Episode 31 – Leading Organisational Change: Interview with Jackie Lanham

Jackie Lanham is Hilton Food Group's Chief People Officer, with a career history that tells a story of leading change in all its forms to help businesses to achieve their goals. It comprises of 3 key phases:

HR Generalist and Business Partner covering all aspects of HR.

Large leadership roles establishing and running HR centralised and shared services.

Developing and implementing strategies to ensure business success now and for the future through culture, capability and organisation design.

What really makes her tick?

Change. Creativity. Performance. Fun. Results.

You Can Read the Full Transcript of Our Interview With Jackie Lanham Below

Darren A. Smith:

Welcome to the MBM block. We are absolutely delighted to welcome Jackie Lanham. Jackie, welcome.

Jackie Lanham:

Thank you, Darren.

Darren A. Smith:

This is our blog where we talk to experts and people who practice in the field right now, and we're talking to them about soft skills. Jackie and I know each other and we have selected the topic, well, Jackie did, of leading organisational change. Is that right?

Hilton Food Group's Chief People Officer

 

Jackie Lanham:

Yeah, absolutely spot on.

Darren A. Smith:

Good. I thought if we've chosen another topic, I've really stuffed up the first part of this, but that's okay.

Jackie Lanham:

We can do buying handbags if you like.

Darren A. Smith:

I'll tell you about a friend afterwards who did a vlog on all her handbooks. No, maybe one for another time. We have the pleasure of Jackie's company for about half an hour. We have a bunch of Google questions. So these are the questions that people typically ask around this topic. We're going to put them to Jackie. But before I waffle on anymore Jackie, would you tell us a little bit about you please?

Jackie Lanham:

Course. And thank you so much, Darren, for inviting me here to have this conversation with you. I'm really looking forward to it. As Darren said, my name is Jackie Lanham. I am the chief people and culture officer for Hilton Food Group. And Hilton Food Group is a premier food packaging organisation. Absolutely focused on the protein category. Well known in meats, also getting well-known in fish, and also in vegan and vegetarian products as well, on an international basis.

Jackie Lanham:

I love my job. I get the opportunity to talk to people across Europe, into Australia, and also have the wonderful opportunity of building things into new countries, most recently, Belgium. In my role, I'm really responsible for facilitating our thinking around our people strategy, and really ensuring that our people love working for us, are fully engaged in what we do, because we know people who love their work, love working for the business, produce the best.

Darren A. Smith:

Very true. Very true. Yeah, very true. Okay. And you haven't just worked at Hilton... I say just.

Jackie Lanham:

Oh, no, no, no. This white hair is earned, unfortunately. I got into human resources pretty quickly, and I have to say, I love it. Absolutely, felt very lucky to find my forte really early on in my career. I've worked across retail for the Co-operative and Tesco within the U.K. And also, I've worked on an international basis within the financial services' sector. A period of 11 years with JPMorgan Chase, and a period of seven years with, also, Aviva, in the insurance sector.

Jackie Lanham:

I think what I absolutely adore about the profession I'm in, is the fact that it's pretty transferable across different sectors. And I think I'm at my best when I'm working in businesses that are absolutely focused on delivering to the customer. Yeah, that what I enjoy doing, and really working with businesses who have that at their heart.

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant. I'm going to go off at a slight tangent, and hopefully, you'll be okay with it-

Jackie Lanham:

You did.

Darren A. Smith:

I'm looking through my... Not now, but I was looking through my LinkedIn feed, and there are people who are changing jobs and thinking HR might be for them. So I just want to take you back a few years to, when did you know you wanted to get into HR and why did you think it was right for you? And what's your advice for those people that are thinking, "Do you know? I might have a good go at that"?

Jackie Lanham:

Yeah, it's a tough one. I'll tell the true story. So the true story was, I graduated in English literature and history-

Darren A. Smith:

Wow.

Jackie Lanham:

... and at the time I graduated, people are going, "What? You say you're going to be a teacher? You're going to be a journalist?" And I had a bit of a flirtation with being a journalist and worked out that I wasn't really tough enough for doorstepping and all of that kind of stuff. And went back to the university careers centre, filled in one of these online things you fill in. Actually, it wasn't online. It was paper and pen at the time, but there we go. And the results came out, "Oh, you could probably do marketing or personnel." And I looked at marketing, thought, "Oh, that looks quite interesting." And I looked at personnel and quite liked the fact that I could get another year's education with a qualification.

Jackie Lanham:

So I decided to go back in and do my post-grad, kind of focusing on what was then personnel. And I think what grabbed me, in terms of loving it, was just the sheer variety. The fact that one moment, you're recruiting, the next moment, you're helping somebody perform better. You're doing that at an individual level and also at an organisational level. And also, you get to work at very senior levels within the organisation, relatively young in your career, which is fantastic as well. So you get a real insight into the strategic direction and the commercial direction of organisations.

Jackie Lanham:

I think human resources gives you the flexibility to not only work within different sectors, but you can also work in different components of human resources now it's really, I think, developed as a function. So if you love numbers and you love rewards, you can kind of have that analytical reward route. If you love more, the training and development side, then again, you've got the opportunity to look at how you bring an organisation along, or individuals along from that perspective.

Jackie Lanham:

I can name, we have diversity and inclusion now. All those types of things gives you the opportunity to specialise if you wish, work as a generalist if you wish, and then work across different sectors. And what I've loved is the opportunity as well, to look at how I can manage my career to different stages in my life, as well.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Jackie Lanham:

So yeah, as I had my son, I could start to think, "Well, actually, I think this is the time for me to specialise a bit more because I can manage my time. My time is more my own." Whereas when you, in a more business partnering role, I can tell you, it's not so much your own. So again, fits another stage of your life in your career.

Jackie Lanham:

So I just had that flexibility, and obviously, people can take it into their own businesses, running fantastic consultancies as you do, or indeed, looking at how you might be an independent consultant as well. So yeah, I just think it's opportunity-rich and I've just absolutely adored it.

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant. And just coming back to, if I'm an HR... I'm not, but if I was a person wanting to be an HR manager, what's the one thing that regrets too much. What's the one piece of advice you'd say to someone, "You should go and do that. You should try this. You should..." What is it? What's the thing?

Jackie Lanham:

I think it's, dip your toe into everything. And I think probably, yeah, I think a regret is a really good question. And very, a couple of times early on in my career, I was given the opportunities to work internationally. Now, I've been lucky that I've done international roles, and I've been able to travel into countries and spend periods of time. But at least on two occasions, I was offered the opportunity to work in New York, offered the opportunity to work in Holland, or the Netherlands, sorry, and never took it up.

Jackie Lanham:

And I think if I look back, I can go, "Yeah, you should have just pushed yourself a bit further on those things." But I think trying to really widen your experience as much as possible, is really important. And we live in a very small world now, so the more experience you've got of working with different culture on an international basis, I think the better, in terms of your career.

Darren A. Smith:

That's good advice. All right. Well, I'm thinking that we could do 40 minutes about you because I am fascinated.

Darren A. Smith:

Do that more than one. Let me just come back to our topic for a moment because I've got about a thousand other questions and the people are thinking, "Hold on. You were going to talk about this, now you're talking about that." So leaving organisational change, let me ask the stupid questions. What the hell does that mean? It sounds like something out of a book. What does it mean?

Jackie Lanham:

It does, doesn't it? Yeah. There's also this piece around... I don't want to sound passe, but change is constant. It absolutely is. And I think for me, around leading organisational change, it's around, you always need to be on point because there's always going to be changed in play. And yes, there'll be big change, there'll be small change. If you, as a professional, are not always looking at how you can do things better, how you stay relevant, then at some point you'll be extinct, the business will be extinct. We've seen lots of examples of that in history.

Jackie Lanham:

If we look at how... It's the easy one, isn't it? How technology has lifted us off to a different place. The impact that's had on retail, for example.