HEAR FROM KAYLEIGH
Before joining Newton, Kayleigh Brennan was Head of Communications at a government outsourcing firm where she spent several years leading change communications on major projects, from restructures to transformation.
With a passion for making change easier for the people going through it, she joined Newton’s People & Change team in the Summer of 2020.
KAYLEIGH BRENNAN
Kayleigh Brennan is a Principal Consultant working in Newton’s People and Change team. She was drawn to the position because it’s all about working with people and making it easier for those going through change at work.
But it’s even more people orientated than that. Newton’s work in the health and care sector is all about making a positive difference to some of the most vulnerable people in society. Working side-by-side with professionals in hospital trusts and local authorities, Newton helps organisations and systems solve their biggest challenges and work better together. This means co-designing new processes and ways of working with frontline practitioners, then once tested and refined, ensuring they’re adopted across multiple groups of people – and creating change that sticks.
A recent project saw Kayleigh as part of a 15-strong Newton team working with five different organisations – each with their own culture, structure and ambitions – who were seeking to change the way that together, they support older adults to be more independent across one of the UK’s biggest counties.
“A lot of our work has to do with taking different groups of people on a journey. In any change programme there will be people with different needs and motivations, but when they also work for different organisations this adds an extra dimension to consider. Storytelling often plays a big part in addressing this; capturing people’s imagination about what could be possible.”
Part of Kayleigh’s job was to design the way change was adopted across these multiple groups. This meant developing a person-centric change plan that combined communications and engagement, training and other learning interventions, as well as behavioural nudges. Regularly measuring progress and using the data to adjust and adapt plans was also key.
A large part of Kayleigh’s role involved working with frontline practitioners to understand their world, the best ways to reach them through communications channels and what things in the past have made change painful, as well as what’s worked well, and building the approach around this learning.
Recognising the impact leadership teams can have in mobilising their people through change, Kayleigh and her team brought together senior leaders from each organisation and facilitated the development of a collective vision for what they intended to achieve together. They also explored the likely barriers they’d come up against and committed to sharing the vision within their respective organisations; actively unblocking challenges and leading their people through the upcoming change.
“What I love about my role at Newton is the variety of the work, and the diversity of the people I work alongside. From frontline carers, social workers, doctors, and nurses, to planners, chief execs and administrators. Often, they’ve all got a role to play in the change and I get to spend time with them all to help make that happen.”
In addition to this collaborative work, Kayleigh was responsible for supporting the recruiting and onboarding of a Communications Lead who would be able to take the already-established communications and engagement approach, and develop it into a long term strategy to support the transformation. At Newton, we pride ourselves on leaving behind the skills and tools for organisations to keep evolving and improving and this is one really important part of creating real and long-term, lasting change.
Along with her project work, Kayleigh and other members of the People and Change team are responsible for growing Newton’s capability in this area. Since joining, Kayleigh has helped develop and launch a bespoke methodology to help Newton consultants unpack behaviour-change and implement it in a structured way. She also regularly delivers in-person training to new consultants joining Newton to help them get to grips with this from early-on in their careers.
The learning goes both ways. By working alongside Operations and Digital consultants, Kayleigh has also seen her analytical skills improving and it’s this culture of learning and continuous development that, for her, really sets Newton apart.
As a result of this, all members of the People and Change team are actively progressing, not only in their careers but their personal achievements too.
“I’m on a constant learning curve – we’re encouraged to push the boundaries and find new and innovative ways to deliver our work. At Newton we are passionate about the power of data to drive change and I’ve definitely got the bug. I have a newfound appreciation for a beautiful graph!”
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