‘Which Assumptions No Longer Serve Us?’

In the months leading up to this edition of People + Strategy, a reoccurring question has been relentlessly drumming at the doors of the HR profession: What tools and assumptions for managing talent, developing leaders, choosing successors, managing unions, and thinking about compensation and incentives no longer serve us in today’s real-world context?

The answers may be different for every organization, but the patterns in the questions themselves seem to be useful across all organization types and sizes.

Alongside this question, the profession as a whole is witnessing the transition of an era. Recent retirements by giants in the field mean the baton in the profession is being passed from one generation to another. We hear from some of those retiring CHRO giants in this issue: Kevin Cox from GE (p. 8), Susan Podlogar from MetLife (p. 10), Katie Burke from HubSpot (p. 11), and Rhonda Morris from Chevron (p. 68).

Against this backdrop is an overarching question, often posed to us by my editorial board colleague Deb Bubb: “Which assumptions no longer serve us?” From the boardroom to the front lines, this question needs to be asked, and asked, and asked. In these pages, we put that question to a range of CHROs, board members, and thinkers in the field.

Risk has also entered the equation as a nontrivial variable. The very definitions of assessing risk have taken on new importance as global markets have become less stable and geopolitics remain fragile to the point of brittleness. Because of this growing presence of risk, we also interviewed the chief risk officer at BlackRock for his insights on risk assessment.

Passing the Baton

For the editorial board and for myself, this has not been an academic exercise. After five years in the role of executive editor, this is my last issue. I want to thank the editorial board members for their selfless, brilliant, humble, and vulnerable contributions to our discussions.
To Laura Morgan Roberts, Claudy Jules, Ernest Marshall, Judith Scimone, Deb Bubb, Brad Winn, Diane Gherson, Dawn Zier, Arnold Dhanesar, and Adam Bryant: You have been brilliant collaborators and friends. You have all lived up to the journal’s mission to be “usefully provocative” in service of the HR profession. I want to also acknowledge that it was Anna Tavis who brought me to the People + Strategy board in 2016. And when Marc Sokol took the editorial baton from Anna, he also role modeled how a good executive editor can help writers and thinkers evolve their pieces in collaboration.

So, where to from here? The SHRM Executive Network (EN) has taken shape over the past few years with a strong focus on fostering peer-to-peer senior HR discussions. Their mission intersects so closely with that of the journal that it’s only natural for them to take People + Strategy in house and root the journal in the community they’ve created.

I want to thank the many members of SHRM for their contributions, as well as the direct sponsorship of CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. in ensuring the journal was able to maintain its levels of thematic independence and editorial thought. I am optimistic about the journal’s future for honest discussions about the thorniest challenges we all face as leaders, working human beings, and organizations.  

Kind regards,

David Reimer, Executive Editor