and you’ve said earned trust. You’ve earned trust over 29 years. And if we think, uh, one of the things I talk about with AI implementation is it’s. It is, if we reduce it to its simplest level, it’s yet another change initiative. So we had ERPs, we had e-commerce, all the stuff.

Uh, and this is seismic to use your word, and yet it is another change management initiative. Humans will need to change at a faster pace, and we as their human. Uh, bosses, for lack of a better term, um, leaders of of companies will need to help define the path, [00:40:00] experiment in a way that is, uh, uh, responsible

Susan: well, and also we need, we need to enable our teams.

We, we, we need to. We need to sponsor them through the journey. Mm-hmm. We need to give them the tools we need to be the ones creating best in class. Mm-hmm. We need to show what good looks like. We need to say we’re willing to try and fail. Mm-hmm.

Maureen: Like

Susan: that’s our job as leaders.

Maureen: It back to this large organization where we were talking about ai.

One of the things he said is. 120,000 employees or something like that, and a fairly decentralized model. He said, we’re gonna fail all over the place, right? We’re gonna try stuff and it’s gonna be brilliant. We’re gonna try stuff and it’s gonna be abysmal. We have to find a way to try and not blow things up, and we have to create this culture where.[00:41:00]

Fail fast doesn’t capture the feeling it conveys to me the, the, uh, because I’m watching organizations fail, they, they’ve run off and used this fail fast idea and unfortunately. They’ve blown up their company or they’ve blown up a significant portion of their organization because they, they may have failed fast, but that just means they go outta business faster.

We’ve gotta get smarter about how do I experiment in a controlled way where yes, I encourage people, go do, go do, go do, go try and scope. The experimentation in a way that we learn, we share the learning across our organization. We, not everyone has to engage in the experiment to learn from the experiment.

Absolutely.

Susan: But everyone, everyone needs to engage in ai. So they, [00:42:00] yeah, they, oh yeah. They need to find their own experiment. Um, for sure.

Maureen: So as we wrap up, what do you want our listeners to be thinking about? One with regarding Weber Shandwick and the. The role of communications going forward, and two, as they look at you as a, as an exemplar leader that is creating this relentless collaborative environment that experiments and.

At the same time acknowledges the service you are providing to all of your stakeholders. There’s a massive responsibility, and you haven’t used that word, but I feel it in our conversation, that you are responsible to the people you serve and responsible to and for the [00:43:00] people on your team, and that comes through in your passion for your work.

Susan: Oh, how very kind, what a lovely reflection. I, I appreciate that so much. I think for those who tuned in thinking about communications, I wanna say it’s, it can be a wild ride out there and. Find the partners, find the solutions, find the tools to deliver your message. Know who you are, know who your stakeholders are, and put your best foot forward in this environment.

So that, that requires a lot of effort. A lot of great companies and individuals do that. Certainly when I, what I love to. Spark in leaders who may be listening is just [00:44:00] my own gratitude that comes from every day showing up, putting my feet under my desk, getting that yoga in. Starting from a grounded place and knowing that that can drive both incredible opportunity and also joy.

Maureen: I love that you ended with joy.

Susan: Kind of nothing, nothing more.

Maureen: Well, in a time that can feel unsettling, finding that there is joy in our world and that we can find it in ourselves and in our workplaces is so comforting. Because it’s easy to feel unsettled when I tune into the news.

Susan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Maureen: So Susan, how would people learn [00:45:00] more about Weber and do you have a LinkedIn account or someplace where someone would follow your thought leadership?

Oh

Susan: sure, of course. Thank you for asking. We are weber shamwick.com and I am on LinkedIn. As you’d expect. It’s Susan how HOWE.

Maureen: Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, your joy and your care for the results and the impact you make in the world.

Susan: My goodness, I got a lot of energy out of this conversation, so now I’ll go, I’ll go buzzing into the rest of my afternoon, so thank you very much.

Great to see you. Great to be with you.

Maureen: Thank you and thanks to our listeners for joining us on Innovating Leadership Co-Creating our Future. Are you interested in elevating the quality of your leadership? The Innovative Leadership Institute offers best in [00:46:00] class leadership development, executive advising, and organizational transformation services.

Send me a note at inquiries@innovativeleadership.com. The world’s most successful leaders are created here. Also as a note, if you enjoyed this podcast, please like us, share us, subscribe, and leave comments. Your comments and your subscribership allows us to gain the support we need to continue to grow and bring you world-class programming.