The Decade of the CHRO
Yesterday Jack Dorsey returned as the triumphant king to the Twitter throne. Employees and investors alike rejoiced hoping Dorsey could bring the swag back to Twitter, an organization that has been bleeding talent and experiencing turbulent share prices over the last year.
More important than Jack’s return, however is the priorities that he laid out in his announcement. First and foremost, it was about people - “build the best team dynamic to lead Twitter”. These 8 words pack a deceptive amount of meaning, honing in on talent development, organizational dynamics and the future leadership of the organization (Bravo to Dorsey for his brevity).
At Lightbank, I’ve been spending an immense amount of time diving into the next wave of leadership challenges facing enterprises and consistently hear HR at the top of the list for executives in my network. With Jack, it’s clearly no different. The war for talent is on and enterprises will be won and lost by their ability to attract, retain and build the best people.
Part of this belief stems from the decade long cycles we’ve seen in executive leadership. The 80's were undoubtedly the era of the COO — the hey day for Lean Six Sigma and operational efficiency through advanced manufacturing and supply chain processes. The 90's followed suit with the CFO as organizations levered up their balance sheets and constructed new financial products that would lead to an immense surge in wealth (seemingly without creating anything) throughout the decade that would ultimately be their downfall in the next. As we kicked off the next millennium, the Valley boomed and busts, but organizational CTOs/CIOs gained immense influence in the C-suite bringing on new cloud-based solutions that redefined their organizations. As many of my peers have accurately cited, we are currently in the “Decade of the CMO”. CMO spend will outpace that of CIOs by 2017 and CMOs are gaining leadership influence faster than ever.
As we look to who will lead the next decade, we need to look no further than Jack — the CHRO will reign supreme. With a workforce that is rife with mobility and ample/lucrative 1099 opportunities, even the best organizations are struggling to attract and retain future leaders. My generation cares about more than compensation and is extremely fickle. Most enterprises have zero clue how to deal with us, struggling to meet our unique demands. Unfortunately they need to as enterprise agility and innovation become increasingly important in a progressively more digital world. Meeting these demands means converting an enterprise’s dynamics from an “Organization of One” to an “Organization of You” and doing so requires HR to be a truly strategic function, not a back-office process for managing payroll, benefits and compliance. Many CEOs (like Jack) are already wearing the CHRO hat and this is going to create an incredible opportunity for HR tech to emerge as the next wave in enterprise technology productivity.
The Decade of the CHRO is here and I, for one, couldn’t be more excited to see what it will bring.
Welcome back Jack.
