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The CHRO as an Enterprise Strategist

Four shifts from Wharton’s CHRO Leadership Forum that signal how HR must elevate itself
By Stephen G. Patscot
November 2025
| min read

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What does it really take to lead HR at the enterprise level? In a landscape where more than half (57%) of S&P CHROs rose to the job internally, how can organizations accelerate the next generation of HR leaders?

These were a few of the questions answered during the first-ever Wharton CHRO Leadership Forum, which brought together more than 40 HR leaders for two days of discussion and learning hosted by Spencer Stuart’s CHRO Xcelerator Fellowship and Wharton Executive Education.

One theme was unmistakable: The best CHROs are not simply functional leaders — they are enterprise strategists who can balance agility with humanity, foresight with adaptability, and technology with trust.

That shift to enterprise strategist was one of four that emerged from our discussion at Wharton. Below we look at each one in depth.

Shift 1: From Functional Leader to Enterprise Strategist

Traditionally, HR leadership focused on people processes. Today, the role demands a panoramic view of how people, capital and capability drive enterprise performance. The post-war model for HR was built on predictability, something that doesn’t fit as well in a modern world defined by speed and ambiguity. The modern CHRO must link people strategy directly to business value, demonstrating how talent fuels growth, capital efficiency and organizational durability.

The top CHROs in recent years have been partners in value creation, earning credibility in the boardroom with HR initiatives that translate into business outcomes, growth, returns and long-term sustainability.

Questions for CHROs

  • Are our people investments directly connected to business outcomes?
  • How are we translating talent, leadership and culture into business growth metrics?
  • Are we articulating HR’s impact in language that resonates with the CEO, CFO and board?

Shift 2: From Predicting to Forward Planning: Resilience as a Discipline

In an age of constant disruption, geopolitical shifts, technological upheaval and changing workforce expectations, CHROs can no longer rely on steady states or past patterns. Rather than rigid plans, resilient organizations build readiness through “small bets” and scenario planning.

Resilience isn’t about predicting the next crisis; it’s about designing the organization to absorb, adapt and perform through whatever comes.

Questions for CHROs

  • Are you evolving your systems and processes faster than the external demands
  • Do we have talent and leadership pipelines built for multiple plausible futures?
  • Are we stress-testing culture, capability and agility at the same level we would do for financial or operational risk?

Shift 3: Connection as Competitive Advantage

Trust and connection (which some might refer to as inclusion) are not soft organizational skills, they are hardwired advantages. When uncertainty rises, the brain defaults to habit; leaders who pause, simplify and frame decisions positively build cultures of engagement and of psychological safety — an often mocked, but important concept. Indeed, researchers have found that a toxic culture is 10 times more predictive of attrition than compensation. For CHROs, building cultures that promote trust, synchrony and belonging is now a core performance lever.

Questions CHROs must ask

  • Are we moving fast enough, on the right things?
  • Is the HR function trusted? Are our leaders trusted at all levels?
  • How do we measure, build and sustain connection, trust and network strength at scale?
  • How do we create fluid and dynamic culture with a globally distributed workforce?

Shift 4: From Tech Adoption to Human-AI Integration

When it comes to AI, the two greatest challenges for organizations are talent and change management, not the technology itself. True adoption requires literacy, trust and governance, and HR leaders play a crucial role in helping their organizations navigate this dynamic environment. Reducing bias and protecting IP are leadership issues, not simply IT tasks. As organizations navigate this inflection point, CHROs must steward how humans and AI collaborate, ensuring technology augments human capability rather than replaces it.

Questions CHROs must ask

  • Do we understand the human impact of technology?
  • Do we have proper governance models to support rapid adoption
  • Do we understand how and where technology is reshaping roles, capabilities and organizational design?

What these shifts mean for CHROs

The shifts above aren’t incremental, they are structural and systemic. For CHROs to operate at the enterprise-strategist level demands a reset of mindset, metrics, relationships and capabilities.

  • Mindset: From service provider to strategic partner.
  • Metrics: From HR metrics (turnover, cost per hire) to enterprise metrics (growth in capability, retention of critical talent, agility indices).
  • Relationships: From functional peer to enterprise leadership team member and trusted advisor to the CEO and board.
  • Capabilities: From HR reactive execution to scenario design, value creation modeling, governance design, and the integration of technology and people.

Our sessions at the Wharton CHRO Leadership Forum underscored how HR’s future belongs to those who can bridge foresight and humanity. Becoming an enterprise strategist has thus become an imperative as HR leaders define how organizations grow, adapt and endure in the decade ahead. By embracing the big shifts happening today, CHROs, their teams and their organizations can lead through complexity, build sustainable advantages, shape the future of work and deliver outsized impact to their enterprises.

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