The CHRO Pipeline Was Built for a Different Job

As enterprise demands on CHROs expand, the experiences required to succeed in the role are changing. Can traditional pipelines keep pace?

The CHRO role is changing because the enterprise is changing. As AI reshapes work itself, productivity and transformation increasingly cut across traditional functional boundaries, and CEOs need people leaders who can connect people, technology, and performance across organizations. Against that backdrop, we spoke with more than 25 sitting CHROs about a practical question: What will the person who eventually succeeds you need to be able to do?

Three themes stood out. Future CHROs will need to think beyond the function, lead effectively where organizational ownership is unclear, and exercise judgment when there is no established response. Running through all three was the importance of influence: the ability to build relationships across the enterprise, create followership without relying on formal authority, and turn judgment into action.

Deep HR expertise remains essential, but the profile is becoming considerably broader – raising an important question: Are we developing HR leaders fast enough and with the right development experiences for what the enterprise will require from its future CHROs?

Building the HR pipeline for a broader leadership role

CHROs are already looking for ways to give future leaders the experiences this broader role will require. In practice, that means:

• Giving high-potential talent earlier exposure to the wider business;
• Creating opportunities to operate across functional boundaries;
• Giving future leaders responsibility for unfamiliar, less clearly defined problems; and
• Looking beyond traditional HR career paths for talent who can bring broader business, financial or technology experience into the leadership pipeline.

The bigger question is how deliberately this is happening. Our conversations suggest that much of this breadth is still being built through the work itself: leaders acquire it because the opportunities arise, rather than because succession pathways have been consciously designed to provide it.

These experiences take time to accumulate. Identifying potential successors is only part of the task; organizations need to start earlier, look further down the pipeline and understand where the gaps are while there is still time to address them.

Returning to our opening question: is the profile of the CHRO changing faster than the pipeline beneath it? We outline four questions CHROs can ask to determine if they’re truly preparing the next generation for the CHRO roles of the future.

A succession checklist for CHROs

• Are we identifying potential successors early enough?
It takes time to gain the breadth of experience necessary to meet the demands of the future CHRO role. Without a deliberate approach, succession can become reliant on one or two individuals who happen to have accumulated the right experiences.

• Are they getting enough exposure beyond HR?
For those coming up through traditional HR pathways, it means meaningful responsibility for enterprise-wide issues and unfamiliar problems rather than simply visibility of them.

• Are we deliberately stretching future HR leaders into the seams?
Future leaders need experience of working across functions, influencing without clear authority and leading where ownership is less defined.

• Is our pipeline wide enough?
As well as looking deeper into internal pipelines, organizations should consider casting the net more widely to high-impact business leaders outside traditional HR career paths who may bring broader business, financial and technology acumen, alongside the enterprise perspective, judgment and influence the future role will require.

Tomorrow’s workforce will look markedly different; the leaders shaping it will need to as well. The question is whether organizations are building that capability early enough, thinking broadly enough about where future CHROs may come from, and giving their high-potential leaders the experiences that will stretch them. Those that do will be better prepared for the role the CHRO is becoming.

Authors

Maddy Butts is a senior leader in Russell Reynolds Associates’ Human Resources capability. She is based in New York City.
David Krahe leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ MedTech practice. He is based in Dallas.
Ted Moore leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Human Resources capability globally. He is based in Chicago.
Annabel Toren is a senior leader in Russell Reynolds Associates’ Human Resources capability. She is based in New York City.
Alison Huntington leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Human Resources Officers and Legal, Risk & Compliance Officers Commercial Strategy & Insights teams. She is based in London.