Jamila Lecky started her career as a fashion buyer at Tesco F&F, New Look and M&Co. But she caught the HR bug and pivoted to the profession seven years ago and hasn’t looked back since.
Six years at engineering consultancy Mott MacDonald gave her time to flex her skill set, and while there she won the 2022 CIPD People Management Student of the year for her change management efforts in successfully delivering a significant global transformation during the pandemic.
Today, Jamila drives advertising and media company Group M’s transformation strategy forward, focusing on culture, change and transformation efforts. We sat down to talk about the secrets of successful transformation programmes and the importance of employee voice.
Your focus is inspiring organisational change and transformation. How important is adapting your approach to different audiences within a business?
We do adapt our approach, but what we really focus on is bringing people into the conversation, taking them on a journey with us and helping them to understand why a change is necessary.
Irrespective of who they are, we don’t talk to people in jargon, ever. We use simple terms so that they understand the bigger picture. We want people to understand what’s in it for them, how the change will help them and the business now and in the future. We have to help people to expand their thinking by deepening their understanding.
I spent a lot of my time listening – I need to understand different people’s perspectives so that we can shape programmes and create an approach that works for them. Co-creation is incredibly important when you’re doing any sort of change and transformation work – I don’t believe anything should be created in a vacuum.
And the approach does depend on the organisation you’re working with. Take GroupM and Mott MacDonald – two very different audiences and internal stakeholders who are motivated by very different things.
Do you find people are more hesitant about change programmes today?
I think we need to find a new way to describe change and transformation – it’s become such a buzzword and it’s now even harder to gain people’s attention.
But our world moves at such a pace now. With the advent of innovative technology and then Covid-19, we have endless examples of seismic changes that came out of nowhere, so I do think people are more comfortable with the fact that we must move forward.
People’s tolerance of change is also so dependent on the company. Group M is a media and advertising business – so people are used to iterating, innovating, and jumping on board with the newest and latest thing. And that does help.
But we’re also incredibly matrixed, with each of our agencies brands in themselves. They have their own distinct ecosystem and culture and they’ve been brought into the fold through mergers and acquisitions. Trying to implement change across the whole company can be tough, irrespective of people’s mindsets.
What role do you think leaders play in ensuring transformation programmes land successfully?
They have such a vital role to play. They should be your sponsors, and the face of any change.
They should be consistently showing behaviours in action and role modelling the required changes from the front. Getting their support and encouraging them to be cheerleaders is a vital first step for us – they are accountable to the rest of the business and so must feel confident enough to explain the changes and own them. I always take the time to ensure their understanding and belief is rock solid before moving forward with any programme.
I’m a big fan of the waterfall comms approach too. Once leaders are onboard, we rely on them to help with the cascade. We usually take a top-down and bottom-up approach, but they need to be able to answers questions directly in the moment, when they arise.
Getting them onboard also makes my role easier because we know we have their buy-in and can focus on implementing.
We’ve spoken about trust a few times; do you find people are less trusting today?
Absolutely. There is a big lack of trust when it comes to change. Although some people may understand the need for change, the majority in businesses don’t appreciate how important evolving is, why it affects everyone and the importance of getting everyone involved in the process. People still see it as something that is happening to them or being done to them.
We have to set out what we’re hoping to achieve in a very open way to build that trust again. We have to tell people what’s happening in the business, explain that we want to be a great place to work, and we want to create a high performing culture where everyone can thrive – and that won’t always happen organically. We’ve got to motivate and inspire change to happen.
There isn’t a natural trust that leaders are going to do what’s in their people’s best interest – a lot of people don’t trust that change will happen fast enough either. So, they leave because they have options and organisations can no longer expect employees to have lengthy tenures and wait out for things to change. We have to pick up the pace so we can keep the best talent.
You’re passionate about surfacing the employee voice. Tell us more.
Driving incremental change, giving people a genuine platform, and increasing their visibility matters so much to me.
Leveraging and listening to the employee voice is how you make change happen. You have to make sure people feel that they’re being heard and then show them that you’re actually doing something about it.
A lot of organisations are great at providing or advocating for employee voice opportunities, but then aren’t able to follow up on the feedback given, which inevitably creates discontent, and then we’re back to people leaving - or quiet quitting - again.
What’s your view on engagement surveys? They certainly have merit, but we’ve found some companies are so data driven now that they’re losing sight of solving the real issues surfaced by the survey and are focusing on the wrong thing.
I think they’re useful for being able to see a point in time. Being able to see the impact of a programme that we’ve led or a change we’ve made is amazing, but I think they’re being done too often. It’s not always worth doing them every year because you need to ensure that you’re driving tangible change within that period with people able to see that real progress is being made and not only tokenistic gestures. That can be hard if you’re trying to change the culture of a business for instance, which takes 3-5 years for you to start seeing an impact.
I'm a real advocate for utilising pulse surveys. They’re super targeted allowing you to clearly attribute the results to your change intervention and enable you to make immediate changes and pivots to your short-term strategy often. People don’t want to complete surveys with 50 questions anymore. They’ve lost patience with them and often only complete them if they’re disgruntled.
The listening piece often falls down because we cannot tackle everything unless we’re prepared, have the right resources, and take the time to create a strategy that has everyone’s input and buy-in. Change has to be devolved to be meaningful.
Looking forward, tell us what you’re most excited about this year?
I am judging the CIPD People Management awards for the second time this year – in 2023 I judged the category I won the previous year, and this year it’s the ‘Best digital/technology initiative in HR/L&D category’ that my team and I gained a special commendation for in 2022. I recently spent a week reviewing the submissions that came in from organisations across the world. It’s exciting to read about the brilliant things being done in HR and inspires me to think about how I can tweak my own approach to change and transformation. Next steps will be for the shortlist to be announced and then the panel interviews in a few months' time. Getting to celebrate successful and impactful transformations and the people that worked diligently to drive them forward is so important, and something I’m extremely proud to be a part of.
And as you’ve made a big shift once in your career with taking the leap from buying to HR and change, what advice would you give other people looking to make a similar change?
Be open to learning and trying new things. I had to take a leap of faith (and a large pay cut!) when I decided to make a change to HR. I focused on highlighting my transferrable skills and bought academic books to help supplement my technical knowledge, so it was clear that whilst I didn’t have HR experience, I was motivated to quickly learn and progress. I took the opportunity to study my CIPD Level 7, and then went for my Chartership quite quickly afterwards.
It was only 3 years in that I started to specialise (Reward and then in to Change Management) but I was keen to gain as much insight into the different areas of HR as possible, and that’s how I found what I was most passionate about, by being open to new opportunities.
