Strategic HR Examples: How CHROs Choose the Right People Game

Strategic HR Examples: How CHROs Choose the Right People Game

A lot of HR teams are working hard on the wrong game.

I recently ran a poll asking CHROs where they wished they had more time.

The majority said they wished they had more time for strategic work.

That answer stuck with me because I hear this all the time from CHROs and senior HR leaders.

They are busy.

They are responsive.

They are solving problems.

They are filling roles, improving processes, answering leaders' requests, launching programs, supporting managers, addressing employee issues, and trying to keep up with everything coming at them.

But activity is not the same as strategy.

An HR team can be working incredibly hard and still not be working on the thing that will help the business win.

That is the real strategic HR problem.

What is strategic HR?

Strategic HR means choosing the people work that most directly helps the business win.

It is not simply doing more HR work.

It is not using bigger words.

It is not getting invited to more meetings.

And it is definitely not about waiting to be invited in.

Strategic HR starts when the CHRO steps back and asks:

What people game does the business need HR to play right now?

That question changes everything.

A CHRO may want to focus on better benefits this year. That may be important. It may even be overdue.

But if the business is missing its numbers because it cannot recruit enough salespeople, retain enough salespeople, or ramp them fast enough, then benefits may not be the strategic game HR needs to play right now.

In that case, HR's strategic game may be sales capacity.

That changes the conversation.

Now the CHRO is not just talking about recruiting activity. They are asking:

• Are we clear on the sales roles that actually drive revenue?
• Do we know which markets have the talent we need?
• Do we have enough recruiting capacity to fill the roles fast enough?
• Are managers moving quickly enough through interviews and decisions?
• Are compensation, onboarding, territory design, and ramp time helping or hurting the sales team?

That is strategic HR.

Not because it sounds more elevated.

Because it is tied directly to what the business is trying to win.

Tactics are how you win the game. Strategy is deciding what game you are playing.

A couple of years ago, Bryan Franklin and Jennifer Russell spoke at one of our Big CHRO events about what they call the five aspects of strategic genius.

Bryan and Jennifer have spent more than two decades as executive coaches in Silicon Valley, working with CEOs, founders, and executive teams through high-growth, high-stakes strategic moments.

In their talk, they shared that they have completed more than 30,000 coaching sessions, helped multiple companies scale toward billion-dollar outcomes, and worked closely with leaders navigating moments where the future was anything but obvious.

One distinction they made has stayed with me:

Tactics are how you win the game. Strategy is deciding what game you are playing.

That distinction matters deeply for CHROs.

Because many HR teams are rewarded for tactics.

Fill the role.

Fix the benefits issue.

Roll out the program.

Improve the process.

Update the policy.

Implement the system.

Support the leader.

All of those things may be necessary.

But they may not be strategic.

Strategic HR is not about doing more.

Strategic HR is about choosing the right people game for the business.

Five strategic HR examples for CHROs

Bryan and Jennifer walked through five aspects of strategic genius:

1. Strategic thinkers predict the future.
2. Strategic thinkers know themselves.
3. Strategic thinkers get buy-in.
4. Strategic thinkers sequence effectively.
5. Strategic thinkers pay the bill.

I have been thinking about those five aspects ever since.

Because when I listen to CHROs in The CHRO Strategy Room, I hear these same ideas showing up in real time.

Not as theory.

As the messy, practical work of helping businesses grow, change, cut costs, build talent, manage risk, prepare for AI, support acquisitions, and make better decisions.

The following examples are intentionally anonymized because what is said in the room stays in the room.

But the patterns are worth sharing.

They show what strategic HR actually looks like.

1. Strategic HR leaders predict the future

Strategic HR leaders do not only respond to what is already broken.

They look ahead and ask what the playing field may look like next.

Many leaders assume trends are linear. If something is small today and bigger tomorrow, we assume it will keep growing in a straight line.

But many important trends are not linear.

Some are exponential.

Some are cyclical.

Some look small until they change the game quickly.

Bryan and Jennifer used Oreo as an example.

During the diet-food craze, the obvious move would have been to create a diet Oreo. Instead, the brand leader saw something others missed: people might be tired of deprivation and ready for indulgence again.

Rather than chasing the linear trend, Oreo doubled the filling and created Double Stuf.

The strategic move was not blindly following the market.

It was seeing where the market was likely to swing next.

That matters for CHROs.

A CHRO who is thinking strategically is not only asking, "What people issue are we solving today?"

They are asking:

• What talent problem will hit us six months from now?
• What skill will become scarce before the business realizes it?
• What leadership capability will the next stage require?
• What workforce assumption are we making that may no longer hold?
• What trend looks small today but could change the game quickly?

In one Strategy Room discussion, a senior HR leader in a large complex business was thinking through how external forces could affect the workforce.

The conversation included government contracting, geopolitical issues, tariffs, sourcing shifts, and the talent implications of those changes.

That is a strategic move.

The issue was not just, "How do we fill open roles?"

The bigger question was, "How might the external environment change the talent game we are playing?"

In another discussion, a CHRO in a high-growth organization described working with the CEO to imagine the future organization.

Not just the company as it existed that day.

The company it would need to become if the next stage of growth actually happened.

The conversation was about the leadership system, culture, values, and capabilities the company would need before the pressure was obvious.

That is strategic HR.

Not because it was a clever HR program.

Because the CHRO helped the CEO think about the future business, then work backward into what the organization would need to support it.

2. Strategic HR leaders know what the business really has

The second aspect is knowing yourself.

For organizations, this means telling the truth about what you actually have.

Not what you say you have.

Not what you hope you have.

What you actually have.

Bryan and Jennifer used Kodak as a cautionary tale. Kodak invented the digital camera, but the company's identity was tied to film. It saw itself through what it did, not through the assets it had. That rigidity made it harder to pivot when the market changed.

They contrasted that with Southern Pacific. Instead of defining itself only as a railroad company, it looked at the asset it actually had: long, skinny strips of real estate crossing the country. That asset became useful for telecommunications infrastructure and eventually helped create Sprint.

That is a powerful lesson for HR.

Companies often confuse what they currently do with what they are actually capable of doing.

A company may say, "We are great at growing through acquisition."

But what does that really mean?

Are you great at finding deals?

Are you great at integrating cultures?

Are you great at retaining key talent?

Are you great at replicating your training model?

Are you great at transferring your employment brand into a new market?

Those are different assets.

And they do not all travel equally.

In one Strategy Room discussion, a CHRO in a multi-location healthcare services business talked through growth by acquisition. The company was moving into larger acquisitions and new markets.

On the surface, the business had a strong model.

It had a good employment brand.

It had strong employee and customer scores.

It had a culture people valued.

It had a track record of training people well.

Those were real strengths.

But the CHRO also named a risk.

In existing markets, the company had strong relationships that helped feed a specialized talent pipeline. In a new market, those relationships would not automatically exist.

That distinction matters.

The strategy is not simply, "We know how to grow."

The better question is:

Which of our current assets will transfer into the next market, and which ones will have to be built from scratch?

That is the difference between confidence and truth.

And strategic HR depends on truth.

A CHRO who knows the business deeply can help the executive team avoid overestimating its readiness.

They can say:

Yes, we have a strong culture.

Yes, we have a strong training model.

Yes, we have a good employment brand.

But we do not yet have the talent supply relationships in that new market.

That is not negativity.

That is strategy.

3. Strategic HR leaders get buy-in before the rollout

The third aspect is buy-in.

This is where many HR initiatives fail.

Not because the idea is bad.

Because the strategy requires people to change behavior, give up control, make time, trust the process, or support something they did not help shape.

Bryan and Jennifer made a counterintuitive point:

Strategic thinkers do not try to change behavior more than necessary.

They reduce friction.

They understand the existing agendas in the system and work with them, not against them.

They used the contrast between General Magic and the iPhone to illustrate the point. General Magic had a version of the smartphone idea long before the market was ready, but it required too much behavior change from consumers.

Apple waited until texting behavior had already taken hold, then introduced a better tool for something people were already trying to do.

The burden of change was on the creator, not the customer.

That lesson matters for every CHRO trying to move work across an enterprise.

In one example, a CHRO at a large infrastructure organization was recruiting a senior talent leader whose work would affect the full enterprise.

The CHRO did not treat it like a normal hire.

A respected senior leader was involved early in the process.

Later, the finalist was introduced to a broader group of senior stakeholders.

That may sound simple, but it was strategic.

The CHRO knew that if this new leader was going to be effective across the enterprise, the organization needed to feel ownership before the person started.

Once the leader was in the role, early wins created even more support.

Leaders started noticing the work.

They saw movement on things that had been stuck.

Advocacy grew because buy-in had been built before the rollout.

That is not accidental.

The CHRO was not only hiring a person.

She was building the conditions for that person to succeed.

This is one of the biggest differences between tactical HR and strategic HR.

Tactical HR asks, "Who should we hire?"

Strategic HR asks, "What needs to be true in the organization for this person to be effective?"

That is a better game.

4. Strategic HR leaders sequence the work

The fourth aspect is sequencing.

This may be one of the most underrated strategic HR skills.

A lot of organizations try to copy the visible action of another successful company without building the hidden assets that made the action work.

Bryan and Jennifer used the eagle example.

If you want to fly, you do not run off a cliff flapping your arms because that is what the eagle appears to be doing.

The eagle flies because it has the assets that make flight possible: hollow bones, wingspan, shape, and muscle structure.

The same thing happens in business.

They shared the example of companies copying Google's famous recruiting billboards with complex math problems. The visible tactic was the billboard. But Google had the hidden asset that made the tactic work: a world-class technical environment that top engineers actually wanted access to.

Companies that copied the billboard without the underlying asset were just flapping their arms.

In HR, this happens constantly.

A company sees another organization build a successful internal mobility program, so it launches one too.

But it has not built manager trust.

It has not cleaned up role architecture.

It has not created transparency around skills.

It has not trained leaders to release talent.

So the program does not work.

The action was copied.

The assets were not built.

One CHRO in a niche services business shared one of my favorite examples of strategic sequencing.

The company had long relied on talent from one familiar source. Many leaders believed that was the only realistic talent pool because the business was specialized.

Instead of accepting that as permanent, the CHRO went on a listening tour.

She wanted to understand the talent market beneath the surface.

Why were people leaving that source?

What worked about that talent pool?

What did not?

What hidden baggage came with it?

What would have to be true before the company could build a different pipeline?

What she discovered was that the issue was not only skill.

It was culture, trust, training, and readiness.

So the CHRO did not simply say, "Let's hire different people."

She sequenced the work.

First, understand the problem.

Then strengthen the culture.

Then build the training.

Then create a new talent pipeline.

Then prove it works.

Then scale it.

Over time, the company built a formal early-career pipeline. Participants worked on real business projects, including market and expansion analysis.

Some of the work was strong enough to influence real business decisions.

Eventually, people who came through that pipeline moved into operating and leadership roles.

By the end, business leaders who had resisted the idea became advocates for it.

That is what it looks like when HR stops reacting to the talent market and starts building a new one.

The tactic was not "start a program."

The strategy was much bigger:

Stop depending on the same constrained talent pool and build the conditions for a new talent supply chain.

That is sequencing.

5. Strategic HR leaders help the business pay the bill

The fifth aspect may be the hardest.

Strategic thinkers pay the bill.

They understand that every strategy has a cost.

This is the part most organizations want to avoid.

They want lower cost and better service.

They want speed and perfection.

They want transformation and no discomfort.

They want accountability and no hard conversations.

They want growth without capacity constraints.

They want leadership development without leaders making time.

They want AI productivity without workflow redesign.

But strategy does not work that way.

Bryan and Jennifer made this point with company reorganizations.

If you organize functionally, you may get deeper expertise, but you also create silos.

If you organize around business units, you may get more customer focus, but you also create duplication and weaker sharing of best practices.

No structure removes all pain.

Leaders have to choose which problem they are willing to manage and then do the daily elbow-grease work that comes with that choice.

If there is no tradeoff, it is probably not a strategy.

It is a wish list.

In one Strategy Room conversation, a senior HR leader in a large global business gave a refreshingly honest example.

The business was focused on margin expansion and structural cost changes. That meant HR had to rethink what level of service the business could actually afford.

He named the tension directly.

HR may want employees to feel highly valued.

HR may want better service scores.

HR may want a more hands-on model.

But if the business has committed to margin expansion and HR has signed up for a significant cost reduction, the function cannot pretend the old service model is still available.

He gave a practical example.

The organization had many global sites, but not every site had its own HR manager.

Site leaders may have wanted to go back to the old days, when every site had its own HR manager, benefits person, and hands-on support.

Employees may have disliked the centralized service model.

But that was the model the business could afford.

He compared it to setting a service goal at 80%, not 100%, because the last 20% may cost twice as much.

That is strategic honesty.

He was not pretending the tradeoff did not exist.

He was helping the business understand the bill it had chosen to pay.

This is a critical CHRO move.

Because if HR does not help the business name the tradeoff, the organization will keep asking for incompatible outcomes.

More service.

Less cost.

More speed.

Less capacity.

More innovation.

No risk.

More leadership accountability.

No discomfort.

The CHRO has to help the business see the bill.

Then decide whether it is willing to pay it.

Strategic HR is not more HR activity

The more I listen to CHROs, the more convinced I am that strategic HR is not about sounding more strategic.

It is not about using bigger words.

It is not about getting invited to more meetings.

And it is definitely not about waiting for an invitation.

Strategic HR is deciding which people game the business needs HR to play now.

Sometimes that game is sales capacity.

Sometimes it is leadership readiness.

Sometimes it is building a new talent pipeline.

Sometimes it is preparing for acquisition growth.

Sometimes it is reducing friction so leaders will actually adopt the change.

Sometimes it is rethinking the HR operating model.

Sometimes it is accepting that the business cannot afford the service model everyone wishes it could have.

The CHRO's job is to name the game clearly.

Then help the business play it well.

That is what makes HR strategic.

Not the invitation.

The game.

Frequently asked questions about strategic HR

What is strategic HR?

Strategic HR is the work of aligning talent, leadership, culture, workforce planning, and HR operating choices with what the business is trying to achieve. It is not just running HR programs. It is choosing the people work that will help the business win.

What is an example of strategic HR?

An example of strategic HR is when a CHRO sees that revenue growth is being limited by sales capacity and shifts HR's focus from general recruiting activity to sales hiring, sales retention, sales ramp time, sales manager capability, and compensation alignment.

What is the difference between tactical HR and strategic HR?

Tactical HR focuses on executing tasks, such as filling roles, updating policies, launching programs, or improving processes. Strategic HR focuses on deciding which people issues matter most to the business strategy and sequencing the work so the company can win.

What should CHROs focus on to become more strategic?

CHROs should focus on predicting future talent needs, telling the truth about organizational capabilities, building buy-in, sequencing change effectively, and helping the business understand the tradeoffs behind every strategy.

Why do HR teams struggle to be strategic?

HR teams often struggle to be strategic because they are rewarded for responsiveness and activity. They may be solving many problems, but not necessarily the problem that matters most to the business right now.

Want help choosing the right people game for your business?

If you are a CHRO at a company with 500+ employees, this is the work we do inside The CHRO Strategy Room, through mastermind sessions with peers and one-on-one strategy sessions with me. We help CHROs decide which people work matters most to the business, then get it done.

Book a call with me to learn more.