The Strategy Gap That Quietly Ends CHRO Tenures

The company hires a new CHRO. The CEO introduces them like they've found the missing gear in the leadership machine. The board nods in relief. The executive team exhales.

And then, month by month, the narrative starts to shift.

Around month nine, the CEO starts offering compliments that land a little oddly. Around month 12, the tone tightens. And by month 15, the question isn't coded anymore: Are we getting the strategic partnership that we need?

This is part one of a two-part series naming the quiet pattern that ends CHRO tenures without a headline, without a blowup, and without a clean post-mortem. Today is the diagnosis. We unpack why this pattern exists and why it catches even experienced CHROs off guard.

The data is stark: 31% of first-time CHROs are fired in their first 18 months. 52% are fired within a year of a new CEO being appointed. The CHRO thinks they're doing a good job. The system is grading them against a job description that was never spoken.

What You'll Learn

The enterprise context that's changed:

• Strategy windows are shorter, margin pressure is higher
• Execution speed has become a competitive advantage
• Boards have less tolerance for slow-motion operating models
• What CEOs need from CHROs has changed, even when the language hasn't

Why the strategy gap exists:

• CFO and COO roles are standardized, CHRO expectations are all over the map
• "Strategic" means a dozen different things to different CEOs
• CHROs get hired into undefined versions and gravity takes over
• The CEO says strategic, the CHRO hears make HR better, but the CEO means see the business in systems

The boardroom diagnostic:

• The CEO opens with narrative, CFO sharpens with margin and cash, operators layer in execution risk
• If the CHRO talks about engagement trends and time to fill, they're running a parallel narrative
• Parallel narratives get trimmed first when the clock runs out

Four faulty assumptions that keep this pattern alive:

1. Delivering results automatically creates strategic credibility (early wins set the altitude of the role, you build credibility as an operator and get evaluated as an architect)
2. Strategic is a shared word that will align over time (ambiguity never stays neutral, it becomes muscle memory)
3. Experience protects you (it doesn't, prior success isn't portable unless you renegotiate the value equation)
4. The CHRO role has the same enterprise ceiling as the CFO (it doesn't, CHRO expectations depend entirely on the CEO)

Four diagnostic questions:

1. Is our business strategy inside the business model or sitting next to it? (Being in the room isn't being inside the model)
2. Are we rewarding operational reliability over strategic authorsh

Transcript

The company hires a new CHRO. The CEO introduces them like they've found the missing gear in the leadership machine. The board nods in relief. The executive team exhales. And then month by month, the narrative starts to shift. And around month nine, the CEO starts offering compliments that maybe land a little oddly. Around month 12, the tone tightens. And then by month 15, the question isn't coded anymore. Are we getting the strategic partnership that we need?

Hey there, senior leader, and welcome to the Talent Sherpa Podcast. This is where senior leaders come to rethink how human capital really works. I'm your host, Jackson Lynch, and today I'm joined by my co-host Scott Morris. He's a former CHRO with the scar tissue to prove it, renaissance man in every definition of the word, and the founder of Propulsion AI. And this is going to be a fun two-part one. Today we're going to be naming the quiet pattern that ends CHRO tenures without a headline, without a blowup, and without a clean post-mortem. And this is big enough that we're going to tackle it, like I said, in two parts. Today is part one. It's the diagnosis. We're going to unpack why this pattern exists and why it even catches the experienced CHROs off guard. And next episode, it's going to be part two. And that's what do we do about it? If you want to dive deeper in it, this is also part of a Substack that I put together. I think it's three or four parts. I'm not quite done with it yet. But it is going to be trying to answer the question: why is it that so many CHRO tenures get cut short?

I've sadly found myself on both sides of this one. I've successfully navigated around it and I have fallen into the pitfall. So here's the setup, Jackson. A company hires a new CHRO. The CEO introduces them like they've found the missing gear in the leadership machine. The board nods in relief. The executive team exhales. And then month by month, the narrative starts to shift. And around month nine, the CEO starts offering compliments that maybe land a little oddly, like praise with a condition attached. Around month 12, the tone tightens. And then by month 15, the question isn't coded anymore. Are we getting the strategic partnership that we need?

Yeah, and the CHRO, who's been delivering outcomes, they're solving real problems, they're stabilizing leaders, they're doing what we do best. But then we suddenly discover the room's changed its definition of what winning looks like. And the data tells the story. 31% of first-time CHROs are fired in their first 18 months. And I can tell you from firsthand experience, there are a lot of us that stub our toes that don't fall into that 31%. 52% are fired within a year of a new CEO being appointed. 52%. And that number is actually even higher when the new CEO is elevated internally. And you wouldn't think that, but it's what the data coming out of Russell Reynolds says.

Well, and here's the tension. The CHRO thinks that they're doing a good job. And in many cases, they are doing a good job. The system is grading them against a job description that was never spoken.

So this is going to be what is called by the kids a humdinger. Now those kids were born in the 1920s. But still, before we dive in, hey, I'd like you to please subscribe, invite you to leave a comment and review on your platform of choice. It grows the pod and it aligns our work with the algorithm and it lets it work its magic. And we just appreciate you listening, whether it is in Madrid, Spain, or in Dallas, Texas.

Hey, and also the CHRO Chronicles newsletter is now live at mytalentsherpa.com. It's written by CHROs for CHROs. It's just $30 a month. We start by diving into the alignment and the need to build alignment with the CEO. It's been described as a game changer so far. Pretty big early response. So when you're ready, level up, check it out.

Hey Scott, let's dive in and set the enterprise context because I think this matters now more than it did even a couple of years ago. The strategy windows are shorter, margin pressure is higher, execution speed has become a competitive advantage, and boards have less tolerance for slow motion operating models. And that environment changes what CEOs actually need from a CHRO. And that's even when the CEO doesn't update the language. And that's where the first problem I think shows up. CEOs have a common understanding of what a CFO does, what a COO does. The market has standardized those definitions. The CHRO expectations, first off, you have more than one title for it, and the expectations are all over the map. And in my experience, that definition depends so much on what the CEO's past experience with HR has been. Good, bad, trauma. They depend on the CEO's level of sophistication about what that role should be. And they depend on their personal interpretation of just one word, strategic. Because when the CEO says they want someone strategic, by the way, I don't know what that means, but the CEO doesn't either. The word carries a dozen different meanings. Make HR less of a problem, be my executive coach, help me with difficult conversations, co-author the business narrative. Like those are wildly different jobs, but they all get called a strategic CHRO. So the CHRO gets hired into one of those undefined versions, and then gravity takes over. Well, what do you mean by gravity? I was hoping I was hoping to get past that without the question. The early signal from the organization is always clear. Usually you come in and you're asked to stabilize, fix the pain, clean up the mess, reduce noise. You know, you oftentimes we'll hear that as get the trains running on time. But while the CHRO is doing that, the CEO is scanning for something else. I think that's leverage. Where will the strategy break? What human constraints are capping performance?

So the CEO says strategic. The CHRO hears make HR better, but what the CEO means is see the business in systems.

Now I'm going to call that mismatch the strategy gap. It starts as language, it becomes structure, and then it becomes reputation.

Well, and the boardroom is where you get to see this one most clearly. Okay, right back at you. How? How do you see that? I thought I was gonna get away without the question. The boardroom is probably the most honest diagnostic because time is really limited, and the enterprise has to choose what matters. The CEO opens with the narrative. Where are they going and what assumptions do they have to hold, and what risk is gonna threaten the path? And then the CFO comes in and sharpens that narrative with margin and cash and capital allocation. And then operators come in and layer in the customer reality and the execution risk. Same narrative, different lenses. And then comes the CHRO. That's where the gap starts. Because if they're speaking about engagement trends and turnover patterns and time to fill, the context can still be correct and still not land. Because the room isn't asking, is HR doing work? The room is asking, can the business execute the plan?

I think that's exactly right. And here's the central point of that. If the CHRO is not extending the CEO's narrative, then the CHRO's work becomes a parallel narrative.

And parallel narratives get trimmed first when the clock runs out.

That's exactly right. And it's not cruelty, it's governance. It's the way the system is made to operate. If it wasn't that way, why is it that something we all know is important like leadership development, it's the first thing on the cutting room floor? I would argue it is because you haven't tied it into the CEO's narrative. It's in a parallel narrative.

Well, so there are assumptions that keep that pattern alive. Let's expose those. These assumptions feel reasonable, and it's why leaders cling to them, but they're also why they're quietly failing. So I think we're going to name four of them here. You want to start?

Yeah, so here's assumption one. Delivering results automatically creates strategic credibility. Now that feels true because, like, we all want to be in a merit-based environment. Results should speak. And early wins should earn trust. That's what everyone has told us. Those first 90 days are so important. And if we can earn trust, that trust should earn influence. But here's why that fails. Early wins do earn trust, but they also set the altitude of the role. If you earn trust by stabilizing operations, the system encodes you as operational. Influence doesn't appear by accident after that. You have to renegotiate the contract because you've already told the organization who you are. You build credibility as an operator, and then you get evaluated by the CEO as something different, like as an architect.

Let me do the second one, which harkening back to the word strategic that we were using before. The assumption is that strategic is a shared word and that we're going to align around it over time. And that feels really mature and it sounds really collaborative, but it's a trap. Ambiguity never stays neutral. Ambiguity becomes muscle memory. And the longer the person in the role operates without an explicit definition, the more the organization defaults to the legacy expectations of HR. If the mandate isn't defined, the org chart is going to define it for you every single time.

Here's assumption three. Experience protects you. Spoiler alert, it doesn't. Experience increases the speed at which you apply patterns that worked someplace else. That can help you stabilize things fast. It also might have you thinking about solving last company's problems in this one. You got to meet the company where it is. But it will also lock you into the wrong version of the role fastest. Prior success, I would argue, is not portable unless you renegotiate the value equation into that new context. And most people don't do that. The first few times I've had CHRO roles, I didn't do it. They assume what worked before will work again. And that's just not true.

Let me do the last one. The CHRO role comes with the same enterprise ceiling as the CFO. It would be nice if it did, but it doesn't. And this is the one that I think sets up everything else, Jackson. Every CEO knows what they're hiring when they hire a CFO. The market has standardized it. But the CHRO, it depends entirely, as you said a minute ago, on that CEO's past context, their level of sophistication around the role and what they personally mean by strategic.

Yeah, let me double down on kind of the overriding piece of this. I did a bunch of survey work 10 years ago. And in that, I asked five CEOs that I know and I've worked with and I consider friends. And I said, I would like you to describe your CFO in two factors. One, what is it that you expect them to be able to do well? And two, what are the experiences they need to have prior to stepping into that role for them to be successful? And across the five, which were in different industries and different size of companies, the only major difference was investor relations as it related to whether it was public or private. But the jobs are the same, the titles are the same, everything's the same, and it has almost no variability from one CEO to the next. You know where this is headed. Now, I had the same conversation with the same people and say, talk to me about your HR person. There was no standardization. It wasn't a standardization of the title, there wasn't a standardization of the expectations of the role, there wasn't a standardization of the experiences leading into that role that are necessary, which is why I believe it is a complete identity shift. But as it relates to the CEO, they use the same language and yet they mean different things. And then what I found is it's largely as a result of their prior experience. What have they seen work before and how does it work? So I think the question isn't how do we make CHROs more strategic? Because I don't think that's even possible. The question is, why do CEOs keep hiring co-authors of the business strategy and then put them into building operational systems that treat them like reporters of data? Well, let's break that down. How about four questions? Not interview questions, but like real executive questions. Questions if we do this right, questions that force leaders to confront those trade-offs instead of comforting themselves with activity. And here's the first one. And to me, this is the most important one. Is our business strategy inside the business model or is it sitting next to the business model? And most leaders hear that and they think, of course it's inside. We talked about people consistently. The CHRO is in the room, the board of directors deck even has a section that says HR in it. But I would tell you that being in the room isn't being inside the model. Those are two different things.

I agree with you, and I also think this is the most important one. Inside the model means that your people narrative extends the CEO's narrative. It tightens that story, it narrows the aperture, it points to the constraint, it changes a decision. If the CEO is talking about margin expansion and the CHRO is talking about engagement, the CHRO might be right, but they're not inside the model. And so there's a shift that's necessary. The room needs to understand how engagement matters, what lever it pulls, what risk it signals. If the CEO is talking about growth and the CHRO is talking about time to fill, the room hears activity. It doesn't hear leverage. Business strategy is a narrative of constraints. And I think a lot of us as HR leaders, we tend to respond with narratives about programs. That's not the same altitude, to borrow the word you used a minute ago.

Yeah, you cannot be an HR person with a program looking for something to solve. That is what most people that I work with start from. And candidly, when I was sitting in the role, like, oh, we have a frontline leadership problem. I will give a frontline leadership solution to it. But you know what, that might not actually be where you need to go, and you end up having activity. So I think talent and leadership are often the reason that strategy fails. But the boards only trust that explanation if it's framed, to your words before, as an operating constraint, not as an HR initiative, not an HR program. So if your people narrative doesn't change a strategic decision, you're not working on the right thing. It becomes optional content when time compresses. And honestly, we've all been there where it is the last part of the deck. And when time gets constrained, you end up having the CEO say, hey, can you cut it from 30 minutes down to 15? That's the signal that you are working side by side, not inside the model.

Let me push us to question two, Jackson. Are we rewarding operational reliability over strategic authorship? This is where I think capable CHROs get trapped because reliability is real value. The organization needs it and the CEO needs it. But the trap is where reliability becomes the ceiling.

Yeah, and every CHRO job I've taken, and even in my advisory practice when I've come in to try to help folks, one of the early things that we talk about is get the trains running on time. That's an operational feel. That is stabilizing the function. And when you do it, the CEO feels relief. And the CEO starts routing more operational work because the CHRO is competent, they're responsive, they're doing all the things. And the CHRO then becomes the executive who can always handle it, and that becomes their identity. Here's the problem. Meanwhile, the CEO is still scanning for a co-author. They are looking for someone who will say, here's what you're not seeing. Someone who can help you write the risk narrative. So the CHRO gets praised for being reliable and then later criticized and often let go for not being strategic. And that's not hypocrisy. That's a mismatch between what the CEO rewarded and what the CEO required. And this is where the CEOs unintentionally shrink the role. It goes from a high altitude to a low altitude. They reward that low altitude operational relief. And then they wonder why the strategic lift never arrives.

Well, and you know, there's something else that's happening here, and it's the drift of expectations, too. Well, tell me more. Well, this actually I could see this one happening. I had a CEO who wanted to talk to me about coming and joining their company. And they, when I said what's important to you, they started asking about programs or started talking about programs. So kind of in a nutshell, like if the CEO asks for engagement scores, like you have to get underneath that. What do they really mean? I think what they really mean is do we have leadership traction? Right? If they're asking for turnover numbers or turnover trends, they might really mean where are we fragile? If they're asking about time to fill, they might mean can we actually execute the plan? Those questions aren't wrong. They're just incomplete proxies. And if the CHRO is delivering on the proxy, they are headed down the wrong road. The CEO still doesn't get the deeper answer, and that is what is going to erode confidence.

Look, I think you're right on point with that. And the question for CHROs is how do you get to the answer that is meeting the actual question, not the question that's being asked, right? So the move is to answer the proxy question. That requires you to step back, think, and then elevate the frame. Yes, turnover is up in two functions, but here's the part that matters. Those functions sit as critical handoffs in the operating model. The turnover is concentrated in managers, not individual contributors. That tells us the system is falling apart at leadership throughput. And if we don't address that, the strategy stalls in execution. So here's what we should do about it, whatever that solution becomes. Like, if you answer what's turnover with that answer, you're in great shape. If you answer it with 17.2%, and that's about industry average, like no one. I almost had to use the Oldsmobile horn. Like, no one cares.

Nobody cares. And they might care momentarily, but it's not going to make any difference long term. To make it really, really simple, what you have to do is meet them where they are and then bring them up. And to do that, the CHRO has to be thinking about the consequence to the business. If you respond to proxy questions without reframing them in terms of constraints, then you're going to be seen as helpful, but you're still going to be seen as low altitude.

Yeah.

So let's, I think we've run that one into the ground. Let's talk about question three. Are we evaluating the CHRO on enterprise outcomes or on how well HR runs? And this is where the evaluation tells the truth about what the system actually wants. So if you look at the CFO scorecard versus the CHRO scorecard, CFOs, they have metrics, they are enterprise metrics by default, margin cash flow, return on invested capital, share price appreciation, EPS, all the numbers. Nobody evaluates the CFO on how well finance runs its internal processes. The CHRO metrics look like a department manager scorecard. Engagement scores, turnover rates, time to fill, training completion. Some of them are HR metrics, many of them are vanity metrics. And we get so excited because we're sharing data, but this is part of what I think is our confidence issue and our control issue. Like we can have a green HR scorecard while the enterprise is failing to execute. That's a problem. Okay, I'm on a roll. There's also a dashboard problem. Boards get HR dashboards that are full of data and they barely scratch the surface on each subject matter. There's not a narrative, there's no story, there's no connection to the business, there's no link to the risk framework, there's none of that stuff. Meanwhile, the CFO presentations are driving decisions. And when I end up having conversations with my clients, and people that have worked for me, I will talk to them about if you have a slide, it either needs to be a so-what slide or one step removed from that so-what slide. The CFO presentations do that, they drive the decisions. And finance didn't get there by accident. What do you mean by accident? Well, think about the trajectory. So smaller companies have a head of finance who, like everyone, they start operating tactically. And the finance narrative is about how finance is running, not necessarily about the business. And then the company hits an inflection point. They're starting to raise capital, they're preparing for acquisition, they're preparing to go public. You got all the external forces that show up: Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, IPO requirements, SEC reporting, investor scrutiny. And those external forces, they come together and they require that finance becomes a business narrative. You can't avoid it. In my view, it wasn't optional. Organizations then learned what strategic finance looked like because they had no choice. The exogenous, word of the day, pressures, those things that you don't control, but the pressures from the outside end up driving the altitude of the CFO role.

You know, I think HR, if we're going to make a comparison, HR didn't have that equivalent forcing function. There isn't any kind of external body that requires a CHRO to translate human capital into larger enterprise risk. There isn't an audit check as to whether the HR narrative extends the business narrative. And investors are typically not punishing you for presenting turnover trends that don't connect to margin. So the discipline that you're talking about in finance seems to be optional in the HR circle. And that optional discipline is inconsistent.

So I agree with you. So what are the good savvy HR leaders doing about it?

Well, they do, first of all, they don't do just one thing, they do many things, but I think centrally they are building the discipline for themselves. They're not waiting for somebody to force it. They are thinking about, as I listened to you talk, one of the favorite things I've heard you say is, so that, right? If you're going to present a program, so that we are doing this. And that just that framing forces you to think about how you structure the HR narrative as a part of the business narrative. And savvy HR leaders are doing that because they figured out that that's how you operate at enterprise level at the altitude that you want, whether anybody is requiring that or not.

Yeah. So is your HR leader predicting the future or are they reporting on the past? That I think is the ultimate question that separates CHROs who create value from CHROs who administer a function. And the way you tell the difference is if you have a clear so that, I think you win.

Yeah. Let me go to the fourth question. Are we mistaking activity for leverage? I think this is where senior leaders need to be brutally honest. HR work expanded over the years for a lot of real reasons. Complexity in the enterprise has increased, and regulation in some cases has increased, and talent markets have tightened, remote work changed management, technology exploded, expectations rose, but the growth in volume is not the same thing as growth in value. A bigger function isn't a stronger function.

Yeah. In December, Bersin came out with some statistics that showed that for 2025, the HR function was growing at 60% higher proportionally to the overall organization. And that's a signal, right? The enterprise doesn't fund HR because it's busy. And all the reasons you said, the enterprise funds HR because HR needs to remove constraints. And when we help the organization by responding to ambiguity with more programs, with dashboards, with more process, with more initiatives, the function gets really, really busy. They're really, really active, and they're still not experienced by anyone else in the business as essential. And here's something that should stop every CHRO in their tracks. Deloitte found that CHROs walked away from QBRs, quarterly business reviews, with frustration and envy, watching the CFO engage leadership in spirited discussion with quality data, and HR struggles with inconsistent metrics and a bunch of disparate systems. And the CHRO is, and I quote, at a disadvantage when using workforce data to influence decisions. That's a problem.

Yeah, it is. And it's the activity trap kind of in action. More data, more dashboards, more reports, but none of it really lands because it's not connected to what the business is trying to decide.

And if you're not depressed enough, it gets worse. Harvard Law School study found that nearly half of CHROs don't regularly report on culture and talent metrics to the board at all. Meanwhile, 80% of directors say that they spend more time on talent strategy than five years ago. The demand is there. The supply isn't meeting it.

You know, activity is always a comfort strategy because it feels good. We've talked about it before. It gives you a dopamine hit, right? But when the role of the CHRO is undefined, then the human response is to just produce more output because more output is visible, and visible feels defensible, and output reduces anxiety.

But Scott, enterprise value isn't created by output. Not necessarily, at least. I think it's created by leverage. Leverage is what changes the slope of performance. Leverage is what makes execution faster. Leverage is what removes repeat problems instead of solving one-offs. It's about leverage.

Right. And just to make sure that the word leverage is clear, like the audience is way smarter than me, but the shift isn't do more. Leverage means do fewer things that remove more constraints. That forces some hard trade-offs. It forces, in some cases, saying no. It forces retiring legacy processes or programs that aren't moving outcomes the way you want them to move. Leverage is forcing talent moves that feel maybe a little bit politically risky, but they are strategically necessary.

Yeah, on the politically risky piece, I tell you, the more ambitious the mandate, the more activity looks like safety, and the more the enterprise drifts away from real leverage. So you got to really, really fight that. So let's talk the traps. And by the way, I am fighting every urge to start solving this problem. So make sure everyone listens to part two next week. Right. I'm fighting my inner beast because like I'm a problem solver. I want to talk about that. But let's talk about some of the traps before we get there. Because like even once you see this pattern, there are predictable ways to stumble.

And understanding, to your point about solving the problem, right? Defining it, identifying it, that's 90% of the work. It makes solving the problem easier. Here's trap one: confusing trust with influence. Trust earns access, influence changes outcomes. You can have deep trust with a CEO and still be seen as low altitude. Trust without being an author of the narrative is still a ceiling.

Look, and I'm going to double down on that point. It is why we need to stop talking about the dadgum seat at the table. That's a participation trophy. I'm invited to the meeting, therefore I am influential. It's not true. Here's trap two. Waiting for permission to operate at an enterprise level. No one's going to give it to you. The CEOs assume it, the boards assume it. The operators don't know really what to do, but they're not going to invite you into hard decisions until you actually show up speaking their terms and solving their problems.

Here's trap three. Over-delivering operationally to compensate for ambiguity about the strategic nature of the role. This is how you cement the wrong identity as a CHRO. The more you prove that you can handle the backlog, the more the backlog becomes your job description.

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they give you a low-altitude mandate and you haven't changed your identity from a functional leader, you are reinforcing that mandate and it becomes a doom loop. And then you wake up in 12 months and you wonder why the CEO is letting you go. Here's trap four, letting the board define you before you define yourself. And this is probably the biggest switch that I see between a first-time CHRO and a second-time CHRO. It's how you navigate that board. If the board experiences you as a parallel narrative for these meetings, that becomes your brand. And there is no incentive for the CEO to fight that board perception.

You know, sometimes when you introduce me, you say he's got the scar tissue that proves it. Well, here's the scar tissue that really matters. Like boards are not afraid of bad news, but they are afraid of vague news. You can't do anything with vague news. And so if you can't speak clearly about risk, the board assumes that you can't see it. If you can't see it, then you can't manage it. And if you can't manage it, then you're not operating at enterprise level.

And you know, just to double triple click on this. The place you see this first at a board level is in fact in the deck. And here are the two options. You have a CEO that defines the outcomes and the strategic intent. The CFO reinforces that with the financial drivers underneath that. And then if you go and you talk about all of the operators, and then at the end you talk about unrelated parallel HR stuff, that's when you know that you have a challenge. And you see that in PricewaterhouseCoopers, they did a survey where 60% of CEOs say that their CHRO is a key strategic partner, second only to the CFO. And that's great, right? But it only sounds good until you understand what second means. The CFO's value is assumed. The CHRO's is not. They are still proving it. Every meeting, every quarter, it is a low-altitude mandate that you have got to work on turning into a high altitude mandate. And that doesn't happen naturally in most cases.

And that's why we're calling this episode the strategy gap. It doesn't get closed by working harder, it gets closed by working differently.

So that's where we're gonna wrap it up on this one. And let's land the plane. Here is your Talent Sherpa summary for part one. Or as Scott always says, HR is just finance with feelings and worse spreadsheets.

You know, I've literally never said that, but I think that's your funniest one yet. All right, here's my summary. The strategy gap is structural, it's not personal. Parallel narratives erode confidence, even when you're doing a good job of delivering. Reliability without authorship creates a ceiling for you. CHRO expectations vary by CEO. That's where the trouble starts. And finance had external forcing functions. HR didn't, but you can build the discipline yourself.

Yeah I tell you, I think that last point is the one to sit with. Nobody is coming to force the discipline. It's on you. You either build it yourself or you stay parallel. And as we started, the math associated with survival of a parallel CHRO platform isn't great. So if that's not your impetus to listen to next week, I don't know what it is. Because this is part one. In the next episode, we're gonna cover part two because that seems like a logical next step. We're gonna talk about what it actually looks like to close the gap and the Monday morning moves to get you there.

Yeah, we'll get into how you contract that role explicitly, how you translate strategy into the constraints that we were talking about earlier, and how you build what we call an operating model that keeps you upstream instead of being reactive.

Yeah. So that's it. I want to say thank you to everyone here for tuning into the Talent Sherpa Podcast. This is where senior leaders come to rethink how human capital really works. And this is so much fun to do with you, Scott, and it's a lot of fun to interact with the listeners. I want to give a quick shout out to Carrie from Chicago. Thank you for being a part of the Talent Sherpa community.

If you like today's episode, do us a favor and hit the like button. Or better yet, subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite platform, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify or YouTube.

And if you're a CHRO wondering where to start your AI journey, don't forget to check out Propulsion AI. That's Scott's company. You can find them at www.getpropulsion.ai. And they're transforming how smart companies turn HR insights into powerful outcomes with a team of agentic teammates that let senior leaders and HR work on the stuff that moves the business forward, like what we've been talking about today. And a quick shout out to our sponsor, Dripify. If LinkedIn follow-ups are eating your lunch, Dripify helps you automate outreach in a way that still feels human. Scott uses it, I use it, and you can check them out at try.dripify.com/talentsherpa.

You know, the stuff that we talked about in this episode, it's hard to do. And if you're a new CHRO, it's even harder. And so if you are new or if you're emerging and you're ready to accelerate your impact, my advice is go over to mytalentsherpa.com. You're going to find resources there. You're going to find coaching there, the new CHRO Ascent Academy and the CHRO Chronicles.

Yeah, we kicked off the Ascent Academy earlier this month. It is going great. And I'd love to work with you to kind of help you manage through this. So until next time, keep raising the bar. Keep structuring your narrative inside the business model, and keep on climbing.