Judith Nelson
Chief People Officer
Weee!
Episode 243
Beyond Support: Why HR Needs a General Manager Mindset for Growth
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleApril 7, 2025 · 16:01
Thesis
“Effective HR leadership transcends traditional support roles; it requires a general manager mindset, deep business understanding, and a focus on aligning people strategy directly with organizational growth and long-term success.”
Show notes
Judith Nelson has built people strategies across 22 markets on three continents. Her core finding: fundamentally, employees everywhere want the same three things — to be treated with respect, to do meaningful work, and to learn and grow. Everything else is execution.
As Chief People Officer at Weee!, North America's fastest-growing ethnic e-commerce company, Judith draws on stints at billion-dollar corporates and hypergrowth startups to articulate a model of HR that most organizations still haven't caught up to. She describes herself as "a general manager who just happens to work in the people space" — a framing that signals how she approaches the function: HR isn't support, it's a business driver that should sit squarely in strategic decision-making. That means being fluent in organizational growth and efficiency, not just culture and capability.
Her contrarian take on culture planning is worth the runtime alone: she's never had a "culture plan" and thinks the concept over-processes something that should be organic. Instead, every hiring decision, every process design, every leadership interaction is a deliberate step toward the culture you're building. She applies the same logic to scaling — her "corporate light" approach favors frameworks over policies and focuses on the what and why rather than the rigid how. Kindness, she argues, isn't a soft leadership trait. It's a driver of trust, collaboration, and long-term business results.
What you'll learn:
- The "general manager mindset" for HR — and why it changes how the function is perceived
- Why "hire for will, train for skill" is the right reset for hypergrowth hiring
- The "corporate light" approach to scaling: frameworks over rigid policies
- Judith's 4 Cs of HR — compliance, capability, change, and culture — and how to sequence them
- Why she's never had a culture plan — and what she does instead
- How adaptability and kindness function as strategic leadership assets
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What you'll take away
- 1HR leaders should adopt a 'general manager' mindset, deeply understanding business strategy to drive people initiatives and ensure HR is seen as a business driver, not just support.
- 2In hypergrowth environments, move quickly, embrace ambiguity, treat mistakes as learning opportunities, and prioritize foundational elements before refining details.
- 3Reset hiring strategies by prioritizing cultural fit ('will') and a learning mindset over specific skills, especially for roles that require thriving in ambiguity and building from scratch.
- 4Implement a 'corporate light' approach to scaling; focus on the 'what' and 'why' of processes using flexible frameworks, rather than suffocating with rigid policies.
- 5Be data-driven in HR, actively participate in defining business goals, and rigorously test the return on investment of people initiatives to ensure meaningful, sustained impact.
What most organizations get wrong
- •"It's not about applying the corporate playbook. It's about agility and resourcefulness in aligning the people strategy to enable the business strategy." (7:48)
- •"I have never had is a culture plan. I think it just over-processes culture. So for me, every piece of work that you do should be a stepping stone towards building the culture that you want to create." (14:14)
In Judith's words
“I describe myself as a general manager who just happens to work in the people space.”
This quote encapsulates her core philosophy of how HR should function as a strategic business partner.
“My biggest learning with hiring though is the culture fit is key. Hire for will and train for skill.”
This provides actionable advice on prioritizing cultural alignment and potential over existing capabilities in hiring.
“One thing I've learned from working around the world is that fundamentally people want the same thing from their work...They want to be treated with respect. They want meaningful work, they want to learn, develop, and grow.”
This highlights the universal core needs of employees, irrespective of cultural or geographical differences.
“I think for me, and all of the people roles, I talk about the 4 Cs. It's about compliance... building capability... driving change... And then the final one, and probably most importantly, is culture.”
This presents a clear, memorable framework for structuring and prioritizing HR functions within an organization.
“Kindness is not a weakness. For me, it's a real leadership strength, and one that builds trust, it fuels collaboration, and overall it just drives long-term business success.”
This emphasizes the often-underestimated power of empathy and kindness as a foundational element for effective leadership and business outcomes.
The problems this episode addresses
- •CEOs struggle with talent and capability concerns, which keep them awake at night.
- •Growing organizations face the challenge of determining what initiatives to pursue, at what level of detail, and when, often leading to overcommitment.
- •Retaining an entrepreneurial mindset and creativity while scaling, without stifling employees with corporate frameworks and policies, is a significant challenge.
- •Ensuring HR is recognized as a strategic business driver rather than merely a support function remains a hurdle for many HR leaders.
- •Achieving sustainable, embedded change that drives business performance, rather than just being perceived as 'another initiative,' is difficult.
In this episode
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Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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