Good HR Is the Problem

Most CHROs believe they are operating strategically. Their calendar tells a different story. Only 12% of HR leaders report spending the majority of their time on enterprise-wide business problems — the rest are managing the function, often without realizing it.

Jackson and Scott deliver the actual test: audit your calendar, name your constraints, and have the mandate conversation your CEO has been waiting for. If you've been telling yourself you're strategic, your calendar knows the truth.

What You'll Learn

• The 50% rule: a properly executed CHRO role means at least half your calendar is outside the HR function — not your intention, your actual schedule.
• The three calendar buckets that reveal whether you're executing, aligning, or actually changing how the organization operates.
• Why "strategic partner" has run its course — and the replacement frame: a business operator who owns the human capital scorecard.
• The Evaluation Default Loop — the structural cycle that traps CHROs in diagnostic mode and fills the calendar with urgency over importance.
• Three Monday-morning plays: free the time, upgrade the function's talent density, and have the explicit CEO mandate conversation.

Key Quotes

• "The calendar is the great truth arbiter. It will tell you what you have been doing."
• "A partner can be in the room without changing the outcome. An operator is accountable for what the system produces."
• "If the function can't run without you, you've built a dependency. It's not a team."

Sources for Statistics Cited

• 12% of HR leaders spend majority of time on enterprise-wide business problems — McKinsey HR Monitor 2025 (Note: McKinsey's primary 12% figure relates to strategic workforce planning with a 3-year horizon; the episode framing may be a paraphrase)
• "Strategic partner" HR model traced to Dave Ulrich's 1996 book Human Resource Champions — AIHR: HR Business Partner Model

Transcript

Hey, here's a question that nobody asks at CHRO performance review time. Not the CEO, not the board, not the search firm that placed you. The question is: what percentage of your time do you spend outside of the HR function? Not your intention, not the aspiration — the calendar. Because there's a version of CHRO performance that looks completely healthy — low attrition, strong engagement scores, no compliance fires, happy business partners — and it still represents a complete strategic failure. The failure is that the most expensive HR resource in the building spent the year running the function. And nobody ever asked whether that was the job.

And the founder of Propulsion AI. Thanks, Jackson.

You know, I gotta say, I hate when I have to do this, but I gotta start with a confession. I have spent a part of my professional career — not as big a part as you have, but coaching other CHROs. And a part of that coaching is to get the work where it actually belongs. Payroll to finance, compliance to legal, benefits administration out of the CHRO's line of sight. And every time the CHRO says, "I'm so glad we finally did that." And I say, "I can't believe we spent this much time fighting about it first."

Which is exactly the problem. Been there, brother. It's what we're going to be unpacking today. Because the conversation in this industry for the past decade, in this function, has been pointing in the right direction. Be more strategic, get closer to the business, think like an enterprise leader. And all of that is absolutely correct. None of it, however, is measurable. And no one ever said, "Here's the test that you can run on yourself to figure out whether you're actually doing the thing."

Well, and when there is no test, you can always tell yourself you're doing fine. The calendar looks full, the team looks busy, the CEO isn't complaining, so it must be working.

So today we're going to give you the test. We're going to talk about how you measure whether you are leading human capital or managing an HR function. And those aren't the same thing. And we're going to do it with enough specificity that you can walk out of this episode, look at your own calendar, and you'll know the answer.

And that's a good thing. But before we get into it, take a second — because every week your community keeps growing, and it keeps growing because the people who do the work then show up here to go deeper. So I wanted to shout out this week's listener. The shout-out goes to Rebecca from my town of Denver, Colorado. Rebecca, you're in this, and we see you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for making the show what it is. Thank you for being a continued listener.

Yeah, Rebecca, that is for you and for everyone listening, whether you found us last week or if you've been here since the beginning. This is the community that makes it all worth building. The reviews, the messages, the people who sent a note saying the episode changed how they walked into a conversation that week — I get goosebumps. That is why we are doing it. You're why we're doing it, and I just want to say thank you. Okay, sap over. Let's get into it. So let's start with the environment, Scott. There's no shortage of research telling CHROs to be more strategic. The McKinsey HR Monitor from 2025 puts it plainly: only 12% of HR leaders report spending the majority of their time on enterprise-wide business problems. The rest are running the function. And when you ask them why, the answer is almost always the same: because the function needs it. My peers expect it, and I can't break free.

And the function is always going to need it. That's not a temporary condition that you can solve. The function has an infinite appetite for senior HR attention. If you are available, the function is going to fill that time for you. The only way out of it is a deliberate standard for how you allocate yourself.

And look, I've been saying for a long time that a CHRO role, if it's properly executed, should look like at least 50% of your time is spent outside of the HR function. Not 50% of your intention — your actual calendar. Because the calendar is the great truth arbiter. The calendar is the only leadership artifact that does not lie. It will tell you what you have been doing.

You know, I don't really think I thought about the amount of time until you and I started talking about it. And when I first heard you say 50%, that kind of stopped me. Because I think the average CHRO would tell you there is just no way I can spend 50% of my time not associated with running the function — maybe 20% on a good week. But that gap between where they think they should be and where the calendar actually is — that gap is a strategy problem.

Yeah, and here's what I think makes it harder to measure than most people expect. Not all time outside the function counts. So I use three categories when I work with the people that I'm coaching on how to audit the calendar. Time spent managing the HR function — execution inside the tent. Time spent aligning to the business — meetings that touch strategy, relationships with the leadership team, connecting HR decisions to enterprise priorities. Just because you're meeting with a senior person doesn't mean it is strategic time. You may still be worried about execution. And then the third bucket is time spent actually changing the work — restructuring capability building, the initiatives that actually alter how the organization operates. Think about the time figuring out how to improve talent density in revenue roles in an organization that's about ready to go through a market expansion. The first bucket should be shrinking. The problem is when you get into this job for the first time, you've been promoted largely as a result of that very first bucket. The more senior you get, the more balanced that second bucket becomes. But in reality, once you get into the seat, it's the second and third buckets. That's where the CHRO job lives.

You know, I don't know whether I've ever told you this for all the times that we've talked about it. I color code my calendar as well. And I am, as you know, really stringent about getting everything onto the calendar — so I can see exactly what you're talking about. I've coached other people to do that same thing. It's a hard discipline to start, but once you get going, it gets a lot easier. The one common mistake that I see constantly is people who are counting alignment meetings as strategic time. You were in the room with the CFO, you talked about the people agenda, you walk out feeling like you had a business conversation — but you went in to report on HR activity and you left without changing how the business is operating. That's a management meeting with a more senior audience. The altitude of the person across the table from you doesn't determine the altitude of the work.

Yeah, exactly. And the label on the meeting doesn't tell you what you were doing either. The question is whether you shifted anything. Did a decision get made? Did a constraint get named? Did a priority change because you were in the room? If so, great. If not, you attended a meeting — you did not change the business.

And I think what you've got to do is be honest with that when you're categorizing it on the calendar, and you'll learn over time how to make those things move. Here's what's hard to fix: most CHROs don't think about themselves as HR managers. They think about themselves — and I think you and I are included in this — as HR leaders. And there's a real identity question embedded in that. Because the people on your team are watching what you protect, they're watching what you spend time on. And if you step back from operational work, it can feel like you stopped caring about the function.

And that pull is real. And part of the thing you have to talk about with your team is where you are focused. No one likes it when I say half the job has nothing to do with working with you — I have a completely different job. Because you came up through the work. You built the team. The people in the function are yours in a way that goes beyond a reporting line, if you have half an ounce of leadership capability. And that responsibility, when it becomes unbounded, becomes the mechanism through which your function reclaims your calendar.

You know, I've had a CHRO at least once say to me, "I should support my team." And the answer to that is obvious — yes, you should. But there's also a significant difference between supporting your team and being involved in the work at a functional altitude more than you absolutely have to. Support means that your team can do the work independently, with guidance and direction from you.

Yeah, this is also where the vague mandate becomes really dangerous. Most CEOs want a CHRO who is "a strategic partner." Most CHROs agree to that description without ever asking what it means. The CFO would not accept that. If you told a CFO you wanted them to be a strategic financial partner, they would naturally ask: what decisions do you want me to be in on? What authority do I have? What would success look like at the end of the year? The CFO would ask sufficient questions to make that mandate legible before agreeing to it. The CEO often describes what a CHRO does as this unicorn — we want you to manage at an unbelievably detailed level and be strategic. The problem is if you don't define what "strategic" means, you will default to the stuff you know and that is tangible. You would never have a CFO knee-deep in the cash collection process — but they say that to us all the time. And part of the reason is we say yes. And then we figure it out along the way. I've seen the problem — it is ourselves.

You and I are both guilty of this, and I don't think we're different from anyone who is listening. I've worked inside organizations where the role was defined loosely, and I operated in ambiguity rather than surfacing it, and it was a mistake. But surfacing it is uncomfortable. It sometimes puts the CEO on the spot, doesn't feel good to do that to your boss, makes you look difficult sometimes if you're not accepting the ambiguity, if you're pushing for the answer. But the ambiguity — that's where the problem lives.

And let me really reinforce this. The vague mandate is not neutral — it defaults to functional management. Unless you define it at a different altitude, it will always lead you back to being a good HR person. Because that's what has always been measured. It's what the organization expects, they know how to reward it. So if you don't define what leading human capital looks like with a great level of specificity, you will spend your career being very good at something that is worth less than what it otherwise could be. So the question is: how can this happen at a mechanical level? How do capable leaders end up spending 80% or more of their time inside the function when they know they should be spending the majority outside of it?

Well, you and I like to come up with fancy names for things because it makes them more concrete. And I would call this one the Evaluation Default Loop.

Say it again.

The Evaluation Default Loop. A new CHRO comes in, and the most visible early activity is assessment — is the function healthy? Where are the gaps? Where are the risks? That's legitimate phase-one activity. The problem is that the evaluation loop never closes. There's always something else to assess: a new compliance exposure, a new organizational design question, a new retention problem. So the CHRO stays in diagnostic mode indefinitely, which feels like rigor — but it's functionally management.

You're right. And the cycle trap underneath it says it all. The evaluation surfaces problems, the problems produce urgency, and urgency produces involvement. The more thoroughly you assess, the more reasons you generate to stay close to the function, and the calendar fills up with what is urgent — unless you have an unbelievable amount of discipline. Next thing you know, you have stuff on your calendar that is familiar rather than important and unfamiliar. It's gravity. The function exerts a gravitational pull over your time. It's not malicious, it's structural. The friction is immediate, it's visible, it's full of real people with real problems, and it's the domain where every CHRO can demonstrate competence instantly — and that feels really, really good. Because on the other side of it, enterprise leadership is a lot slower, a lot less visible, feels a lot more ambiguous, doesn't always feel like you're making progress. And when you can choose between demonstrating how competent you are right now and operating in ambiguity, the calendar is going to make that choice for you unless you override it deliberately.

So here's the test I use — I call it the real estate test. Look at your calendar for the last 90 days and audit it. People make fun of me because I want to audit everything, but it's the mirror you've got to use. Who called the meetings, who was in the room? If most of the calendar is called by direct reports or HR functional partners or line leaders trying to talk about execution of your team — you're managing the function. If you're not in the room for a decision or an insight that requires you and only you, at some point you are involved way deeper than you need to be. By comparison, if you have a calendar where most of it was called by business leaders, peer executives, your boss, or a board member around enterprise problems — not HR problems — then you're leading human capital. The real estate of your calendar tells you what job you are actually doing. There's no magic in that 50%, but I've been doing this for 12 years now. That's why you spend your time that way.

This is why I color code — because it makes it immediately obvious when you scan the calendar week by week. Especially if you take a week-long view, you can see where you're spending your time and make adjustments for the next week. There's another thing to be named here — I'll call it the invisibility standard. The question — and it's a hard one to ask yourself honestly — is: if you disappeared from the HR function for a week, would things break? Because if the answer to that is yes, that is not a success. That's a design failure. The CHRO's job is to build a function that doesn't require the CHRO's constant presence to operate. That's when you'll have the time to fill with the strategic aspects of the job. If the function can't run without you, you've built a dependency. It's not a team.

Yeah, and this connects to something you raised earlier. It's not enough to say you want your team to be more capable or more strategic. You actually have to build that capability by defining the roles in the function by outputs — not "I want a more strategic HRBP." No one knows what that means. You have to describe what you want someone to deliver. The question is: what does a strategic HRBP actually deliver? What are the outcomes? What exists in the world at the end of the quarter because this person did their job well? Until you can answer that, you haven't defined the role — you've described an aspiration and probably a list of tasks. And if you're only assigning tasks, you as the leader must always insert yourself to play the coordination role. The CHRO doesn't have the latitude to do that if you want to play at high altitude.

I think it's really good that you brought that up, because the distinction between task and outcome is critically important — and it's not just the language you use. When the CHRO's role is defined by outcomes, the team's roles can be defined by outcomes. And when the team's roles are defined by outcomes, accountability becomes structural rather than relational. You stop depending on good people with good intentions. You don't need heroes anymore to get the work done. You're building a system that produces regardless of who holds the seats.

So here's what we want to push on in the framing. "Business partner" — since 1996, when Dave Ulrich put it together. I'm here not to praise Caesar, but to bury him. It's time to put that language in the ground. It's run its course. Not because it was wrong directionally, but because it was never specific enough to actually act on.

It tells you how to position yourself — "strategic partner" — but it doesn't tell you what to do. It's more like an identity label than an operating instruction.

Yeah. And so we're not just criticizing — we have a different proposal. The frame we're proposing is a business operator that owns the human capital agenda. That's a different accountability structure than partnership. A partner can be in the room without changing the outcome. An operator is accountable for what the system produces. And you know what else it's not?

It's not service provider — it's fiduciary. If you think about what a business operator does, they have a scorecard. A set of metrics that tells them whether their part of the enterprise is working — financial, operational, talent-specific. If that scorecard doesn't exist for your function, then your calendar is going to fill itself with what can be measured, which is all of the activity, all of the transactional, all of the "run the function." Because organizations optimize for the visible. And if the only visible things in HR are operational, then the CHRO becomes an operator of the HR business process by default.

So I got an email last night from my friend Keri over at TrueSearch — hi, Keri, I know she listens — and it was a job spec, and she was asking if I was interested. The first thing I do when I look at new job opportunities is ask: what are the expected, deliberate outcomes? And I usually see the same stuff. And on the very first one I saw on this spec, it was "improved talent density in pivotal roles from 40% to 90%." I don't care about anything else about that company — I'm interested. Because what it speaks to very specifically is: I now know that I have a high-altitude, outcome-oriented CEO who understands what we do. On the contrary, you don't get to complain about not being taken seriously as an enterprise leader if you haven't built the scorecard. And that's a CFO standard. A CFO doesn't walk into the boardroom and say, "I think I've been adding a lot of value." The CFO walks in with numbers — not activities. The CHRO needs numbers that are enterprise. Not engagement scores or voluntary attrition in isolation — those are largely vanity metrics that don't actually lead to an outcome. You need numbers that connect talent decisions to revenue, output, execution, risk, capability, concentration. That's how you can tell.

It's hard for me not to get excited when the first thing is talent density with a specific, measurable number attached to it. But anybody listening right now should immediately say — okay, it's going to take time to do that. If you're running the function, you don't have that time. When you build a function that can run without your constant presence, when you define roles in the function by their outputs rather than their activity, and when you own the scorecard that connects human capital to enterprise performance — you have not merely repositioned yourself. You have built the conditions that make the other altitude possible. The function doesn't need you at the tactical level anymore because you've got clear outcomes for your people. They are delivering on those operational and tactical priorities. And you now have the time to think about a really hard question — like how am I going to move this talent density? The business does need you at the strategic level, and that scorecard provides the connection.

So the question for every CHRO is this: if somebody audited your calendar right now, would they see a business operator — or would they see a very senior HR manager with a better title and more equity? Not what you intend, not what you can do, not what you want to do. What does the calendar show? I can talk all the time about how I'm eating better and exercising more. And yet there's this thing I step on every morning that tells me with great truth how much progress I've made. That's the calendar in this context. Because the calendar tells you what your real job today is. And if you want to change the job, you've got to change the calendar.

Sometime you and I have to do an episode on the difference between leading indicators and trailing indicators and where those things are important. Both are important, but where they play in importance. Let's instead turn this into a playbook — moves that CHROs can make starting Monday morning. Three plays. You take it.

Yeah, so play one is where Scott and I have to be honest with you about the fact that we came at this from two different places. A little behind-the-scenes: when we do a podcast, we talk earlier in the week and make sure we're aligned on what we're going to do. We came to the playbook and said, "Okay, here are one, two, three, four." Scott said one, two, three, four. We normally spend about 15 minutes on this, and 45 minutes later we're still arguing about what play one is. So I want to give you both — and because I'm a gentleman and a scholar, Scott, why don't you set it up?

The two here are: focus on the constraint first, or focus on your calendar first. My point of view is that before you redesign your calendar, you have to know what is holding the current one in place. You have to sit down and name the five things that are consuming your time as a CHRO that are not enterprise-level activities. For most people, those five things are real, but you've got to understand what you need to let go of. A team member who is not ready to own their own scope — that could be one. A business partner who escalates everything instead of owning it. A process that requires you as the CHRO to sign off that you probably don't need to be signing off on. A CEO who calls you for things that should belong to the COO. A legacy program that you personally built that you feel ownership over. You've got to name those things. And you have to name them first because you can't redesign around the constraints holding you back unless you're present to what they are.

And while you're doing that constraint audit, you need to design the calendar in parallel. If you wait for the constraints to be resolved before you block the calendar, you're going to be waiting for a very long time. Constraints don't resolve themselves on their own timeline. You have to have the true north. So you look at the business strategy through a talent lens, identify the constraint, figure out what that true north is, and develop that so that you know where to put the time when you free it up. I still think you need to find time in the calendar first, because that's actually more challenging — and the calendar pressure makes the constraints resolve. So if you can find a way to block out Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for enterprise leadership work, then the function is going to have to figure out what they're going to do that you otherwise would have been doing. You need to figure out how to free up time to work on the stuff that matters. And then concurrently, you figure out what matters and make sure it fills that time. If you focus on the constraint first, I worry about setting expectations — inside or outside the function — that aren't there yet. I think you have to find the time first. And once you figure out where in the organization you need to focus and you've found the time, you're going to very quickly figure out which gaps are real and which ones existed because you were available.

And I think you and I came to the point of view that you have to do both of these. You've just got to block your calendar. If you don't, nothing is ever going to happen. But you also have to know where you're going.

Yeah, but Scott — you do have to block the calendar, but the key thing is figuring out what you stop doing in order to free that time up. That's the nudge I'm trying to make.

And I think where you and I came out, Jackson, is you've got to do both of them. It's not one or the other — you probably do them at the same time. You're constantly running the audit and constantly redesigning the calendar, figuring out what you should be doing, what's the business constraint you should be focused on — and they self-reinforce. The calendar creates urgency on the constraint side; the constraint audit tells you exactly what to anticipate as the calendar changes go into effect. That's as difficult as it is — but that's it. What's the next play?

I think practically you've got to look at the last four weeks. And for every meeting that required your presence, ask three questions: could this have been handled by a direct report? Could this have been eliminated with a better process design? Or could this have been a business leader's call without us even being involved? That's where this partnership language we talk about a lot works against us. When I've done this with my coaching clients, I found 30 to 40% of the calendar is easily recoverable. It's uncomfortable, but it can be done without changing any of the outputs. And that's not a small number — that's like Tuesday and Thursday.

That's a big time gain back in your week. And the constraints that don't resolve themselves quickly — you've got to name them explicitly. Go to your CEO and say: here are three things that are structurally limiting my ability to operate at the enterprise altitude that you and I both want me at. Here's what I'm going to do about each one. And I'm here to align with you and make sure we're on the same page about removing these constraints, because it's not going to be without short-term disruption. Having that as an explicit conversation — that conversation is an enterprise leadership activity. A lot of CHROs don't ever have it. And what happens if the CEO pushes back? Then you understand another constraint. And you're going to have to figure that out. If you don't get agreement, okay — that's a wall. The question still remains: are you going to continue to operate the function, or are you going to move yourself to enterprise altitude? Just like any business operator — the CFO isn't going to say the banks made it really hard. The CFO is going to figure out a way around it. And we need to do it the same way.

Sometimes the CFO does say that, but it's usually because you're in chapter seven. But I digress. Let's move on to play two. I think it's talent density inside the HR function. Here's the uncomfortable truth: you may have really, really good people working for you. They may be functionally excellent at what you have historically asked them to do. They might not be who you need in the seat for you to be able to reach your altitude. You cannot manage human capital from the front if you are backstopping the team from behind. The goal is to have a function where every direct report fully owns their own scope and doesn't need you outside of setting the direction and the walls of the sandbox.

And Jackson, just for clarity for the audience — you and I are never advocates of coming in and going off with heads. "We've just got to fire everybody." But you have to be realistic with yourself. If the gap is so big that you're developing people over years to be able to own the scope — you really have to ask yourself, can the business afford that for you? And can you afford that as an HR leader? You may have to make some different choices. You need the right people in the right roles, defined by the right outputs, with clarity about what a successful quarter looks like. No good people in ambiguous roles — good people with explicit accountability. And when that exists, you as CHRO are free to move forward. When it doesn't, you are going to stay close to protect the work because you have to.

Yeah, so think about it this way: if you are taking a talent density approach to your own team, and you want to make the elevation change and free up 30 to 50% of your calendar, the question becomes: what are the pivotal roles in the HR function that will allow you to do that most effectively? That's going to be different for every company, every stage, every life cycle. But for each one, I would ask: does the person own their scope fully? If the answer is no, is that a capability gap or a clarity gap? Clarity gap is yours. Capability gap is theirs. The fixes are different. If it's a capability gap, ultimately that requires a talent upgrade. If it's something that can be taught quickly, great — but figure out what the development plan is to get there fast. And when I say fast, I mean six months. I've talked to tons of HR people who say, "Well, we can get them there over time." There is a time box on this, and it should be six months. If you can't — candidly, they can't be in the role you need them in. If it's not teachable in the next six months, if I need someone who can make better decisions or influence the business toward the right outcome — some of those things tied to cognitive capability, you can't coach fast enough. You need to put them in a different position, maybe inside the organization, maybe not. You've certainly got to time-box your sequence in a way that you don't flush the entire organization — because then you've just created one set of problems for another set. But in most cases, I've found it to be a clarity gap. And that requires a better role definition, more thinking on your part upfront to define the outcomes, and being very clear on what the destination of that role is. If you can do that, it's faster and more effective than you expect. People are operating at the levels that you've told them is acceptable. If you change that, really good people can step up. But you've got to start with the clarity.

Strong role definition has outcomes, it has how success is going to be measured, it has targets, it has competencies, and it has skills. Those five things are absolutely critical. We've got to stop thinking about job descriptions as one-time work. One of the reasons we built the capability within the Propulsion AI platform that we did is because we strongly believe role definition is going to be dynamic. As the CHRO's altitude shifts, the function's roles shift. What a Head of Talent Acquisition needs to deliver changes when the CHRO is spending more time on workforce design at the executive level — it just naturally evolves. And the role definitions have to track that strategic agenda. The clarity gap is yours as a manager, not theirs. Redefining those roles as the function evolves and your altitude rises is critically important.

So let's move on to play three — and this is going to be a hard one, because it's the CEO conversation. The people I've interacted with over the last 20 years, it's the one that gets deferred most. It can be really uncomfortable.

Well, the conversation isn't complicated — it's two questions. The discomfort doesn't make it complicated. It's straightforward, but it's hard as hell to do. Question number one — this is CHRO to CEO: what are the two or three things you most need me doing that nobody else on the team can do? Question two: are there things I'm currently spending time on that you would rather I move off of? Those two questions surface the actual CEO mandate — not the implied one. And they give you explicit permission to deprioritize what doesn't belong at your altitude.

Yeah, and let me laser in on the first one — "what are the two or three things you need me doing that no one else on your team can do?" The easy default is HR functional stuff. That's not what we're talking about. You need to navigate that conversation to say: okay, I need to stop filling jobs, and I need to start identifying the 5% of jobs that matter more than others. This is not a passive exercise. Because unless you're dealing with an enlightened CEO, chances are your first answer to that question is going to lead you down the wrong path.

Because they default to everything they've had in the past. And you and I have done other episodes on that.

Yeah, exactly right. The other version here is the scorecard conversation. "Here's how I currently measure the performance of the human capital agenda. Here are the four metrics I want you to evaluate me against. Do you agree these are the right ones?" It's going to take some navigation. If you say you want to be measured based on talent density changes over time, the CEO is not going to come up with that on their own — which is why when I find someone who does, you run toward that opportunity. More likely they're going to say they want to help culture, reduce unnecessary turnover, and improve engagement scores. Those are okay. But you have an obligation to navigate and push that conversation where you need it. Because ultimately, if you get the CEO to agree, you have an enterprise scorecard with explicit accountability attached to it. My recommendation: talent density, speed to impact, retention of key talent, and things that are forward-looking, not backward-looking. If the CEO pushes back, that too is progress — you've started the conversation about what actually matters. And either way, you're still operating like a business leader, not a functional one.

One point to cap that before we land this plane, Jackson: the CEO who tells you "I just need you to do a better job with engagement" — the simplest way to get underneath that is just ask why. What is it a means to an end for you? How is that going to help the business you are leading right now? That's the most effective question for that CEO.

I agree completely. All right, senior leaders — it is now your favorite part of the show. Your Talent Sherpa summary. Because Scott always leaves us with his wisdom. And this week, as we were prepping, Scott said: "I knew I was finally operating at enterprise altitude the day I realized I was the last signature on every onboarding checklist."

Just so everybody knows — I don't get to preview any of this summary segment that Jackson leads in with. You're so full of nonsense. All right, four things we think you should take away from today. One: audit your calendar before you audit the strategy — the calendar is the truth and it doesn't lie to you. Two: name the five constraints that are holding your current time allocation in place before you try to change it. Three: run the constraint audit and the calendar redesign in parallel — don't sequence them, it's a two-fer. Four: have the hard CEO conversation about your explicit mandate — not your intentions, but what you're being asked to deliver and what you're being measured against.

And you said "calendar doesn't lie" — that makes me wonder what a Shakira song about this would sound like. I think it would be amazing. But here's the thing I keep coming back to about this episode: the CHRO is a hard job, but it's not hard because it's complicated. The function isn't complicated — sometimes we overcomplicate it, but it's not that complicated. The CHRO job is hard because the function will always be more urgent than the enterprise. And the leaders who crack this code and operate at altitude are living by a different standard. They build the function so that it largely runs without them — and by the way, that makes you feel a little less useful. But it's important because it allows you to own a scorecard that the business respects. Not a functional scorecard — an enterprise scorecard. And the people who are doing this have the discipline to keep the calendar honest. The research says be more strategic. We are saying: build a scorecard before anybody asks you to. That's the step. So that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning into the Talent Sherpa Podcast, which, as you know by now, is where senior leaders come to rethink how human capital really works. This is so much fun. I think we're coming up on just about a year since you and I have been doing this together. And I've enjoyed the ride, brother.

It's really hard to believe. But I look forward to this time every single week — both prepping and doing the episode. And it's amazing to watch the audience grow and to see all the places that are listening. If you want to help with that, do us a favor and hit the like button right now on this episode, or even better, subscribe so you get episodes delivered directly to you. Leave us a review on your favorite platform — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or even YouTube. We're on all of those. It benefits the community, it helps the algorithm, it spreads the podcast to other senior leaders. It's free. It helps you, it helps others.

And for the record, it's six, not three people watching on YouTube. We have hundreds of folks that watch on YouTube. Two bald dudes are not that interesting — but Apple has videos now, so if you've ever wondered which of the two of us is more handsome, you can make that judgment on Apple, not just on YouTube. One of us likes leg day, and one of us likes donuts — you can figure out who is who. Hey, I do want to talk a little bit about Scott's company, Propulsion AI. They are workforce intelligence for private equity. Their AI teammates surface workforce risk before the deal closes, and they help leadership teams drive execution after. Whether you're in a deal or trying to execute your strategy, this is a group you should reach out to — they can help you translate strategy into individual accountability. That includes coaching managers to define roles by outcomes and giving every employee a clear line of sight to what actually matters. If you've heard it on this podcast once, you've heard it a hundred times: good people want to execute well, but you need to make sure they're pointing in the right direction. That's one of the things Scott's company does, and it's all through artificial intelligence. You can learn more at getpropulsion.ai.

If you are a new CHRO, or if you're preparing to step into the role for the first time, Jackson has built a number of tools to help you operate at the altitude the role demands — personal coaching, the CHRO Ascent Academy, and his best-selling Substack. You can find everything at mytalentsherpa.com.

Yeah, I spent two hours earlier today helping a CHRO redo their entire board presentation — went from seven slides that were just way too much into two slides that will have everyone leaning back and saying, "Wow, they're on top of this." I like doing that. So thanks for the pitch, Scott. And thanks to everyone listening. Until next time — keep raising the bar, build the scorecard before anybody asks you to, and keep on climbing