The Ceiling Looks Like Success

Most CHROs are waiting for their CEO to evolve. They're educating upward, building sophisticated frameworks, and assuming CEO awareness is the lever. It's not — and that wait has a cost.

Jackson and Scott diagnose the real constraint CHROs keep misidentifying, walk through the K-shaped loops that trap HR leaders in execution or disconnect them entirely, and lay out the terrain read and baby-step method for building a new reinforcing loop the organization can absorb.

What You'll Learn

• CEO awareness is not a variable CHROs can control — terrain clarity is, and most CHROs are diagnosing the wrong constraint.
• The K-shape describes two career traps: one where strategic thinking outruns absorptive capacity, one where execution rewards become their own ceiling.
• The three-part terrain read — external business environment, external talent market, honest internal assessment — surfaces the real constraint before any strategy gets built.
• "Valued or utilized" aren't the same thing; most CHROs can't tell which one they are, and the CEO isn't doing anything wrong either way.
• Constraint relaxation produces a result the CEO can feel; that evidence builds permission for the next step — baby steps are the method, not a compromise.

Key Quotes

• "CEO awareness is the variable that gets attention. CHRO terrain clarity is the variable that gets results."
• "You don't get fired because your ideas are bad. You get fired because nobody can connect your work to what's mattering right now."
• "A baby step isn't a compromise, it's a method."

Referenced in This Episode

• Baby Steps — What About Bob?
• Bill Murray singing in a Limerick pub

Sources for Statistics Cited

• "Fewer than one in three CHROs report having the CEO alignment they need to execute their full people agenda" — Gartner CHRO Research
• "Companies where HR operates as a design function outperform peers roughly two times on revenue per employee over five years" — McKinsey: Performance Through People 

SEO Summary

Meta Description: CHROs keep diagnosing the wrong constraint. Learn the terrain read and baby-step method that builds CHRO altitude and CEO alignment from evidence up.

Keywords: CHRO strategy, CEO alignment, human capital strategy, CHRO development, HR as a strategic function, terrain clarity, execution reliability, CHRO altitude, baby steps leadership, strategic HR

Transcript

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Scott: You know, almost every CHRO in a less sophisticated organization is working on the same problem. They need their CEO to understand what HR is capable of. But here's the issue: CEO awareness is the variable that gets attention. CHRO terrain clarity is the variable that gets results.

Jackson: 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 am joined by my co-host, my friend Scott Morris. He's a former CHRO with the scar tissue to prove it. He was told four quarters running that his talent roadmap was great and "we're going to circle back when things settle down." And the founder of Propulsion AI — that's my favorite part of the whole bit. Today we're going to be talking about a gap that I think rarely gets named in the room where it lives. Here's the reality: a large portion of CHROs are operating in companies where the CEO measures HR success by whether the trains are running. And a lot of very talented people have spent years waiting for the CEO to evolve. Today we're going to make the case that waiting is the wrong move. The episode today is about clarity — and the CHRO's own terrain clarity — and what to do with it.

Scott: Yeah, that picture hits hard, Jackson, if you've lived it especially. And I know I have. I've been really fortunate to be with CEOs who really get it and are really sophisticated, and I've been on the other end of it too. And I've also watched where the most capable HR leader I'd ever worked alongside was running a playbook that the CEO just wasn't ready for, and they paid for it. And I've been in a room where a different CHRO was doing something that was harder to name — they were moving the people agenda forward in ways that the CEO could feel without making the CEO feel left behind. And that's the skill that this episode's all about.

Listener Shout-Outs and Community

Scott: But before we get into it, let's just take a second to say thank you to some listeners. A shout-out this week to Will from Dallas — thanks for being a part of the community, Will. It means something real that you're here. And to everybody who is listening to us today, whether you're joining us from — I knew I wasn't going to be able to say this name without reading it — Schleswig-Holstein, or an easier one for me, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We're really glad you showed up for today.

Jackson: And I'm especially glad that the folks from Germany joined — so that Scott, who has made fun of my inability to pronounce some of the names of our listeners and the cities they listen from, can get a little taste of his own medicine.

Scott: But I'm very thankful for our German audience, and I'm very sorry that my pronunciation isn't better.

Jackson: We're actually quite big in Germany. And I'll tell you what, this community — it's the thing that I think is so dang cool — it's been building itself into a group of people who are actually doing the work differently, and not just talking about it. So thank you, Will, and thank you to everyone who keeps showing up twice a week.

Scott: Yeah.

CHRO Ascent Academy and Systems Thinking

Scott: And let's take another 30 seconds since we're stopped here, because I want to talk about this thing that you've built that is really catching fire right now. Let me just say to people who are listening — think about a performance problem you're focused on right now. And now ask yourself: is that a person problem, or is it the system around the person and how that system is designed? That's the question that a lot of CHROs answer wrong in real time, and it costs them. Jackson's built this thing called the CHRO Ascent Academy, and it's built specifically to close that gap. One graduate of the program described the organizational design module as immediately relevant — something they applied that same week. That's the kind of program Jackson delivers — it's practical, it's at the right altitude, and it's designed to deliver results. Seats are limited. You should check it out at mytalentsherpa.com. Get there quick because the seats go fast when he opens a cohort.

Jackson: Yeah, we're really excited. I've been in the process of doing the final interviews for the folks that'll be participating. We have sitting CHROs, we have folks who have been in the chair at least twice and are coming back for a third cohort — and they're still coming in because we can add value to them. Everything starts on June 12th on the current calendar, so really appreciate that, Scott. Let's get into today's episode.

Why HR Gets Stuck as Transactional

Jackson: Here's the picture that a large share of CHROs are actually working inside right now. Gartner — you've heard of them — has a CHRO survey, and that data consistently shows that fewer than one in three CHROs report having the CEO alignment they need to execute their full people agenda. Incidentally, that number has not moved meaningfully in several years. And a significant portion of CEOs describe HR as important but fundamentally transactional — something that either runs well or it doesn't, but not something that shapes a business decision before it gets made. All of that put together creates a gap between the role that most CHROs are prepared to play and the one they're actually invited into. I don't think that's new, but what's different now is where the pressure is landing in this environment, in this moment.

Scott: What I've seen inside organizations is a pretty clean dividing line. In companies where HR was operating as a strategic lever — and the CHRO was in the room when business architecture decisions were being made, go-to-market restructures, capability builds ahead of new markets, succession treated as risk management rather than an HR planning exercise — that's one world. And in other companies, HR is still in the service delivery lane. The CHRO is being brought in after big decisions are made — after the reorganization was decided, after the acquisition closed, after the executive hire went sideways. The problem was baked by the time HR had any visibility into it. Those are two very different ways that HR exists in business right now.

Jackson: I think that's right. And from my view, the organizations that have performed most effectively over the last couple of years had real executional discipline. They had the right people in the key roles, clear decision rights, accountability systems that were more than a word on a poster. They really defined what reliability meant and asked: what has to be true for us to execute at a high level? Then you flip that against the organizations that have struggled — they had a strategy in most cases; the organization just couldn't absorb it. McKinsey, by the way, has done some research on high-performing talent systems, and what they found is that companies where HR operates as a design function outperform peers roughly two times on revenue per employee over five years. That's a real number. The separator in case after case is whether the people function is a lever or a support beam. Technology spend, capital structure — both show up on both sides of that line.

Scott: Yeah. I like that — is "support beam" your term, or is that McKinsey's?

Jackson: No, I think I just came up with that.

Scott: I like that. The thing that makes it hard to interrupt is that the CHROs working in that support beam scenario are often doing really, really good work. It's not easy to get the trains to run on time. They're executing well, and they get recognized for it — which creates a picture of success that looks indistinguishable from a ceiling. And you can't see the ceiling from inside the lane you're in. That's a problem.

Jackson: It is. And there's something I've seen in my own advisory work that I think you just named really precisely. I've sat with CHROs who could not tell whether they're valued or utilized. Let me say it again: valued or utilized. Both feel like success from the inside. The CEO was not doing anything wrong under whatever model they held. They had an HR function that delivered, and they didn't know they needed anything different. And I think that's something most of us have felt — if not at some point, then often over the course of our careers.

Scott: As I look back over my own career — I've been that person. I was effective in a role, had broad support, the business was moving, and I was nowhere near the conversation that was actually shaping the next chapter — even though I was getting credit for doing the job really well. I had built a picture of contribution that was accurate on its own terms and invisible to the problem that actually mattered. And I think that's the gap that you and I are going to try to map in this episode.

Jackson: Yeah. And I want to take a second here to talk about the importance of mandate clarity, because we're going to assume in the course of this episode that you are working toward a mandate aligned with where the function needs to go. That is the ideal scenario. But there's also a reality: the only thing you can't afford is guesswork around what that clarity actually is. If two people — the CEO and the CHRO — can't describe the mandate in two sentences or less, start there, because you at least need to understand where you are today before taking the next step. My alcoholic family members would say the first step is to admit you have a problem. I'd apply the same logic here: the first step is to know exactly where you are, and only from that point can you move it. But I also want to double down on this: CEO awareness is not a variable the CHRO can control. And sometimes we think we can. The CEO is doing exactly what a CEO in execution mode does — there's nothing wrong with it. They are relying on the function that's working the way it's currently defined. That is normal. The variable in the CHRO's own control is the clarity about the terrain — about the constraints, about the specific next step that begins to build a different pattern without triggering the immune response that kills the initiative before it lands.

Two Career Traps for CHROs

Jackson: So I want to name a couple of wrong turns that make this harder than it looks, because they point in completely opposite directions, and both are easy to end up inside. The first is what I think of as the upper arm of the problem. These are the CHROs who have done the work. They've read the research, they've been to the conferences, they listen to the Talent Sherpa Podcast, and they know what a world-class people strategy looks like. They arrive with a framework, they start building it out, and within 18 months they're seen as disconnected from the business — not because their thinking is wrong, but because it arrived faster than the organization could absorb it.

Scott: You know, I did a program at Harvard with Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky — it was on adaptive leadership. One of the things I remember starkly is their view that leadership is about frustrating a system at a rate that it can absorb. I think that's a part of what you just named. The career outcome that follows is worth naming here because it's counterintuitive: the CHRO most prepared for a strategic role is often the one most at risk in a less sophisticated environment, because the system rewards what it already recognizes. And what a CEO in execution mode recognizes is operational reliability — run the trains. When the CHRO is talking strategic people architecture and the CEO is focused on next quarter's execution plan, the CHRO isn't wrong. But that's the problem: they're operating at a frequency the organization can't yet receive. You don't get fired because your ideas are bad. You get fired because nobody can connect your work to what's mattering right now. That's a different problem, and it calls for a different response. Jackson, I've been that person.

Jackson: And I don't know if you have. [Laughs.] The reason I say that — the silence for anyone listening is Scott nodding, forgetting that we do audio. But the people who watch us on YouTube actually saw the reaction. And by the way, we are now on video on Apple, in case you want to ruin a really good meal — you can watch us while you eat. But the reason I'm asking is: I think the honest answer to that question is where the diagnosis stops being abstract. It's a different conversation when you've actually lived that out.

Scott: I've totally been that person. You know me, and I'm pretty open about this — I've had more failures than successes. I've learned most of the lessons the hard way. There was a stretch role where I was proud of the talent framework I'd built. I came to understand more gradually than I should have that the CEO couldn't describe what was in it. That's a huge problem. It wasn't because he was uninvested; it's because I had designed it with a level of sophistication that the organization didn't need yet. It was brilliant from my point of view. It just wasn't helpful for that situation. Context matters. I built a four-level architecture on a one-level foundation and expected it to hold. It didn't.

Jackson: Yeah. One of the challenges for people who grew up in the Pepsi organization — widely recognized as one of the academy HR environments — is that we think everything that worked at Frito or Pepsi is going to work everywhere. Frito-Lay has such strong decision rights, role clarity, and built-in accountability that the system runs reliably almost regardless of who's in the seat. And then you try to apply that same model somewhere else, and you realize: here are four things I assumed to be true that turned out not to be. I've gotten smarter over the years. I was talking to a CEO earlier this week and he said, "What do you think the right people scorecard looks like?" I walked him through the talent scorecard we talk about — but I got a little smarter at the end and said, "But I also recognize that might be three steps further than where you guys are today, which means one of the things we'd want to co-create is: what's the farthest path forward that the organization is actually ready for?" I'm not inside this organization yet, but once we're in, we can figure that out together. I'm not caving intellectually — I'm just making the smart play. If I move this organization too far too fast, it's going to blow everything up.

So the second wrong turn is the mirror image. The CHRO who sees what happened to the person above them and makes what seems like a rational adjustment. You see this in sports coaching all the time — if you have a player's coach and they fire him, the next hire is usually a disciplinarian, the pendulum swings. The equivalent here: "I'm going to be operationally excellent. I'm going to earn trust through execution. I'm going to introduce the strategic agenda from a position of credibility, because the last person tried to cram it through." That logic isn't wrong. And it probably keeps you employed longer. But what happens is the execution loop starts to pull. You get better at it, you get recognized for it, the rewards build, and the runway to everything beyond execution gets longer every quarter. Three years in, the ceiling is still operational reliability — and now you're also the person everybody calls when the system breaks. Leaving that lane starts to feel like a risk, because every signal the environment has sent points right back to it.

You're an old movie fan — have you seen What About Bob? (Baby steps) Bill Murray, Richard Dreyfuss — baby steps up to the bus, baby steps down the hall, baby steps to blowing up the building.

Scott: That's exactly the one. And I think that's the right frame here. That character is taking small steps toward something. A baby step isn't a compromise, it's a method. That's how you move the terrain forward, especially in a less sophisticated organization. The CHRO in the execution lane isn't failing — they're on a path that has no natural exit ramp. And that's what you're trying to create with those baby steps: find where that exit begins, and let that path take you to a different level of HR — not just execution, but strategy. And you're doing that as the organization slowly becomes able to absorb more.

Jackson: Yeah. You mentioned Bill Murray — I'm now thinking of this: there's a video of him going back to Ireland and singing all the Irish folk songs in the pubs. If you have not seen that, and you're Irish like me, or if you just like beer or Bill Murray, it is such a wonderful video. I highly recommend it. But coming back to this — I think both of those traps share the same structural root. And that's what we need to get to next.

The K-Shaped Reinforcing Loops

Jackson: Here's what I think is the mechanism underneath both of those wrong turns, because the fixes people typically reach for treat the symptom — they don't touch the loop that's producing it. Scott, when you were inside the role where the architecture you'd built wasn't being absorbed, what was running underneath that immune response? Because what you described from the inside is probably more useful than any structural diagram.

Scott: There was a self-reinforcing loop — on each arm of the problem. The loops pulled in opposite directions. On the upper arm — the over-elevated strategic play — the loop looks like this: you go up the K, you start talking strategy, the CEO doesn't connect your work to what's in front of them. You get excluded from operational decisions because you seem less relevant. So you try to go further up the K, looking for space where your ideas get traction — which takes you further from the operating reality of the business, which makes you harder to connect to it. The CEO was expecting me to be more operational. I was trying to go the other direction. And that's where the disconnect lives.

Jackson: The loop on the lower arm is the exact mirror. Think about a K. What Scott just talked about was the line going up — now I'm going to talk about the line going down. You stay in execution mode. You solve problems. The CEO appreciates it. You get pulled into more operational decisions. You solve more problems. The system teaches you that this is where your value lives. Every reward signal I've seen points down the K. The idea of stepping up starts to feel like you're abandoning the thing that makes you trustworthy. The loop reinforces that lane so strongly. Both arms have their own gravity, and they're pulling hard. The pull toward execution is not laziness — it is what rational actors do when the environment consistently rewards one behavior and penalizes the alternative. The question is what happens over time.

Scott: It feels like a no-win scenario. Whether you're going up the K or down the K — go down the K and you get pulled into more of what you're trying to get away from. Try to go up the K and you're getting further from how everybody else perceives you're adding value. It's just a no-win.

Jackson: There is a third path, and we're going to cleverly title it the middle path. No organizational gravity pulls toward it. Every environmental signal points at one arm or the other. The only way to get to that middle ground is to build it yourself — by reinforcing it deliberately rather than letting the environment choose for you. Let me open that up.

The Three-Part Terrain Read

Jackson: A common pattern among CHROs in less sophisticated operating environments is diagnosing the wrong constraint. They assume the constraint is the CEO's development — because if the CEO could see the full potential of what we're capable of, the organization would elevate with it. That framing produces two strategies: waiting or educating. Both are slow. Neither is in the CHRO's control.

Scott: Well, they're not always ineffective — but you're right that they're not usually within your control. What is the variable that's actually in their control? I think a lot of people in the CHRO seat have been so focused on the CEO as the lever that they've stopped looking anywhere else. It makes sense — the CEO feels like the only variable that matters.

Jackson: Yeah. The real constraint is the CHRO's own clarity about the terrain. And terrain clarity has a very specific meaning here. It means knowing three things about this organization at this stage of its life cycle right now. What are the three?

Scott: Let's double-click on that, because I think a lot of people will nod at terrain clarity and assume they already have it. The specificity is going to help. Name the three.

Jackson: I use this in my work with clients on developing a people strategy — so if anyone has seen the work I do in this space, this will be familiar. The first is the external business environment — not the annual report version. The real operating reality the CEO is losing sleep over. You learn that by sitting with the CEO, the CFO, the line leaders fighting for revenue and asking: what is hardest right now? Not about HR, not about the agenda — just genuine curiosity about the terrain the business is actually standing on. The second is the external talent marketplace — where is the supply and demand equation broken for the roles that most drive results? That's tied to talent optimization work. Where is the risk building that this company hasn't seen yet, because it's too focused operationally on what's right in front of it? And the third is a real, no-BS view of the current state of human capital. Not what you wish it were. Not the programs you're running. A full, honest look at the constraints and the sophistication level of your human capital system as it actually exists right now.

Scott: The third one I think we should press on a little, because it's the one I've seen filtered most often — and the filtering is where the whole strategy breaks down. The first two are external and feel safer. The third requires us as HR leaders to look at our own house.

Jackson: The third is the hardest because it requires an honest assessment of the state of human capital inside this organization. Calling balls and strikes on something you helped co-create can feel like failure, or like you're setting yourself up to assume blame. I get it — that's a natural reaction. Fight through it. As an architect, you've got to understand where you are on the field. I'm not talking about "here's what I'd like us to do" or "here's what we're good at as HR." I mean the overall state of human capital — the way it would look if a private equity operator were doing diligence and asked you about it. Gaps named, risks named, bright spots named, execution issues surfaced — the picture that makes the problem legible, not the picture that makes the function look good.

Scott: When we talk about the first two — the external business environment, the talent market — being honest about those isn't threatening. But an honest internal assessment is where the temptation to protect the function shows up. And in an organization where HR isn't yet valued strategically, it gets even harder. I've been in rooms where the CHRO had done the first two really well — articulate, sharp — but the third came out soft and squishy. What came out was a reality that didn't exist. When it didn't land, the interpretation was that the CEO wasn't sophisticated enough to receive it. That's just the wrong diagnosis.

Jackson: Yeah. And I want to push back on something you said, because it's important. You said "an HR community that is not valued as highly." That has an assumption embedded in it about how it should be valued. What you actually have there is a mandate clarity difference — between what you think value should be defined as and what your CEO does. That doesn't mean the CEO doesn't value you. It could simply be a definitional challenge between where you think you should be and where they are. It could be a low-altitude mandate, and the CEO could highly value that. That puts you in a position where you need to either figure out the baby steps to move forward, or perhaps that's not the right seat for you.

Scott: Yeah — let me clarify. What I meant was that I assume most of the people listening to us want to help their organization step forward into increasingly more strategic HR pursuits, rather than just run the trains. In organizations that have already laid the groundwork — where the CEO has some recognition, where the CHRO has led the baby steps necessary to start building absorptive capacity — that work is easier. In organizations that haven't done that yet, the CHRO wants it, but the organization isn't ready. That's all I meant.

Jackson: Yeah. And I'm not arguing your good intentions. What I want to point out for the listeners is the challenge in assuming that because you're not doing the work you know you're capable of, the CEO doesn't value you. That may be true — I'm not saying it isn't. But it's easily interpreted that way, and that framing is dangerous. You need to know what your CEO expects out of the function. You need that clarity on the mandate. Without it — without setting aside the narrative of "they don't value me" — you have no baseline. If you can tell me "here is what they value me for," great — now you have a starting point. If it's "they don't value what I do," then either it's time to find a different seat, or it's time to get the mandate clarity that any of this work requires.

Constraint Relaxation the CEO Can Feel

Jackson: And look, we've hit the third piece hard, and it's important — because once you hold all three simultaneously, you can identify the constraint that, if you relax it even a little, produces a result the CEO can feel. That's the baby step. Not a full strategic transformation. A constraint relaxation — small enough for the organization to absorb, specific enough to produce a signal the CEO can then connect to a business outcome. And if you keep doing that over and over, that's how you expand what the CEO expects out of the function.

Scott: And you just named the cure for the failure I experienced in my own story. That connection — the CEO feeling the result — is what I missed. I was building things that were architecturally rigorous and experientially invisible. The CEO didn't feel them because I had designed for the ideal organization rather than the actual one. When I started asking a different question — what can I relax in the next 90 days that would produce something this specific CEO would feel in the business — that's when the whole picture started to change. Not the destination I was moving toward, but the sequence I was pursuing.

Jackson: And let me reinforce something important for everyone listening: CHROs everywhere are struggling with what Scott just named. Scott's lived it. I've lived it. I don't know another CHRO with any self-awareness who hasn't. Life isn't the highlight reel you see on Instagram. This is gritty work. That's why building a community of people thinking through this matters. And it's why a reframe is important — rather than treating this as a tactic, we're changing the causation model. The old model says the CEO has to evolve before the CHRO can operate at altitude. The new model says the CHRO has to build the reinforcing loop first — by relaxing one constraint in a way the organization can absorb — and the CEO's awareness will follow the evidence. You're building the conditions under which that permission becomes available. It's an orientation shift. Precision follows evidence, and evidence is what you're building.

Scott: Baby steps — not because you're compromising the vision, but because the baby step is the method. Baby steps build the loop that eventually makes the bigger steps possible. If we take anything away from What About Bob? — it doesn't teach you to play small forever. It teaches you that movement through a resistant system requires matching the step size to how the system can currently absorb it. The step sizes grow, the loop runs, and that's how the path gets built.

Jackson: So let's talk about how a CHRO can start moving on this starting this week.

Redesigning the CEO One-on-One

Jackson: Play one is the terrain read — three diagnoses run simultaneously before anything else. First: sit down with the CEO, the CFO, and the line leaders fighting for revenue and say, "What is hardest right now?" Make sure it's linked to the business's strategy. That meeting is not to report back on HR's work. It's one-directional — purely to understand the terrain the business is standing on. Second: look at the external talent marketplace. Where is the supply and demand equation broken for the roles that most drive results? What employee expectations are you not currently delivering on? What risk is building that the company hasn't seen yet? Third: do the honest, no-BS internal assessment of the current state of human capital — built the way a private equity operator doing diligence would want to see it. Gaps named, risks named, bright spots named, no assignment of blame, real balls and strikes. Because the first step is to admit you have a problem, and only then can you do something about it.

Scott: When you look at all three of those together, the constraint starts to show itself in a way it doesn't when you look at any of them separately. The overlap is where the real picture lives.

Jackson: I think that's right. When all three reads are in view simultaneously, the constraint is just going to pop out. You'll see the friction point that, if you relaxed it, changes what's possible with the CEO in this moment in this company. That specificity is what makes the next move more concrete than conceptual. That's play one.

Scott: Play two is restructuring the CEO one-on-one. A lot of CHROs use whatever time they get with their CEO to report on HR — what's happened, what's in progress, what's coming, their projects and programs. I don't want to be dismissive of that; those things are necessary and have their place. But that format, even when executed well, confirms the CEO's model of HR as a service function. The restructured one-on-one has three parts. Part one is still the tactical update — keep it short, five minutes, the trains are running, here's what the CEO really needs to know. What they really need to know is: there are no fires. Short. Part two is the business interpretation. In play one, you developed an understanding of the terrain. Here, you bring one read from that terrain diagnostic and offer it as a hypothesis: "Here's what I'm seeing in the market for the roles that matter most to our growth agenda, and here's what I think this means for our next decision — because this is what's holding us back." That's a different kind of meeting to have with your CEO.

Jackson: Yeah. "Tell me where I have that wrong" — that's the question. That framing shifts the whole dynamic. You're not reporting; you're thinking with the CEO rather than reporting to them.

Scott: And I actually like your use of that question. "Tell me where I have it wrong" invites the conversation, and it's going to progress naturally from there. Part three is one question — not a list, one. Something like: what's the business problem keeping you up right now that has a people component to it? If you're asking that question consistently over time, it will surface the real constraint faster than most diagnostic work. And it does something else: it signals to your CEO that you're thinking about their problems, not just the problems of your function.

Jackson: Yeah. And let me offer a suggestion on the play one update piece. What I do — and it's a pain, but with AI you can probably do it more efficiently than when I was doing it — is write down all the updates and send them in advance. Then ask: which of these do you actually want to talk about? Because oftentimes we spend the most valuable thing we have — airtime with the boss — talking about stuff that doesn't need a decision and might not even need a discussion. Write it down, send it, and ask: "What do you want to talk about from what I shared?" Flag any decisions. Go to those first.

Play three: once you get that terrain read, and the CEO is in the analysis with you — really through questions — you can identify the one constraint you can do something about in the next 60 to 90 days that would produce a result the CEO can feel. Small enough to absorb. Specific enough that the CEO can connect the outcome back to the action you took. Ideally, you've co-created what that thing is. That connection, done right, becomes a new self-reinforcing loop.

Scott: And what else that loop does — it's not just a tactical win. It recalibrates what the CEO believes HR is capable of. And that recalibration is the permission the next step needs.

Jackson: Once that loop runs, you've earned the right to stretch the next constraint just a little bit further. The CEO's evidence base builds. Your own clarity about the organization's absorption capacity builds. Each relaxation is a little larger than the one before. The confidence builds on both sides. You're not compromising the vision — you're building the path toward it. Okay. Senior leaders —

Talent Summary: Core Takeaways

Jackson: This is your favorite part of the pod. It's the Talent Summary. And as Scott always says, "I have an extremely sophisticated talent architecture. I am simply waiting for the organization to become the organization that needs it."

Scott: I've never said that. Oh my God, I don't know where you come up with these. All right, here we go.

Takeaway one: the sophistication gap is real. Not all CEOs get it the way you need them to — but it's not the CEO's problem to solve. A large number of organizations still measure HR success by execution reliability: headcount filled, compliance, no fires. That's the environment you're operating in. Acting as if you're in a different one isn't going to change or accelerate that evolution — it might just get you replaced by someone who delivers on the model the CEO had in mind. You have to work two things at once.

Takeaway two: the K-shape is a diagnostic, not a judgment. The lower arm — execution focus — describes one way the system works and one way people survive inside it. The upper arm — disconnected strategy — describes what happens when the step size exceeds the organization's current ability to absorb it. Both arms have reinforcing loops. Neither loop points toward the middle path. You have to build that path directly and deliberately.

Takeaway three: terrain comes before strategy. Read the terrain first. The external business environment, the external talent marketplace, and an honest internal assessment — held simultaneously, they help you identify the real constraint. Not the one you wish the business had. The one it actually has. Once you can name it, you can decide what to relax.

Takeaway four: baby steps are a method, not a retreat. The constraint relaxation that produces a result the CEO can feel is not a step back from the vision you have for HR or for how human capital works. It's how you build the new reinforcing loop. Each loop that runs successfully increases the organization's capacity to absorb a new one. The step sizes grow over time. That's architecture.

Jackson: And here's what I want people to carry out of this conversation: there's a version of this episode that sounds like advice to be patient, to settle, not to make waves. That's not the argument. The argument is that the method for building altitude in a less sophisticated system is different from the method for operating inside an already sophisticated one. And the reality is most people are in the first. The destination stays the same. The path there is what changes. The path is built by reading the terrain clearly, naming the constraint honestly, and taking the baby step the organization can actually absorb. That step builds the loop, the loop builds permission, and the permission builds the very next step. And that's it for today.

Closing Promos and Final Charge

Jackson: I just want to say thank you so much 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 all y'all.

Scott: If you liked today's episode, do us a favor and hit the like button right now. Or better yet, subscribe. You might even leave us a review — whether you're using Apple Podcasts (which now has video), Spotify, or YouTube. We're on all of those. It benefits the community and it helps activate the algorithm, which spreads the podcast to other senior leaders who need to hear new ideas about how to become more effective. So hit the like button, drop us a review, even subscribe right now.

Jackson: That would be awesome. And I want to take a minute to talk about Scott's company — Propulsion AI. They're workforce intelligence for private equity. Their AI teammates surface workforce risk before the close, then help leadership teams drive execution after the close. They translate strategy into individual accountability, coach managers to define roles by outcomes, and give every employee a clear line of sight to what actually works. We talk about mandate clarity and outcome clarity in almost every episode — that's what Scott's company does. All through artificial intelligence. You can learn more at getpropulsion.ai.

Scott: And if you're a new CHRO, or you're preparing to step into a CHRO role, Jackson has built tools that are going to help you operate at the altitude that the role demands — personal coaching, the CHRO Ascent Academy, and his best-selling Substack. You can find everything at mytalentsherpa.com.

Jackson: Hey, thank you, Scott. And thank you to everyone who's listening. Until next time — keep raising the bar, name the constraint before you draw the architecture, and keep on climbing.