How I Did It is a monthly series from Between Seasons, exploring the human side of influence. Influential professionals share candid stories about how they made change happen - or why it didn’t - and the real-world reflections and lessons that followed.

Rick helps retail businesses with strategic development and implementation across sustainable supply chain, product, human rights and beyond! (see what I did there?)

In this first edition of How I Did It, I took a trip down memory lane with Rick Lambell, CEO of Beyond Sustainable Retail Group to talk about his work on Living Wage during his tenure at Kmart Group Australia.

But, we didn’t just talk about the work - we talked about the work behind the work: the influence strategies and leadership skills that kept a complex, long-term initiative alive when the path was unclear and the pressure was on.

🎧 If you want to hear the full conversation in Rick’s own words - including the expanded backstory and deeper thoughts about leadership and influence - I’ve turned it into a podcast. You can listen to the full episode here:

Scroll on for the story and strategies Rick shared as he told us How He Did It.

When Rick joined Kmart in 2014, the industry was still reeling from the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 people.

“Factories manufacturing for Kmart were not directly impacted,” he told me, “but I think it had a real impact on the business and its understanding of how important safety was in factories and the risks involved”.

For a business like Kmart, with low margins and a low-price focus, it wasn’t surprising that the questions - from customers and NGOs – quickly evolved from building safety to wages:”How can factories pay their workers a fair wage when prices are so low?”

But from day one, there was tone-from-the-top alignment - a scenario that isn’t as common an occurrence as you might think.

“Our Managing Director of Kmart at the time, he actually was the one who championed this at the beginning,” Rick explained, “he said to me - I think this is the big one. I think we’ve got to really focus on this topic”.

A working group was formed, and Rick and the team began with global research - speaking to other brands, industry bodies and NGOs. They were quick to realise, “this is a topic where you can't go it alone, as a business or as an industry”. This wasn’t as simple as paying their suppliers more and expecting the dollars to trickle down. “It became clear to us you needed to look at the whole system,” Rick said. Their new strategic priority was going to require systemic change.

So, Kmart joined the ACT Living Wage initiative, a formal, global partnership between brands and international trade unions.

Collaboration didn’t remove the pressures, though. Externally, customers asked questions and NGOs demanded immediate action. Internally, leaders wanted something they could talk about with measurable results. But the project (if we can call Living Wage that…) was a slow, systemic change spanning years - and that was hard to reconcile with those expectations.

Over the next (almost) decade, Rick maintained leadership on this topic as the retail, global supply chains and business strategies shifted around him. He navigated competing pressures, kept people engaged and held the line on their Living Wage strategy.

Here’s how he did it.

For Rick, collaboration was the only way to make progress - and it was a strategy to implement both internally, and externally.

Externally, joining ACT was a cultural shift. Collaboration in the fashion industry was a very different landscape 10 years ago than it is today, but it was a pivotal move to address a systems-wide challenge.

“We realised that we needed to collaborate with other bigger brands globally – along with trade unions and employer representatives - if we were serious about this topic,” Rick shared, “and to build the leverage that we needed to achieve progress”.

Internally, it meant building and maintaining cross-functional alignment - creating a working group, looking at their supply chain and bringing people into the process so they could lead on the topic too.

From NGOs pushing for quick fixes to internal leadership wanting results they could speak to, Rick was constantly reiterating the project’s timeline and scope.

“Myself and others involved [were] getting challenged - is this ever going to work?…What you have to do in these situations is just to keep pointing to the fact that this requires long-term system change across the whole industry.” He continued, “it's about the longer-term change and impact that we can have… It's going to take time. It's going to take years for those changes to happen. And that's uncomfortable”.

Managing expectations for him meant being clear with his communication and transparent about their approach and the small and shorter-term wins they were having.

In a long-term initiative, consistency builds credibility. A message that in itself was a consistent message throughout my conversation with Rick.

His advice?

“Be clear on what you believe in and be consistent about that”

“We were very clear about what we believed in and what would work – and what wouldn’t work - and we were consistent in sticking to that over the years,” Rick explained.

His drumbeat message - this is complex, systems-change and will take a very long time, but there’s wins along the way - kept the vision alive when the timeline was long and winding - it reinforced trust and helped manage expectations.

Momentum is both personal and organisational. Rick kept his own energy up by focusing on small signs of progress.

“I genuinely believed in the work and I was passionate about living wage. I was in the detail and… I was seeing the change and having the conversations… So, that gave me a lot of belief”. Rick explained, “I saw attitudes shift over the years in some of the countries we were dealing with - from complete skepticism at the beginning, to belief at the end – but building trust among disparate stakeholder groups takes consistent effort over many years.”

For the business, he used that passion and belief (and first-hand experiences) to advocate with confidence to the leadership team and external stakeholders. He leaned into the shorter-term components of his Living Wage strategy – such as tangible improvements in responsible purchasing practices, to show measurable milestones along the way. And strategically, he kept the business lens front of mind.

“I [kept] saying…this is about careful long term change. And that way you keep the confidence of your commercial teams and leadership.” He continued, “it's really emphasising that point and be cognisant of the pressure they're feeling - about the commercial implications”.

I plan to close every How I Did It interview with the same question:

Rick’s answer was immediate: get your leaders on board - and keep them there.

“The tone from the top is really important,” he advised. “You really have to form a good relationship with your CEO and make sure they understand the strategic importance and what it means.” Rick continued, “you need [them] to be speaking out consistently and supporting the key messages and commitments that you've made”.

“And if they're not doing that, you've got to - as subtly and delicately as you can. - call them out. … Your role is to educate, advise and support them, but also, hold them accountable.”

Rick’s decade-long Living Wage journey could have been a story about supply chain, trade unions and wage benchmarks. Instead, it’s a playbook for leading complex change:

To hear Rick tell the full story - including the behind-the-scenes moments that shaped these lessons - listen to our conversation on the Between Seasons podcast.

A big thank you to Rick Lambell for being my first How I Did It guest, and sharing his wisdom and insight with us.

If you know someone who would benefit from a peak behind the scenes of making meaningful change, send this interview their way.

Until next time,