Secrets of a Chief People Officer - it's not just about HR then?!

Over the past couple of months, the summer sports are back on for my 8 year old and so the obligatory ‘chit chat’ whilst watching tennis or cricket training happens now on the weekend. “So what do you do for a living?” is always a topic and when I say that I’m a Chief People Officer (CPeO). The number of people that look at me and say.. “so what does that mean?” is quite high. This conversation happened again just last weekend, and at the end the person said to me.. “so you’re not really just ‘HR’ then?!” And the answer of course is no. Yes, we must make sure that the functional and transactional elements of HR are run tightly by those responsible, but the role of the CPeO is far broader. There are many articles online that seek to explain the role but let me give you three key takeaways which are, of course, my personal opinion.

First and foremost, CPeOs are accountable for the design of the people experience. This is the end-to-end design from first candidate touch points right through to alumni. How to do this effectively is a whole other topic to write on. People often confuse this for putting in a set of processes that make sure things are ticked off and complete, rather than taking it right back to design principles and utilising methods that one would see in the product strategy function of an organisation.

I’ll write about that bit another day.

Importantly, on the people experience we (CPeOs) won’t be responsible for delivering that experience. Indeed, much of it will be the functional leaders and managers in the organisation where that employee sits. Yes(!) people really do leave those managers if their experience isn’t great, no matter how much they want to point the finger at something else. I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had with senior leaders who think that staff turnover is a target for (usually) HR! But, we are responsible for making sure we hold others to account on delivering that people experience through bringing both challenge and support; and those all important health indicators like staff turnover are key to helping us do just that. Getting the right balance between challenge and support is critical here and I often have to ‘check in’ with myself to make sure I’m creating the right balance.

Secondly CPeOs need to create and own the target leadership model in an organisation. This for me, is equally as important as the target operating model and both must be held in tension by any Senior Leadership Team when it comes to their performance and the performance of the organisation. The target leadership model defines all those good things like leadership capabilities, leadership toolkits and how these will be pushed out into the organisation, but it should also include cadences that all for leadership assessment, team coaching opportunities and a chance for leadership teams to critique and learn from experience. So many times we hear the term ‘Performance Improvement Plans’ for individuals, but not so much ‘Leadership Improvement Plan’. You’ll have seen in my last blog that, often, if there are performance issues in the team it’s the leader that needs to be looked at first. Importantly, as leaders define culture the target leadership model has to compliment what we are doing with the design of the employee experience. It has to align to a culture code that CPeOs have created as part of that people experience I talked about above. So many times I’ve seen in organisations’ ‘leadership training’ that has been developed in isolation and, guess what(?) those learning and models were motivating at the time.. but were destined never to be used again.

Finally, the CPeO has to work in partnership with the CEO to drive growth and change in an organisation. If an organisation is to grow then the key ingredient in order to do that is people. But do to this the CPeO has to be right across the business strategy. They contribute towards it, they can articulate it and certainly bring opinions and suggestions towards that strategy in the same way as any other C-level. I remember having a conversation with a C-level individual last year who was surprised to hear that getting involved with product strategy, technology strategy, marketing strategy etc was something that I was involved with. They honestly thought that my role was to be transactional and run what they considered to be an administrative function. I’m sure he is not alone in thinking that.?As a CPeO you have to get right across all of it in order to be able to work with the CEO to drive business performance and transformation. We need to be able to look at performance versus strategy and help diagnose why things may be not going to plan. I see myself as a business leader and have intentionally planned my career to ensure that the broader exposure to commercial acumen and awareness is present in all I do. But, in all of this when we are sat round that Exec table debating and solutioning we must also remember we represent the voice of the people too. This can be trickier than it sounds, but an absolute necessity nevertheless.

I recently read a White Paper on the changing face of CPeOs and, in a recent survey, 95% of CEOs surveyed agreed that their CPeO had the right skills to become a CEO. And, I’ve seen a growing number of CPeOs diversify to become Chief Strategy Officers. I’ve no aspiration personally to move into either of these directions, but as I think about an NED Porfolio career in my next full decade (still a few years off yet!) I can see the value of the skills I’m developing to support that.