Mandate First. Hire Second.

The most common CHRO failure mode isn't the person — it's the role design that precedes them. CHRO turnover sits at 9%, and 66% of incoming CEOs replace their CHRO. That number doesn't improve because organizations keep finding better candidates. It improves when the mandate is written before the offer letter is signed.

In this episode, Jackson and Scott name what usually goes unsaid: CEOs hire for the functional gap, encode the role around operational pain, and two years later wonder why their CHRO never reached enterprise altitude. The mandate was never written. The aperture was never opened. And by the time anyone notices, another turnover statistic is already forming.

What You'll Learn

• Why the CHRO role defaults to functional support even when both CEO and CHRO wanted something strategic — and how the reinforcing loop stays invisible while it's running
• The four faulty assumptions that trap CHROs in operational mode before the first 90 days are over
• Why a clean HR operation is the floor, not the ceiling — and what a CEO is really measuring when they call their CHRO "strategic"
• The Mandate Architecture: three elements that must be in place before the hire, during onboarding, and across the first operating cycle
• What operating integration actually looks like — and the specific signal that tells you it's missing
• A 6-step playbook you can start this week, whether you're the CEO or the CHRO
• Why the fix requires the CEO to implicate themselves in a performance gap they've been attributing to someone else

Key Quotes

"The title doesn't define the role. The mandate defines the role."

"If you design a functional support role and call it a CHRO, that's what you got."

"The operational failure is visible and fast. Strategic failure is slow and a lot less visible."

"Stop waiting for permission to operate at enterprise altitude."

Sources for Statistics Cited

• CHRO turnover at 9%, higher than most C-suite roles — Spencer Stuart Fortune 500 C-Suite Snapshot 2024 (Note: per the same report, COO turnover is 12% — CHRO is elevated but not the single highest)
• 66% of incoming CEOs will replace their CHRO — Fortune / Russell Reynolds, May 2025
• Nearly 1 in 5 CHROs globally in their role less than 2 years — Fortune / Russell Reynolds, May 2025

Transcript

JACKSON: The reality is the CHRO, if they're not in the room when the business decisions are being made, are always going to be reactive. They will always be translating strategy after the fact rather than shaping it in real time.

Hey there, senior leader, and welcome to the Talent Sherpa Podcast, where senior leaders come to rethink how human capital really works. I'm your host, Jackson Lynch, and today I am joined by my co-host, Scott Morris. He's a former CHRO with the scar tissue to prove it, the alleged author of a motivational LinkedIn post that went viral in 2019, and the founder of Propulsion AI.

So, Scott, here is an interesting question. You hire a CHRO, you give him a title, you give him the proverbial seat at the executive table — whatever the hell that means — and two years later, as a CEO, you're frustrated that HR isn't driving enterprise performance. But here's the uncomfortable part. You designed the role, you set the mandate, and the mandate said functional support. And it said process compliance, and it said stay in your lane. So what did you actually think was going to happen?

SCOTT: You know, I've been on both sides of this one, Jackson. I'm excited that we're going to have this discussion today. And I think I wish our audience had more CEOs in it because they need to hear this one too. I've been that CHRO who got hired into the role that said strategy, but meant operations. And honestly, I think in being self-critical, it took me longer to name what was happening than it should have.

Before we dive into this one, though, I want to do a plug for your Ascent Academy. I think you're getting incredibly good press on this — at least from what I can see, you're getting really, really good press. And you've got a new cohort that is kicking off in May. One of those new programs is for sitting CHROs, and you've got similar material focused on leaders that are one step away from the CHRO role. So both are likely to sell out quickly. I would encourage everybody listening to check out the agenda, the pricing, and the timelines. Go to mytalentsherpa.com.

JACKSON: So, Scott, we have talked about this on the pod. The CHRO role is absolutely expanding — with AI governance and workforce transformation, board engagement. Every major publication these days, it feels like, has a new piece about how the CHRO is the second hardest job in the C-suite. In fact, I saw recently that Spencer Stuart published data that said CHRO turnover is 9%, which is higher than any other C-suite role. And that's the lowest number I've seen. There's a Fortune article — Brad Pugh of Russell Reynolds back in May of '25 — that said 66% of incoming CEOs will replace their CHRO. And again, I've seen that number as low as 52%, 56%.

SCOTT: That's a pretty staggering number. The conventional read on that — and you and I have talked about this before in at least one other episode — is CEOs want chemistry. They want their person. And for sure that's true, but there's something underneath that number that I think we should name.

JACKSON: Right. Because if the CHRO has spent two years as a genuine enterprise-level operating partner — not just an HR support function head with a C-suite badge — the transition math changes. You don't replace an executive who's built the talent architecture for your next phase of growth. You find a way to make that relationship work.

SCOTT: Well, and the CHRO isn't just about chemistry. It's about what value the role actually was set up to deliver. What happens when a CEO looks back after two years of CHRO tenure, and the primary contribution was clean processes and filled roles and no compliance fires? That doesn't feel like enterprise leadership. That feels like a well-run department.

JACKSON: And as they said in Star Wars, it's a trap. It's a trap. Because clean processes and filled roles are not nothing. They're genuinely hard to do sometimes. A CHRO running a tight HR operation — they're doing real work. But it's functional work. It is the floor, it's not the ceiling. And when the CEO expected the ceiling and you delivered the floor, you end up with two very frustrated people and probably a turnover statistic.

SCOTT: You know, like you, I get to talk to a lot of different CHROs. And a number of them seem to be going through this same thing. They say the CEO brought me in to be a strategic partner, and then six months in, I'm spending 70% of my time on HR ops because nothing had been built in the organization before I got there. How do you execute strategy from that position?

JACKSON: Look, the CEO has a different version of that. That conversation for them sounds like: I hired someone who said they were strategic and they were never able to get out of the weeds. The reality is neither of them are wrong. They just never agreed on what the job actually was.

SCOTT: And the misalignment there has a real cost. Nearly one in five CHROs globally, right now, have been in their role for less than two years. And if you think about what that means from a continuity standpoint, from a talent architecture standpoint — you're not building anything durable when your most senior people leader turns over every 18 months.

JACKSON: And the fix isn't to recruit better. The fix is to define clarity before the offer letter. What did you actually hire your CHRO to do? Because if the mandate is ambiguous, the role performs at the lowest common denominator. It's going to default to the functional support level. It's not because the person is incapable of more — because they usually are. It's because the structure never gave them room to do more.

SCOTT: Our CFO colleagues might differ with me, I don't know, but when I think about it — the CHRO role is the only C-suite function where the leader is simultaneously expected to run an operating department and perform as a strategic executive. From my seat, I don't think the CFO spends a lot of time in accounts payable, and the CMO doesn't spend a lot of time managing the print shop. More often than not, people in the CHRO role are expected to oversee HR ops while also driving talent strategy. And I don't think that tension resolves itself. I think you have to design it out intentionally.

[FOUR ASSUMPTIONS THAT TRAP CHROs]

JACKSON: So to make sure it's painfully obvious — what we're really talking about today is mandate clarity. The role design question that gets asked after hiring, if it gets asked at all. So let's call out a few of the faulty assumptions that get leaders stuck. Scott, do you want to start?

SCOTT: Sure. Here's the first one. And I want to be honest — I think I've believed this one myself. The assumption is: we hired a strong CHRO, so the strategy is just magically going to follow. That logic kind of feels right. If the person's capable, they'll figure out where they need to add value. If you just give them a little time and get out of the way, everything will lock.

JACKSON: I've been that person, so what's the problem with that logic?

SCOTT: Well, the problem — and you and I have both lived this one — is that strategy doesn't follow from a title, it follows from a mandate. If you never defined what enterprise contribution looks like from the CHRO, if you never said here are the three important business problems that I need you to co-own — if the CEO never said that — then the CHRO defaults to what they can measure and what they can control, which is usually HR ops. But you can't self-determine your way into a strategic role in an organization that hasn't made room for one. And that has to start with the CEO.

JACKSON: And I'll say that the CHRO is not passive in this, though. I've been in rooms where I could have pushed harder on that conversation before I accepted the role. And it's a weird power dynamic, and I didn't always do it. So this one implicates both of us.

So let's dive into a second assumption. I think this one's particularly insidious — word of the day. If they're good enough, they're gonna find a way to make space for the strategic work. I missed this one. I've lived it. This is the leadership version of "figure it out." And it produces exactly what you would expect: CHROs who spend their time on what gets measured and praised, which is normally operational delivery. Then the CEO who says "find the space" is the same CEO who tends to fill it with very urgent operational requests every Sunday night.

SCOTT: Or Monday morning, or Tuesday night, or Tuesday morning — pick any day that ends with a Y. The urgent always beats out the important every single day if you let it. And the structural problem here is that operational failure is visible and fast. A compliance issue, a missed hire, a team in conflict — those things show up immediately and feel urgent. Strategic failure, on the other side of that, is slow and a lot less visible. The leadership pipeline with a gap in it three years out doesn't announce itself today. It announces itself gradually, sometime in the future. And so the CHRO optimizes for the signal that gives them feedback. And that signal is operational.

JACKSON: Exactly. And so here's the third assumption. This is the one CEOs say with genuine pride: HR runs well, so the CHRO must be doing their job.

SCOTT: Which is true, because HR running well is not nothing. It's hard to do. And those of us who have inherited organizations where nothing was built — getting it running is hard. The hard work matters. But you said it a second ago, and I think it's worth repeating: it's the floor, it's not the ceiling.

JACKSON: Scott, that's right. And a CHRO who's built a tight operation in HR but hasn't converted the business strategy into talent requirements, or hasn't identified human capital constraints before they become execution failures, or hasn't elevated the quality of leadership decision making across the enterprise — that person has delivered on the operational job description, but they haven't delivered on the enterprise one. And if the CEO hired expecting enterprise contribution, that gap's going to surface. And it usually surfaces in the first 18 months.

SCOTT: The painful part is the CHRO doesn't always know that the gap exists. They're receiving great feedback. HR is running really, really well. The CEO seems happy. And then one day they're not in the room for a decision they should have been there to shape. And they realize the aperture never opened.

JACKSON: That's right. And the fourth assumption — this one happens in the hiring process: "We know what we need, we'll sort out all the specifics once they start." They don't actually say that, but that's the behavior.

SCOTT: Said every CEO who replaced not just their CHRO, but every other position. I hate this one.

JACKSON: Yeah. The first 90 days of a CHRO role are candidly the most formative. How the CEO engages the new CHRO in that window, what problems they hand to them, what rooms they're invited into, what language they use to describe success — all of that encodes the role. And from my view, if the mandate is vague when they walk in the door, the role fills with what's urgent and visible. And urgent and visible is almost always operational. So by the time anyone realizes the strategic aperture never opened, you're about 12 months in — and weeks, maybe days, away from a turnover statistic.

SCOTT: You can't recover mandate clarity from inside an operational churn cycle. The window to set the role at the enterprise level is at the very beginning. After that, the organization's immune system locks the CHRO into the functional lane. And both sides — the CEO and the CHRO — are left wondering why the role never performed at the level either one of them hoped for. At least, that's my belief.

[WHY THE PATTERN DOESN'T SELF-CORRECT]

JACKSON: I think you're right. And here's the answer: the role performs exactly at the altitude it was designed for. If you design a functional support role and call it a CHRO, that's what you got. The title doesn't change the structure. The mandate does.

Okay, so before we get into what do we do about this — I want to name the thing underneath all of it. Because if we don't understand how we got here, we're going to build — and I feel like I say this every week — we're going to build new workarounds on top of old workarounds.

Scott, you and I talked about this after our last recording session, and I appreciate the conversation because you said something important. At its core, this is a solutions order problem. CEOs hire for the functional gap before they define the strategic mandate. And that ordering is not accidental. It reflects how the need for a CHRO typically surfaces.

SCOTT: Walk us through this one, Jackson, because I think this is the thing that makes this problem so incredibly hard to fix.

JACKSON: So the decision to hire or replace a CHRO usually follows a pain signal. HR operations are under stress, a compliance issue has surfaced, there's a personality issue, the people function doesn't have credibility with the business, talent processes are broken. These are all real problems. They create real urgency. So the CEO frames the hire around solving those problems. And then that framing encodes the role before the offer letter is ever written.

SCOTT: And they never change the language in the job description. The job description says "strategic partner," but the pain that created the opening says "fix our operations." And the CHRO who lands in that environment reads both signals.

JACKSON: Yeah. And let's be honest — the search firm has probably written the job description. The CEO may not have done anything more than glance at it. So the operational signal is louder. And it has metrics, it has immediate visibility, it has stakeholders who are going to tell you when it's not working. The strategic mandate is softer. Harder to measure, longer cycle, doesn't produce a dashboard as easily. The CHRO then optimizes for the signal that produces feedback. And that signal is not strategic — it is operational, it is functional.

SCOTT: I feel like when we talk about these things, I don't want anybody to interpret that we're looking down our nose at anybody else, because I've most certainly been guilty of this one. I've walked into at least one CHRO role where the most visible thing I could do in the first 90 days was to stabilize something — and it was because things were bad before I got there. But stabilizing felt like value. It made people appreciate things, it produced visibility. And it consumed the time and the political capital that I needed to do the enterprise work. Big mistake.

JACKSON: Yeah, right there with you. I am the reformed smoker of almost everything we talk about on the show. I remember getting into — I think it was my second CHRO position — and they had a flood-the-zone strategy, and talent acquisition was a mess. So for the first 60 days, all I was doing was acting as a very well-paid recruiter. And thankfully, that CEO and I had a recalibration once we got to the other side of it. But you lean into it because it feels like the right thing to do for the business. You get some credibility. And candidly, the organization rewards it. And if you don't have that other mandate conversation, you wake up 18 months later having run an excellent HR program and not having changed the trajectory of the enterprise in the slightest.

SCOTT: So why doesn't this self-correct? Why do the CEO and the CHRO not just recognize the pattern we're talking about and adjust?

JACKSON: I think it's because the reinforcing loop is invisible when it's running. The CEO sees clean HR operations and interprets that as the CHRO doing their job. The CHRO sees the positive feedback and keeps doing the work that generates it, because we like to be liked. No one's making a bad decision here, no one is doing anything untoward. The system is just producing the outcome it was designed to produce.

Who breaks the loop? I think it's really context-specific, but someone has to name it. It's a very uncomfortable conversation. I think it's probably the CHRO — and I think they have to say, "I'm running the wrong race, boss." But the CEO also has to be willing to hear that without interpreting it as the CHRO saying they don't want to do the hard work, they don't want to roll up their sleeves. That's a death knell. So it's a trust conversation. Whether or not you have the trust to have it is another story. But it's not really even a performance conversation. And in my experience, most organizations aren't set up to have it — and they don't really want to, because it's scary as heck.

[THE MANDATE ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORK]

SCOTT: I agree with you. Let's reframe this so we're offering some sort of a roadmap. How do we move from a role defined by functional execution to a role defined by enterprise operating contribution?

I want to offer the framework that you and I have been calling the Mandate Architecture. There are three elements to it. Think of it as the work you do before the offer letter, during onboarding, and across the first operating cycle.

Part one is about role design. You've got to define the strategic altitude before you hire. The strategic altitude is defined as the set of enterprise problems that the CHRO is going to be accountable for — not HR problems, but business problems that have human capital dimensions. Things like: What are the three capability gaps that are going to limit our growth in the next 24 months? Where is our leadership bench weakest relative to our strategic needs? What human capital constraints are embedded in our operating model that we haven't named yet? That level of problem.

JACKSON: I want everyone to notice that those are not questions that live in the HR function. Those are questions embedded in the business strategy. Which means answering them requires a CHRO who has access to the business strategy and understands it — not a CHRO who's just managing the function.

SCOTT: Well, and you and I talk a lot about what you have to do before you take a CHRO role. One thing you've got to do is have a very clear conversation with the CEO about what those problems are. And if the CEO keeps wanting to come back to HR problems rather than business-level problems, that sends a signal.

The old version of this looks like a job description that says: strong HR generalist background, experience leading large HR teams, track record of successful transformation. Which describes an excellent HR professional. The version we're advocating for says something different: here are three enterprise-level problems we expect the person in this role to co-own, here's what success looks like in business outcome terms, here's the altitude we expect this role to operate at. That kind of clarity changes who even applies for the job.

JACKSON: Yeah. And I think it changes the onboarding. If you define the aperture before you hire, the first 90 days has a very different shape. The CHRO is not walking in trying to figure out what the job is — they're walking in knowing where to focus. That's huge. It also means the operational demands don't capture all of the bandwidth.

SCOTT: Look, for anybody listening right now who says, "Yeah, but I don't control those things — that's in the mind of somebody else" — you can pay attention to the signal, and you can shape those things in the hiring process. That's where your best conversations are going to be with your potential future boss.

JACKSON: Yeah. I talk to people in the real world all the time. I had two people last week who called and said, hey, I've listened to a couple of the most recent podcasts and I realized I need to level up the mandate. How do I do it? At that point, it's doable. I'm going to work on some things that might make it easier and more user-friendly for people to have that conversation, so stay tuned. But it is so much easier to do on the way in. And it's hard. I've gotten a lot of silver medals because of this. And you know the neat thing is — I shouldn't have gotten the gold medal in it, because I was going to be miserable in the role given our misalignment on what the role actually does.

But you've got to ask: what are the things getting in the way of your business? And if the answers come back as programs — try it again from a different angle. A CEO who's answering you well during the interview process allows you to follow a script that sounds like: here's what the business needed, here's why it had a talent implication, here's what I did to resolve the talent constraint, here's what the ultimate performance looked like. If you have a conversation where that flows naturally versus you forcing it — you have the makings of mandate alignment at the very beginning. That's super important.

Because the trade-off of not having the conversation is this: if we agree the CHRO should be spending 60% of their time on enterprise-level work, then we also have to talk about what part of the agenda is not getting that 60%. Who's running the function? What level of operational overhead is acceptable? What are we willing to build underneath the person so that their altitude doesn't collapse into operational? How do you build the next layer down?

SCOTT: The honest version of the old model is: we want you to be strategic, but we also want you to manage everything that HR touches. Which means you're either strategic and the operations suffer, or you're operational and the strategy suffers. And neither is what the CEO thinks they hired for.

JACKSON: Okay — I've been a little mean. I'm going to be kind here. The CEOs who create this bind are not doing it intentionally or cynically, and they have no bad intentions. They genuinely believe that both are achievable. They've seen CHROs who appear to do both. But the CHROs who appear to do both have either sacrificed their personal operating tempo in ways that aren't visible, or they've built an exceptional leadership team beneath them that is actually running the function. I think the second path is the right one. That's why, when I talk to companies I've thought about joining, I've asked what latitude I have to bring in my existing team. Because we speak shorthand, we can get things done — especially in a transformation environment. But it does require investment. And it requires the CEO to actively support the CHRO in building that team.

SCOTT: One of the things I think I've done successfully across multiple organizations is recognizing the operational deficit, looking at where we could create efficiencies, redeploying the salary savings into someone who could run day-to-day ops — without asking for additional budget. So you're right, it takes investment. Sometimes you can be creative, sometimes it's harder.

I want you to take number three. I think you should deliver this one.

JACKSON: In the spirit of the Mandalorian — what you just said is, in fact, the way.

The third element is operating integration. We've got to wire the CHRO into the business decision cycles. Because the reality is the CHRO, if they're not in the room when business decisions are being made, are always going to be reactive. They will always be translating strategy after the fact rather than shaping it in real time.

So operating integration means the CHRO is a standing participant in the strategic planning cycle, in the capital allocation review, in the M&A diligence process, and in the leadership team performance discussion — not as an HR observer, but as an enterprise contributor with a clear point of view.

SCOTT: The signal that operating integration is not happening is a really specific one: it's when you as a CHRO hear about a major business decision in the same meeting as everybody else. That's the tell. It's the indicator that the CHRO is in a support posture, not an operating one.

JACKSON: Yeah, exactly. And I've been there, and it sucks. It usually makes me mad. A CFO doesn't find out about the capital allocation decision after they announce it on the earnings call. The CHRO operating at enterprise altitude shapes the workforce implications, the capability requirements, and the leadership readiness into the decision before it's made — not after.

SCOTT: Right. So I want to summarize the framework, and we're going to break this down into a playbook. Part one: define the aperture before the hire — before you accept it or make it, both ways. Second: negotiate the trade-offs explicitly — what's operational, what's strategic. And third: wire the role into the business decision cycle. All three have to be present. You can't define the aperture and then fail to give the CHRO access to the decisions that would let them contribute. You can wire them into decisions and then drown them in operational management. The architecture has to hold across all three.

[A PRACTICAL PLAYBOOK TO START THIS WEEK]

JACKSON: The real question here is: are CEOs willing to redesign how they use the CHRO role — not just upgrade who's in it? Because the turnover number doesn't improve because you get a better person. It improves with better role design. The root cause is farther upstream. That is a completely different conversation.

Let's do a playbook. Here is how a CHRO and their CEO can start this week.

Number one: write down what you actually hired your CHRO to do. Not the job description — you may not have even seen that one. Not the job title. The three outcomes you expected this person to drive that would change the enterprise trajectory. If you can't write them down without referencing HR processes, you have designed a functional support role. It's not bad — it's useful information.

SCOTT: Number two: get a mandate conversation with your CEO or your CHRO on the books — depending on which side of the table you're on. The agenda is one question: what percentage of my time as CHRO should be spent on enterprise-level work versus functional management, and what infrastructure do we need to build to make that possible? If you've never had that conversation, you have your answer about why the role hasn't performed at the altitude you wanted.

JACKSON: Number three is what I ask all of my new clients to do: audit the CHRO's meeting calendar for the last 30 days. What rooms were they in? What decisions were shaped in those rooms? Look at things categorized as strategic — I'm going to change the work or how the work is done — versus managerial or execution. Most of the time when we do that, 90% of the calendar is filled with things that don't change the work. If it looks like an operations review, the role is operating at a functional floor.

The calendar is your strategy. It is a proxy for altitude. And altitude is a design choice, not a talent outcome. The first step in any change is you have to admit you have a problem. Look at your calendar, figure out where you're spending your time, and that gives you a new baseline to move forward from.

SCOTT: That one's no joke. For anybody who doesn't take you seriously about that — I track my calendar in 15-minute increments so I can look back and do exactly what you're saying. Number four: find a leader on your own team. Identify one person who you think is ready to take more functional lead. If you're a CHRO spending 60% of your time on operational delivery and you don't have someone who can absorb that responsibility, building that person is one of the most strategic things you can do. Enterprise altitude requires people holding the floor below you.

JACKSON: That's a really good one. And here's another: define three enterprise problems that you intend to own in the next 12 months. Make sure they're not HR programs. They've got to be business problems with human capital implications — growth constraints, capability gaps, leadership bench risk. Bring those problems to your CEO, frame them in business language, and ask explicitly: are these the right problems for me to be solving? And if you're the CEO, ask your CHRO to do that. Because that conversation is the beginning of mandate clarity.

SCOTT: Let me weave two of them together — that one and the calendar one — because the time will never feel right to do what Jackson just said. Schedule it. Book time on your calendar a week out so you're planning for it, and then use that time well.

Number six: if you're a CEO looking at the CHRO replacement data and thinking about whether your current CHRO is strategic enough — ask this question first. Did I give them a mandate? Did I give them the access? Did I give them the infrastructure that would allow them to operate strategically? If the answer is no, you're not looking at a talent problem. You're looking at a role design problem. And as CEO, you're in control of that one. Think twice before making the same hire with a different person.

[SUMMARY AND DIRECT CHALLENGES]

JACKSON: Yeah, that last one sounds obvious, but it is the hardest to execute. It requires the CEO to implicate themselves in a performance gap they've been attributing to someone else. And in my experience, most people don't do that voluntarily.

All right, senior leaders, here is your Talent Sherpa summary. Or as Scott always says — every CHRO has two jobs: fix the people problems and pretend the people problems aren't really that bad. Okay, hit it, Scott.

SCOTT: I don't think I've ever said that, but it kind of sounds true.

Alright, here's the summary.

CHROs suffer from a role design problem. CHRO turnover is at 9% right now — higher than nearly any other function in the C-suite. And 66% of incoming CEOs are going to replace their CHRO. That is not a talent pipeline problem. It's a role design problem.

Number two: functional execution is the floor. The CHRO role defaults to functional support not because the person's incapable of more, but because the mandate was never defined. Enterprise contribution requires a specifically designed aperture.

Number three: mandate clarity has to precede the offer letter. The first 90 days will encode the role. If the strategic aperture isn't defined before you walk in the door, the operational demands are going to close it for you.

And fourth: the fix is not a better CHRO hire. It's better role design. And it's a specific conversation about aperture, trade-offs, strategy, and operating integration. That has to happen in your own head and in conversation before the search begins.

[SUBSCRIBE, REVIEWS, AND RESOURCES]

JACKSON: My takeaway from this conversation is something I wish someone had said to me earlier in my career: the title doesn't define the role. The mandate defines the role. And if you're a CHRO who's been waiting for permission to operate at enterprise altitude — stop waiting. Write down the three enterprise problems you intend to own, and bring them to your CEO. That conversation either gets you alignment or it gets you information. And both are useful.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Talent Sherpa Podcast. This is where senior leaders come to rethink how human capital really works. I know I say this every week, but it is so much fun to do this with y'all. I want to give a quick shout out to one of our favorite listeners — Daniel from Atlanta. Thank you for being a part of the Talent Sherpa community. And we thank everyone for listening, whether you're in Tromsø, Norway, or Harmony, Wisconsin. What a nice sounding city that is. It's so great to have you with us.

SCOTT: If you enjoyed today's episode, do us a favor right now and subscribe, hit the like button, or leave us a review on your favorite platform — whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. We're on all of those. It benefits the community. If you take just a second and write a quick review, it's how the algorithm works and how it helps us spread the podcast to other senior leaders. It's free to you, it's helpful to us, and it could be helpful to someone else.

JACKSON: And if you're a CHRO wondering where to start your AI journey, please check out Propulsion AI at getpropulsion.ai. They're building a team of AI teammates to help human capital leaders focus on what matters to the business. Hey Scott, what are you helping people with again?

SCOTT: Just a single word, Jackson. Clarity. We use artificial intelligence to help build clarity at all levels of the organization.

And don't forget — if you are an early-stage CHRO or new to the CHRO role, Jackson has been helping people like you for a very long time through personal coaching, through the CHRO Ascent Academy I mentioned at the top of the episode, and through his best-selling Substack. Head on over to mytalentsherpa.com. You can find all three and gain access. It's well worth it.

JACKSON: Thanks, Scott. And thanks to everyone who's listening. Until next time — keep raising the bar, keep designing roles at the altitude you actually need, and keep on climbing.