Michelle Holliday
Saturday, January 30, at 2p.m. in Bronfman 001
Michelle Holliday has 20 years’ experience in brand strategy, with particular expertise in authentic marketing for sustainable results. She is the founder of Cambium, a Montreal-based consulting firm uniquely blending brand strategy, organizational development, communications and graphic design. She founded the company after observing that the predominant organizational concepts and ways of working are neither optimal nor sustainable. And she is driven by the desire to help usher in an expanded set of beliefs and practices, inspired by a view of organizations as living systems.
Early in her career, Michelle was one of two expatriates responsible for establishing H.J. Heinz in the former Soviet Union. She developed and implemented a comprehensive strategy to launch five product categories, covering everything from pricing and positioning to packaging and promotion. When she left, the office had 35 employees and annual sales of $12 million, with distribution throughout the region.
She left Heinz to become Brand Manager for the Coca-Cola brand for Russia, Moldova and Kazakhstan. With an $11 million marketing budget, she initiated and oversaw a full range of advertising campaigns. She is most proud of her work on the region’s first national contest, which tied together an under-the-cap prize mechanism, 3 television commercials, outdoor advertising, point-of-sale materials and a 30-minute nationally televised film produced specifically for the promotion. As she entered the position, Coca-Cola was new to the region and market leader Pepsi had a 20-year head start. When she left, Coca-Cola’s sales were double those of Pepsi’s.
Her growing interest in the internal side of branding led Michelle to leave Coca-Cola to co-found a consulting firm dedicated to leveraging culture and leadership more effectively. It was here that she developed the Engagement Competency Model, a diagnostic tool and guiding framework for building an organization that engages employees and customers in a sustainable manner. Based in Washington, DC, her firm’s clients included Merrill Lynch, the US Department of Energy and the Eurasia Foundation.
When personal circumstances led her to Montreal in 2004, Michelle continued to apply the ECM, first as a freelance consultant and then as founder of Cambium. In these capacities, her experience has included clients in foodservice, scientific fields, healthcare, retail management, consulting, business-to-business product offerings, and energy efficiency. For example, for an international chain of cafés she involved customers and all 150 employees in a process to develop the company’s manifesto – the shared vision of what the organization stands for and what it wants to become. On this basis, she developed and implemented an integrated brand strategy, including an employee training program and “vibe” video. In another example, she and a fellow Cambium consultant helped all 650 employees of the Montreal Nature Museums (Biodome, Insectarium, Botanical Garden and Planetarium) to develop their manifesto. This document was then used to raise the $180 million in financing needed to move toward the vision they had articulated.
When she is not helping clients, Michelle is writing a book that is both deeply philosophical and eminently practical. It describes the emerging era in human civilization, in which engaging the human spirit is the only viable competitive lever.
Michelle has a Master’s Degree with a concentration in International Marketing and is certified to apply the values-based Cultural Transformation Tools. She has lived in the USA, Canada, Scotland, England, Russia and France and speaks English, Russian and conversational French.
Talk: “The Future of Organization” Workshop
A new era is emerging, but what defines it? Information technology? Globalization? Chaos and complexity? Economic disparity? Financial instability? Environmental degradation? Generation X, Y and C?
What if there’s one simple pattern behind all of these trends? And what if understanding this pattern could make all the difference — to you, to your organization, to humanity?
It’s the pattern of all living systems.
Once we understand it, we can see it all around us. And then we can work with it, instead of struggling against it as we do within the dominant (but limited) paradigm that tells us that (1) we and our organizations operate like machines, (2) we’re separate from each other and from nature, and (3) we exist essentially to compete and consume.
The signposts are already up, pointing the way to a new story — one in which we recognize our capability to align ourselves and our organizations with the simple but powerful pattern of all living systems. And enacting this new story will literally make all the difference in the world.
The Future of Organization workshop offers a bridge into the emerging era, as well as a map to guide you on the journey ahead. Based on a view of organizations as living systems, it describes the Engagement Competency Model, a comprehensive framework for engaging customers and employees on a sustainable basis. And in this way, it offers a user’s manual for an organization’s most essential resource: the human spirit.