Many CHROs are trying to figure out how to use AI in HR without increasing risk or overwhelming their teams.

But here’s the pattern I’ve seen over the last 30 days:

HR teams are adding AI tools on top of already broken processes.

And instead of freeing up capacity…
it’s making things worse.

More tools.
Same bottlenecks.
No real impact.

Not because executives don’t care.
Not because they’re behind.

Because they haven’t experienced how AI actually drives business results yet.

And when you haven’t experienced something…
you don’t respect it.

It’s like chocolate.

If you’ve never had really good chocolate, you don’t crave it.

That’s where a lot of executive teams are right now with AI in HR.

What is actually keeping CHROs up at night with AI in HR?

Short answer: It’s not AI itself. It’s everything around it.

What I’m seeing across CHRO and CPO groups:

• Executive teams pushing for AI without understanding the risk
• HR teams already at full capacity
• Data that is fragmented,...

AI doesn’t feel urgent to most CHROs. That’s the real risk.

Most executives don’t think AI is urgent.

That’s what should worry you.

Not because they’re careless.
Not because they’re behind.

Because they haven’t experienced what AI can actually do to their business.

And if you haven’t experienced it… you don’t respect it.

Why doesn’t AI feel like a priority right now?

Because it hasn’t been tied to business outcomes yet.

In most organizations, AI is not clearly connected to:

• Revenue growth
• Cost reduction
• Productivity gains
• Operating model changes

So it gets deprioritized.

It doesn’t show up in the SWOT.
It’s not framed as a real threat.
It’s not treated like a real opportunity.

There’s also a quiet assumption happening inside leadership teams:

“If we haven’t figured it out, our competitors probably haven’t either.”

That assumption is dangerous.

What changes when AI actually shows up in the business?

Everything.

Once AI is applied in a real way, it st...

Most CHROs think they’re not ready for AI.

That’s not the real issue.

The real issue is this…

Your HR systems are not set up in a way that AI can actually work.

Onboarding is just where this shows up first.

But it’s happening everywhere.

Why this shows up so clearly in onboarding

I hear this all the time:

“We’re investing heavily in hiring… but new hires are slow to ramp.”

Most companies assume onboarding is broken because they don’t have enough content.

That’s not the problem.

The problem is onboarding is designed like an event instead of a system.

Here’s what it usually looks like:

• Day 1 sessions
• A checklist
• A shared drive full of documents
• Then… figure it out

New hires come in excited.

Within weeks:

• They’re confused
• They’re searching for answers
• They’re getting inconsistent guidance

Even your strongest hires start to lose confidence early.

And that kills momentum before it ever starts.

This is not an onboarding problem

Let’s be cle...

Most CEOs think the problem is talent.

It’s not.

It’s the system the talent operates in.

I learned that the hard way.

At one point, I had a team where maybe 20 percent were true top performers. The rest looked strong on paper but didn’t operate like a high-performing team.

There was backstabbing. Finger pointing. Low accountability.

And I own that.

I overvalued resumes. I undervalued attitude, aptitude, and appreciation.

We also didn’t have a strong employer brand. We were early, not well known, and didn’t have big benefits.

So we couldn’t rely on inbound talent.

We had to build differently.

Years later, I took a seven-week sabbatical as CEO.

Nothing broke.

Here’s what actually changed and what CHROs should be doing right now.

What actually allows a team to run without the CEO?

A team runs without the CEO when decision-making, accountability, and priorities are built into the system, not dependent on the leader.

Before, everything flowed through me.

After, it d...

The other day I was reviewing someone’s LinkedIn profile and saw the phrase:

“20 years of experience.”

For most of my career, that number signaled credibility.

But lately I find myself reacting differently.

And before anyone jumps to conclusions, this is not a commentary on age. Ageism is alive and well in many industries, and dismissing people because they have decades of experience would be just as misguided as dismissing someone because they are young.

But something else has changed.

If you are a CEO or CHRO building an executive team today, the real question is not just how much experience someone has.

The real question is this:

How do you know you are selecting leaders who will stay relevant?

Because in a world where technology, AI, and business models are evolving this quickly, the shelf life of knowledge is shrinking.

Research from organizations like BCG and Harvard Business Review suggests that the half-life of many professional skills is now less than five years. In ...

A few days ago I was talking with Loni Markman, who will be facilitating a session at the upcoming CHRO Reset Retreat.

At one point she asked me to do something incredibly simple.

Close my eyes.
Put my feet on the floor.
Take a breath.

That’s it.

So I did.

And it took almost twenty minutes for my brain to calm down.

Twenty minutes.

All I was doing was sitting in a chair with my eyes closed.

My mind was firing like a caffeinated squirrel.

Which is funny, because I do not even drink caffeine.

What struck me was not just how wound up I felt.

It was how normal that feeling had become.

And it reminded me of something I learned years ago when I was training for marathons.

Professional athletes train hard.

But they also recover intentionally.

If they trained at maximum intensity every single day, they would break.

Yet most executives do exactly that.

Quick insight for busy CHROs

• Many executives operate in a constant stress response without realizing it
• Traini...

The shift most CHROs underestimate

There is a moment in a CHRO’s career when the rules change.

You are no longer leading individual contributors.
You are leading leaders.
And those leaders are leading other leaders.

You now sit above multiple layers.

At this level, effort does not fix misalignment. Executive communication does.

Based on years of working alongside sitting CHROs inside our Mastermind Groups, one pattern is clear:

The biggest bottleneck at this level is not strategy.
It is executive communication that does not scale across layers.

Why leading leaders of leaders requires a different operating system

When you lead individual contributors, alignment is direct.

You can:
• Correct misunderstandings immediately
• Inspect decisions personally
• Reinforce expectations one conversation at a time

When you lead leaders of leaders, clarity must travel without you.

You cannot personally coach every interpretation.
You cannot personally fix every drift.

Your communication bec...

Introduction: The Real Strategic Risk for CHROs

If you are a CHRO trying to decide where to invest limited HR budget, this is the real challenge.

Not access to information.
Not a shortage of vendors.
Not a lack of ideas.

The challenge is deciding where to focus.

The most expensive mistake I made as a CEO was not a bad hire.

It was misallocating attention and capital because I listened to experts who were not accountable for my full strategy.

The real risk is not a lack of information. It is spreading yourself too thin chasing it.

That mistake is easy to make.

And CHROs are especially vulnerable to it right now.

What Was the Most Expensive Mistake I Made as a CEO?

I hired experts instead of building a strategy filter.

Over the years, I hired business coaches across marketing, systems, scaling, branding, AI, and operations. Many were excellent.

But they all taught their lane.

None of them sat across from me and said:

Here is where you should play.
Here is where you should no...

If you are a CHRO trying to be more strategic in 2026, here is the uncomfortable truth:

You are sitting on competitive intelligence most companies are not using.

Capital is moving fast.
AI adoption is accelerating.
Entire industries are being rebuilt around automation, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and geopolitical pressure.

Yet many CHROs still show up to strategic planning meetings with HR updates instead of enterprise insight.

That is why HR struggles for influence.

Not because it lacks intelligence.
Because it is not framing what it sees in financial and strategic terms.

What Is the CHRO’s Real Role in Strategic Planning?

The modern CHRO is not just responsible for talent management. The CHRO is responsible for interpreting workforce signals as business strategy inputs.

In a volatile environment shaped by AI, capital reallocation, and global tension, SWOT analysis cannot be complete without HR at the center.

If HR is absent from SWOT discussions, the company is operating ...

The Real Problem

At some point, every CHRO hears this line from a CEO or CFO:
“Let’s just pay what it takes to get people on board.”

It sounds flexible, but it’s not strategic.
What they’re really saying is, “Let’s skip the structure because structure feels slow.”

But without a compensation philosophy, you’re not being agile. You’re being reactive.
And that reactivity creates invisible costs that eventually show up as pay inequity, trust erosion, and margin leakage.

The Truth

A compensation philosophy isn’t about red tape or HR policy. It’s a decision framework for how you compete for talent.
It gives every leader the clarity to make consistent, data-driven pay decisions.

Without it, managers negotiate on emotion instead of logic.
And when everyone does it differently, you end up with compression, inequity, and a budget that drifts off plan.

The irony is that skipping the strategy costs more than building one.

The Business Case

Here’s what you can tell executiv...