SHRM26 Debrief · Leadership & Development · #2145
Why CEOs Don’t Trust HR (And What Great CHROs Do Differently)
with Anita Grantham
"Your job isn't to change the CEO. Your job is to amplify them."
What it was about
HR's job is not to change the CEO but to amplify their vision by translating mission, values, and behaviors into scalable systems tied to rewards and incentives — and by learning to speak the CEO's financial language instead of HR-only metrics like engagement scores.
By the numbers
Seven times revenue growth, $300 million to $3.5 billion
WD-40's revenue growth over the decade tied to its sustained engagement, per Garry Ridge.
100% of workforce paid vs. 80%/50% perceived return
Illustrative framing that companies pay 100% of payroll but executives often perceive they're getting back only 80% or 50% effort/output.
50+ employees / 250 or 500 employees
Thresholds cited for when informal, founder-centralized decision-making and culture transmission stop scaling and require defined values/behaviors and delegated autonomy.
Key notes
- Do not try to change your CEO; partner with and amplify their existing vision instead of attempting to reshape them.
- Define explicit values with a counterfeit (what the value does NOT look like) on the flip side so people can recognize and act on them.
- Revisit or rebuild your values only when there is a CEO/founder change, a 50%+ executive team change, or a hard strategy shift requiring new behaviors.
The contrarian takeHR should stop reporting generic engagement scores to the C-suite altogether. There's no meaningful line between HR metrics and business metrics: the only benchmark that matters is whatever the C-suite defines as important, and HR should abandon its own team-level metrics in favor of those.
Take this back Monday
Do this for your team
Add a clear 'this is NOT it' counterexample to each of your stated company values so people can actually spot violations.
Say this in your next leadership meeting
My job isn't to change our CEO's vision, it's to translate it into systems tied to rewards so culture actually sticks.
Watch out for
- Building training programs and culture initiatives from the middle-management level up instead of getting top-down CEO commitment first.
- Bringing HR-only metrics (like generic engagement scores) to the C-suite table instead of metrics the business actually cares about.
- Asking for feedback (surveys, listening tours) and then never acting on it — which teaches people that giving feedback is pointless.
Fun fact · Anita Grantham
Anita Grantham helped scale Pluralsight's team from 300 to 2,000 employees across 12 countries.
If this landed, see these
↳ Go deeperReturn on Intelligence: Move AI ROI Beyond Cost to Competitive AdvantageShows exactly how to reframe HR's story in the ROI language this session says CEOs actually respect.⇄ The counterpointThe Missing Middle of LeadershipArgues the real translation gap sits with under-developed middle managers, not the CEO relationship.✦ The unexpected oneHow to Leverage the 5 Hidden Signals That Predict Cultural DriftThe trust gap CEOs feel might just be cultural drift nobody bothered to name.