HBR's 10 Must Reads for HR Leaders Collection (5 Books)

People Before Strategy

A New Role for the CHRO. by Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey

CEOs KNOW THAT they depend on their company’s human resources to achieve success. Businesses don’t create value; people do. But if you peel back the layers at the vast majority of companies, you find CEOs who are distanced from and often dissatisfied with their chief human resources officers (CHROs) and the HR function in general. Research by McKinsey and the Conference Board consistently finds that CEOs worldwide see human capital as a top challenge, and they rank HR as only the eighth or ninth most important function in a company. That has to change.

It’s time for HR to make the same leap that the finance function has made in recent decades and ...