HR is solving the wrong problems: What the C-suite taught me

Summary: HR’s role is to hold the mirror up. Not to judge or fix. To reflect back what the organisation can’t see about itself. Here are the questions HR should be asking.

I was cold. Stacking shelves at Sainsbury’s. In and out of the industrial chillers. Something needed to change.

So I knocked on the door of the Personnel office and asked for a job. That accident set me on a 20-year path through HR. I worked in contact centres, local government, banking, and wealth management. Eventually, I arrived into the C-suite as Chief People Officer.

I thought I knew what HR was for. I didn’t.

Sitting at the executive table, I realised that a lot of what HR was doing was solving the wrong problems.

The problem with people strategies

Controversial take: people strategies are a waste of time.

I spent years building them. Talent frameworks. Employee value propositions. Succession matrices. They were good. But not what my organisation actually needed. I was stuck in orthodoxy. I was too busy ‘doing’ HR to notice.

Organisations don’t fail because their people strategy is misaligned to business strategy. They fail because people can’t talk to each other honestly.

In difficult moments. When the commercial reality and company values don’t match. When the executive team is full of egos. Or when truth is uncomfortable.

People strategies don’t address this.

Sitting at the executive table, I realised that a lot of what HR was doing was solving the wrong problems.

The C-suite reality

Before I reached the executive table, there was always someone above me to catch the ball if things went wrong. In the C-suite, there’s no one. There’s no safety net.

I expected pressure. Less so loneliness. 

The C-suite is cut-throat and political. It’s also fragile. Executives over-index on being right. They feel judged when challenged. They respond defensively and disagree badly.

I saw capable C-suite teams make poor decisions because nobody felt safe saying what they actually thought. It felt like consensus, but it was actually groupthink. Agreement in the meeting became backstabbing outside it.

We had frameworks for everything. Engagement surveys. Feedback models. Values statements. An ‘employee value proposition’ (whatever that was).

None of it tackled the root cause.

Capability over comfortability

Organisations are generally capable. They have skills, knowledge and experience in abundance. But they struggle to have honest conversations.

Most people are never taught how. We grow up in families and schools where conflict is avoided. Difficult things are left unsaid. Those habits follow us into the workplace. Leaders cancel one-to-ones. HR teams hide behind policy. Managers choose niceness over honesty.

This is a problem. Bad news is hidden until crisis point. Decisions are made on incomplete information. Restructures happen that an honest conversation 18 months earlier might have avoided. The best people leave because they know what good looks like (and this isn’t it).

Psychological safety isn’t about making people comfortable. It’s about making them capable. Speaking honestly. Saying when something isn’t good enough. Disagreeing with positive intent.

This needs sustained investment in human behaviour. It’s hard, slow, and messy. But it’s the only thing that works.

Psychological safety isn’t about making people comfortable. It’s about making them capable

HR’s real job

Trust is not a HR problem. It’s built in individual interactions that accumulate over time. It can’t be owned by one function.

HR’s role is to hold the mirror up.

Not to judge or fix. To reflect back what the organisation can’t see about itself. To highlight the gap between the culture described in the values statement and the one that actually exists in how leaders behave.

That takes courage. Most HR functions haven’t developed this. They’ve spent too long policing the organisation, and hiding behind process. It’s their identity. Stepping out of it feels difficult. 

But it’s what the organisation needs from HR. Fewer frameworks. Less meaningless ‘strategy’. Just a mirror.

Where I was right, and where I went wrong

Looking back at my C-suite career, the things I’m proudest of had little to do with HR.

The difficult conversations I pushed myself to have. The times I was vulnerable, and others did the same. The times I asked the silly question. And the times I asked for help, and trust deepened as a result.

The things I regret? 

The polished proposals I took to ExCo meetings that didn’t invite real debate. The meaningless people strategy that didn’t actually solve problems. The times I kept my mouth shut when I should have said something difficult.

HR’s role is to hold the mirror up. Not to judge or fix. To reflect back what the organisation can’t see about itself

The questions HR should be asking

Not: how do we improve our employee value proposition.

But: can the people at the top of this organisation tell each other the truth?

Not: how do we increase engagement scores.

But: are we building people’s capacity to have honest conversations that drive real performance?

Not: what does our people strategy say about psychological safety.

But: when did an executive last say something genuinely difficult, and what happened to them?

The C-suite taught me a lot. But most importantly, it taught me that it’s behaviour that dictates performance. It’s where trust is built. Where safety is nurtured. Where challenge is valued.

HR leaders have the opportunity to make true impact. They have access, relationships, influence. But they have to stop solving the wrong problems, and start asking harder questions.

Over to you.

Did you enjoy this article? Read: Five ways to fix your high performance problem