AI in HR. M&A integration. The CEO–CHRO dynamic. Fractional leadership. Governance, transformation, and the operating discipline most companies skip. Originally written for 17,000+ followers on LinkedIn — collected here for everyone else.
Most recruit a Head of HR the same way: referrals, internal promotion, an agency, crossed fingers. That works sometimes. It's also what everyone else does. The better move is to bring in a fractional or interim CPO before or during the change.
Most HR org structures are still built for a 2005 world while work is changing like it's 2026. HR shouldn't be an operating model. It should be an operating system that's completely redesigned. Two buckets, one backbone.
Most CEOs bring in M&A lawyers 24 months before a sale. They bring in a People/HR integration lead 24 days after close. And then they're surprised when key leaders leave, incentives distort, and culture fractures.
Fractional doesn't mean part-time commitment. It means full-on accountability, scoped appropriately to what's needed. If you've been burned by someone who lacked depth, that's not a fractional problem. It's a hiring problem.
When execution is slow, leaders are misaligned, change stalls, culture is heavy or political — most look at strategy or talent. In my experience, look at the CEO–HR relationship first. Not whether HR is strategic. Whether the CEO actually uses HR as a business lever.
HR systems and tech stack transformations fail not because the technology is wrong, but because the work starts before needs are validated, before anyone is meaningfully enrolled, and before the organization's change capacity is understood.
Most leadership teams don't have a kindness problem. They have a niceness problem. Niceness keeps things comfortable. Kindness moves things forward. Clarity is non-negotiable in high-stakes moments.
Companies hire future-ready CHROs before they've validated the real problem, before they've aligned on the mandate, before they've decided what has to stop. Then they're surprised when it's hard.
When leaders say HR is useless, they're really saying our people systems aren't working for the business. That's not an HR problem. It's a leadership and operating model problem.
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