Leander LeSure
Chief People and Diversity Officer
Smarsh
Episode 231
HR's New Mandate: Strategic Courage to Shape Culture, Drive Business Outcomes
Current chapter: Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built By PeopleApril 15, 2025 · 13:13
Thesis
“HR must transcend administrative functions by deeply understanding the business and having the courage to make strategic talent decisions, thereby intentionally shaping culture and aligning rewards to drive sustainable organizational results.”
Show notes
Building an Intentional Workplace Culture with Leander's Insights
This episode is in partnership with Transform, we are very grateful and excited to be working with this wonderful community. Go check them out here
In this episode of the Built by People podcast, Dave welcomes Leander, an HR executive with 30 years of experience across diverse industries including manufacturing, consulting, and financial services. Leander shares his transformative career journey, emphasizing the crucial role of understanding business operations to foster effective leadership and workplace culture. He recounts a pivotal lesson from his time at Pizza Hut on aligning HR functions with business needs.
Leander also discusses the importance of HR being a strategic partner in leadership decisions, investing in people leaders to shape culture, and implementing pay-for-performance practices to drive business results. His parting advice stresses the interconnection of talent, culture, and business outcomes as foundational to organizational success.
00:00 Introduction and Career Journey
02:28 Learning the Business at Pizza Hut
05:44 HR as a Strategic Partner
07:30 Investing in People Leaders
09:39 Driving Business Results through Culture and Talent
12:29 Conclusion and Parting Advice
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What you'll take away
- 1HR must deeply embed itself in business operations to provide strategic value, moving beyond generic, procedural advice.
- 2Cultivate 'courage' within HR to leverage a holistic organizational view, make decisive talent assessments, and act on underperformance in critical roles.
- 3Define and shape culture actively by consciously choosing what behaviors and performance levels to tolerate within the organization.
- 4Implement a robust pay-for-performance philosophy to significantly boost motivation and retention among high-achievers.
- 5Recognize culture, talent, and business results as interdependent pillars; a weakness in one destabilizes the entire organization.
What most organizations get wrong
- •HR professionals often 'lack a bit of courage' in leveraging their comprehensive organizational insights to make and act on difficult talent assessments, which impedes business success.
- •Culture is succinctly defined as 'what you tolerate,' directly challenging abstract notions and emphasizing accountability for accepted behaviors.
In Leander's words
“How can you grow my business if you don't know my business?”
This quote profoundly highlights the essential need for HR to deeply understand operational business functions to be a true strategic partner.
“The people function participants lack a bit of courage. We are one of the few functions that has a horizontal view of the organization structure and talent, a diagonal view of the organizational structure and talent, and we don't leverage that knowledge and understanding.”
This points out a critical internal challenge for HR professionals, urging them to be more assertive and impactful with their unique insights.
“culture is what you tolerate. If you think about that for a second, culture is what you tolerate. You can tolerate high performance and delivery, which is a good thing. You can tolerate the lack of performance and delivery. Which one do you want to choose?”
This offers a stark, actionable definition of culture, emphasizing leadership's direct role in shaping it through their tolerances.
“we have now retained our highest performers at about 90% retention. So pay for performance and having the right talent in the job, which is what I call talent uplift, are some meaningful things that I do to drive business results.”
This quote directly links a specific HR strategy (pay-for-performance) to a measurable, positive business outcome (high-performer retention).
“Culture, talent, and business results. That's a three-legged stool. Any of those legs that are weak, it's gonna be a wobbly seating position.”
This powerful analogy stresses the fundamental interdependence of these three pillars for organizational stability and sustained success.
The problems this episode addresses
- •HR teams delivering ineffective, generalized advice without truly understanding specific business unit operations or profit drivers.
- •Loss of motivation and retention among high-performing employees when compensation and rewards are not clearly linked to individual performance.
- •Organizational paralysis or suboptimal outcomes stemming from HR's reluctance to make courageous, objective assessments and decisions about talent capabilities in critical roles.
- •Instability and lack of sustainable results when the foundational elements of culture, talent, and business outcomes are not equally strong and aligned.
In this episode
Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built by People
Dave Zirin shares his career journey and perspective on leadership and culture
The 30-Year Career Journey
Early in your career at Pizza Hut, you learned the importance of truly understanding business
How Can You Grow My Business If You Don't Know My Business
Leander says HR needs to be at parity with other business functions
How to Build a Strategic Partner in the Business
Leander believes investing in people leaders is key to shaping workplace culture
Leander on People Leadership
You've structured your accomplishments into 3 areas: culture, uplifting talent and pay for performance
Culture, Talent Uplift and Pay-for-Performance
Leander offers advice on how to balance culture, talent and business results
Leander On Talent, Culture, and Business Results
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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