Productivity Blog

Why Change-Ready Culture is a CEO Issue (i4cp login required)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:20:00 GMT

I've spent more than 30 years in the change management field, working with frameworks such as Kotter's Eight Steps, ADKAR, and McKinsey's 7S framework. Each offers valuable guidance, but they all focus on the same core question: How do we execute a change initiative successfully?

That is no longer the most important question. Today, the critical issue is whether an organization's culture can absorb continuous change at the speed its strategy demands. When it cannot, execution slows, friction rises, talent burns out and competitors gain an advantage.

That question drove the research behind i4cp's Building a Future-Ready Organization with a Change-Ready Culture study, explored in a recent webinar with my colleague Katheryn Brekken, Ph.D. The findings point to a fundamental shift in how leaders should think about change.

From Managing Change to Building Capacity

Traditional change models are designed to manage discrete events. A change-ready culture is an organizational capability that enables companies to adapt repeatedly. This is not about a single transformation. It is about building a repeatable capacity to execute through disruption.

Drawing on eight years of research, four studies and input from more than 2,000 global participants, i4cp identified three core dimensions that determine whether culture accelerates or undermines change: adaptability, cohesion and agency.

Adaptability: Turning Learning into Action

Adaptability reflects how the organization learns, adjusts, and creates value as conditions shift. It includes practices such as personalized learning, knowledge sharing, and encouraging intelligent risk-taking.

In practical terms, adaptability determines how quickly a company can redeploy talent, integrate new technologies, respond to market shifts, and convert strategy into execution.

One thing I've noticed across the organizations we work with: adaptability gets a lot of attention these days in part due to the growth-mindset movement. Yet few build the systems needed to scale learning. Organizations talk about "fail fast" without building the structures that actually let people share and learn from those failures. i4cp research shows that the most effective teams are 3.5X likely to reward prudent risk taking than their lower-performing peers.

The Finnish-based mobile game company Supercell developed a learning ritual early in its history to celebrate when products fail to gain traction—marking those moments with champagne (The Team Network Effect, 2024). The company now operates a "Team Lab" for its gaming teams, incorporating team psychologists and stress testing collaboration under pressure. Most companies celebrate adaptability rhetorically, but those that can sustain continuous change build systems that allow learning to scale.

Cohesion: The Hidden Constraint on Change

Cohesion reflects the strength of trust, transparency and productive collaboration across the organization. This is where I see many organizations fall short, and it was one of the most striking findings in our research.

In i4cp's webinar, 57% of participants said change in their organization feels fatiguing, "there's been too much for too long." That is not simply a workload issue, it's a breakdown in cohesion. When cohesion erodes, the impact is immediate: slower decision-making, reduced discretionary effort, weaker cross-functional execution, and increased risk of talent loss. Without cohesion, every transformation carries an invisible tax.

Organizations that have thrived amid consecutive transformation actively invest in cohesion. They institutionalize practices such as rapidly integrating new hires, maintaining transparency, and ensuring teams remain energized and aligned.

Agency: Turning Strategy into Action

Agency refers to the ownership, autonomy, and decision-making authority employees have to execute change. It is often the weakest dimension and one I find most difficult for senior leaders to address.

Without agency, decision-making bottlenecks at the top. With it, organizations accelerate execution by empowering those closest to the work.

Pfizer's "pilot in command" model during the pandemic illustrates this principle. Cross-functional teams operated with a single accountable decision-maker, clear objectives, and direct alignment to enterprise goals, which compressed the distance between decision and action.

Why the Three Dimensions Must Work Together

Organizations that excel across all three dimensions are more likely to outperform their peers on key market metrics over a five-year period, according to i4cp data.

That result was not surprising. Companies combining adaptability, cohesion, and agency respond faster, execute with less friction, and sustain change without exhausting the organization.

A learning culture alone is insufficient if trust has eroded. High trust alone is insufficient if employees lack real authority to act. These three capabilities reinforce each other, and when one is missing, the entire system strains.

Consider a client currently navigating the shift from traditional manufacturer to software -as -a service. The company is investing in growth mindset training, revising performance management to recognize knowledge sharing, and encouraging leaders to model learning, rather than simply endorse it. That's adaptability executed well.

But adaptability alone is not enough. Weak cohesion accelerates change fatigue. Weak agency creates decisions bottleneck at the top. That is when transformation stalls and value capture slips.

Where Do You Start?

The first step is an honest diagnosis. Leaders cannot align around what needs to change without first knowing where the organization stands. Is adaptability strong, but agency weak? Is cohesion the factor quietly undermining every transformation initiative?

For CEOs and executive teams, this is not a culture exercise. It is an execution diagnostic.

To support that process, i4cp has developed a Change-Ready Culture Assessment. The assessment takes five to seven minutes, and scores results across all three dimensions. As a self-assessment, it reflects the respondent's perspective, but it's a meaningful starting point for the conversations that matter most.

The more important question is not whether more change is coming. It is whether your culture accelerates transformation or quietly taxes every strategic move.

Take the assessment here. To discuss results and research-based guidance on where to focus first, contact i4cp Consulting Services for a complimentary 30-minute debrief. In a market defined by disruption, the companies that prevail will not be those with the best change management teams. They will be the ones with the cultural capacity to keep adapting while competitors stall.

Decision Architecture: The Real Work of Strategic HR (i4cp login required)

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Ask most HR leaders what "future readiness" means and you'll hear familiar answers: adopting AI, building skills-based talent strategies, and modernizing the operating model.

All of that matters. But many organizations quietly assume that better tools and programs will naturally lead to better people decisions.

They don't.

The uncomfortable truth is this: most organizations don't struggle because they lack HR capability. They struggle because leaders make inconsistent, biased, or poorly informed people decisions—often despite having access to good data and sound recommendations.

Research by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) consistently shows that high-performance organizations differentiate themselves not by the sophistication of their HR programs, but by how clearly decision ownership and accountability for people outcomes are defined.

That was the core reframe offered by John Boudreau and Pete Ramstad in a recent i4cp conversation. Consider a typical HR mission statement: "HR will create a future-ready workforce." Now revise it: "Leaders, managers, and employees will create a future-ready workforce, supported by decision frameworks designed by HR."

That shift is not semantic. It's structural.

In the first version, HR owns outcomes. In the second, HR architects how decisions get made—while leaders remain accountable for the decisions themselves. This is the difference between delivering HR services and shaping enterprise performance.

Why Most Strategic HR Efforts Stall

Boudreau and Ramstad posed a question most HR strategies avoid: Does it matter how advanced your HR programs are if leaders still make poor people decisions?

The best analytics in the world don't matter if leaders ignore them. Succession plans collapse when executives override them based on gut feeling. Performance systems fail when managers lack the capability or accountability to act on what they see.

"Typically, HR's value has been measured by the quality of its programs. The more meaningful measure is the quality of decisions those programs enable when HR isn't in the room." - Pete Ramstad

Future-ready organizations understand this. Research from MIT's Center for Information Systems Research has repeatedly found that decision rights,not technology, are the hardest organizational capability to get right. Competitive advantage doesn't come from better dashboards. It comes from clarity about who owns decisions, why those decisions matter to the business, and how they are made.

In these organizations, leaders own talent decisions. HR designs the decision architecture—the data, guardrails, shared language, and expectations that make good decisions repeatable and bad ones harder to justify.

From Dashboards to Accountability

Most organizations still treat people metrics as HR-owned artifacts. HR collects the data, builds the reports, and presents the insights. Leaders review them, nod, and move on.

That isn't strategic HR.

"In high-performing organizations, people outcomes—retention, engagement, internal mobility, bench strength—are owned by line leaders and embedded directly into business scorecards. HR owns the integrity of the data and the decision frameworks, but leaders are accountable for results." - John Boudreau

This distinction matters because managers account for the majority of variance in employee experience and performance. Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace research attributes roughly 70% of engagement variability to managers—not HR programs. i4cp's Culture Fitness research reinforces this finding: high-performance organizations are significantly more likely to hold line leaders accountable for employee outcomes such as retention, development, and mobility.

It's a widely recognized principle in organizational leadership that employees don't leave companies—they leave managers. Yet most organizations still measure these outcomes as if HR controls them.

When accountability shifts, behavior follows.

The HRBP and CoE Inflection Point

This is where the work gets uncomfortable.

If HR's role is to architect better decisions, then HR business partners must be fluent in data, decision logic, and business trade-offs. Yet analytics and decision influence remain the single largest capability gap among HRBPs. i4cp's HR Capabilities in the New Era of Work research consistently identifies people analytics as the top development gap—creating a disconnect between what HR is expected to deliver and the capabilities many teams actually have.

That gap undermines everything else. HRBPs cannot teach leaders to make better people decisions using frameworks they don't fully understand. This also presents a challenge to traditional HR Centers of Excellence (CoEs), which must reframe their value proposition to include not only building HR processes that are valid and evidence-based, but also teaching the frameworks that underpin those processes. As Pete Ramstad said, "HR functional leaders in CoEs such as development, staffing, performance and remuneration are typically chosen and evaluated to have high personal expertise in their functional areas. The best organizations will also expect those leaders to be excellent at teaching others what they know."

i4cp research shows that organizations that prioritize strengthening the analytical capability and business acumen of HRBPs see measurable returns: better leadership decisions, higher trust, stronger engagement, and improved retention. But this requires moving beyond static competency models and event-based training toward real-world decision capability.

What This Means for CHROs

Future-ready CHROs are not focused on perfecting HR's internal machinery. They are focused on improving enterprise outcomes through the decisions others make.

This requires a shift:

From ownership to influence
From delivering answers to designing frameworks
From reporting metrics to building decision capability

Recent research from MIT Sloan Management Review underscores this shift, noting that sustainable advantage increasingly comes from organizations that design better decision environments—not just better individual decisions.

The real work of strategic HR is not making talent decisions. It is designing the conditions under which better talent decisions consistently emerge across the organization.

The Real Test

Pete Ramstad and John Boudreau suggest CHROs, Boards, CEOs and C-suite teams ask themselves one question:

If HR stepped out of the room tomorrow but left the decision frameworks, data access, and accountability structures in place, would your leaders still make good people decisions?

If the answer is no, the challenge isn't technology or structure. It's decision capability.

The HR organizations that endure disruption will not be those that control the most processes. They will be those that build decision-capable leaders at scale supported by clear frameworks, credible data, and disciplined accountability.

That is decision architecture.

That is strategic HR.

No Bandwidth for Change: Malaysia Airlines Rebuilds Culture & Cohesion (i4cp login required)

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:17:00 GMT

To turn the company's finances around, Malaysia Airlines' HR focused first on renovating its culture.

When Dato' Mohd Khalis joined Malaysia Airline Berhad in 2018 as Group Chief Human Capital Officer, the organization wasn't short on plans—it was short on belief.

The company had a new CEO. Captain Izham Ismail had no financial background when he was handpicked for the role a few months prior.

Years of disruption—financial strain, a government takeover and layoffs—had left the culture toxic and resistant to change. Employees were depleted, skeptical and stretched thin, and even well-designed transformation efforts were likely to stall under the weight of exhaustion.

To turn the company's fortunes around, Khalis knew a cultural transformation had to take place.

"There were a lot of things that needed to be fixed in the organization: processes, equipment, even integrity issues here and there," he said. "But you can't do that if you don't fix the morale of the people first. At that moment, they were a group of people who had given up hope."

While the board and new CEO focused on financials, Khalis focused on building cohesion and a workforce that could come together and commit to the changes that needed to be made for the good of the company.

Eight years later, 2025 marked the company's third consecutive year of net profit.

The challenge

Malaysia Airlines carried the weight of being a national symbol—and the scrutiny that comes with it. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, financial trouble had already become part of the airline's operating reality, including a near-bankruptcy moment that led to significant government ownership. The next two decades brought a cycle of turnaround plans and uneven results. A profitable year would be followed by steep losses; a new leader would arrive, launch a reset, and then watch momentum stall in the face of cost pressure, competition, and political complexity.

Then, in 2014, Malaysia Airlines suffered two major disasters: the disappearance of MH370 and the downing of MH17. The airline was uniquely vulnerable in the aftermath because it was already battling financial difficulties. Public faith and internal morale took another direct hit at the same time the business was fighting to survive.

In the wake of those tragedies, the organization was not only grieving—it was destabilized. The share price dropped sharply, and doubts about the airline's survival multiplied. Structural pressures mounted: high operating costs, fuel volatility, intense competition, political interference and powerful unions.

In 2015, the government nationalized the airline, buying out remaining minority shares and rebranding it as Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB). The reset came with sweeping internal consequences. The Malaysia Airlines Employees Union (MASEU)—a major force inside the company—was disbanded. The restructuring included a high-profile CEO retrenchment and nearly one-third of the workforce cut—about 6,000 jobs.

By the time Khalis arrived, he walked into the residue of all of it:

A company that had been through "many transformations… and nothing worked."
A workforce dealing with transformation fatigue and cynicism—made worse by feeling publicly condemned while watching the government inject money into the carrier.
Scarcity so extreme it became symbolic: Khalis recalled buying his own ream of paper to print.

The turnaround: restore cohesion before demanding change

Instead of leading with structural change, HR focused on rebuilding the emotional and cultural prerequisites for transformation. An exhausted workforce doesn't adopt new ways of working; it protects itself.

In Malaysia Airlines' case, the early work wasn't about "rolling out agility." It was about restoring enough belief, identity, and capability for employees to participate in a turnaround rather than brace against it.

Foster gratitude

One of Khalis' earliest interventions was unconventional: he brought in a religious teacher to spend time with employees. While that was not unusual in the region, his instructions were different. He asked the teacher not to preach, but to listen, steady emotions, and reset perspective by encouraging reflection on gratitude.

"In many religions, the structure of the prayer is that before you ask anything from God, you praise and count your blessings," Khalis said. First, you thank Him, then you ask."

He explicitly instructed the teacher to be inclusive, engaging employees across backgrounds and beliefs. The intent was not religion; it was morale.

Gratitude became a foundation for cultural renewal. In demoralized organizations, employees often anchor on what has been lost—security, pride, colleagues, and certainty. Gratitude provided a counterweight: a reminder that employment still existed for many, that the airline still operated, and that survival was not guaranteed.

Khalis' logic was practical. When people are consumed by bitterness or fear, they conserve energy and disengage. When they can reconnect to what remains—and to the possibility of rebuilding—they are more willing to commit effort. Gratitude created the conditions for commitment.

Build pride

After stabilizing the emotional temperature, HR turned to identity.

Khalis began opening town halls with the national anthem. The point wasn't ceremony; it was reconnection. Many employees felt publicly condemned and privately defeated. The anthem reminded them of the meaning of serving as the national carrier.

"It reminded them you're part of the nation. That's why they own you. That's what differentiates you from other airlines like AsiaAir," Khalis said. "Your responsibilities go beyond just P&L. Suddenly they felt that purpose. That's why we are here."

HR reinforced that message with a company song, created in partnership with a well-known songwriter--with no budget. The simplicity mattered. The airline's workforce included strong subcultures and status boundaries; a shared song cut across role, rank, and function.

Pride served a second purpose: it shifted the perception that change was being done to& employees. Instead, the turnaround became something employees were doing for the airline. That shift—from compliance to ownership—is critical in organizations that have seen critical transformations fail before and stopped believing.

Develop people

Once emotional capacity and shared purpose began to return, HR focused on capability.

Employees were trained in more effective ways of working, including Lean- and Agile-style approaches and cross-functional problem-solving. The goal was to convert renewed energy into execution: clearer priorities, faster improvement cycles, stronger collaboration, and less reliance on heroics.

Development also reduced the perceived risk of change. In depleted environments, change feels like chaos. Capability turns change into a set of learnable practices.

The sequence—gratitude, pride, then development—helped convert a worn-down workforce into one capable of absorbing new expectations. It did not eliminate the difficulty of transformation, but it rebuilt the capacity required to attempt it without collapsing under fatigue.

The result

The turnaround work began showing up first in operational and people metrics—engagement, service quality, reliability—and later in financial performance.

As execution improved, leadership was able to move from "stabilization" language to a growth plan with measurable financial ambition.

Operational and workforce indicators strengthened
People engagement rose sharply from the earlier baseline to the later measurement period.
Customer satisfaction improved and stayed elevated.
Reliability improved (notably on-time performance).
Net promoter score climbed from a low baseline to a strong positive level.

In December 2025, the company announced a five-year plan marking a shift from survival to performance, with a goal of nearly doubling revenue to more than RM24 billion by 2030.

Conclusion: Prepare the way for transformation

Malaysia Airlines' experience underscores a critical lessons; transformation often fails before implementation because the organization is running on empty. Attempting change without rebuilding emotional bandwidth can backfire. It amplifies fatigue, deepens cynicism, and hardens resistance.

The more effective sequence is the one HR pursued here. Before a strategy reset can succeed, the culture must be restored. Only then can a workforce confidently and effectively execute new strategies to& transform and strengthen the company's future.

4 Priorities for Future of Work Leaders in 2026 (i4cp login required)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:00:00 GMT

For Future of Work leaders, 2026 marks a shift from experimentation to execution. The question is no longer whether work will change—but how quickly organizations can redesign work, workforce models, and organizational structures to keep pace with AI-driven disruption.

As AI and automation become embedded across the enterprise, Future of Work leaders are increasingly focused on simplifying workflows, unlocking capacity, and enabling more meaningful work. Yet, despite unprecedented investment in AI, productivity gains remain uneven—reviving a familiar tension between technological potential and organizational readiness.

The challenge ahead is not simply deploying new tools, but redesigning the architecture of work itself.

From Productivity Promises to Work Redesign

AI has fueled significant economic growth and corporate investment, but the data on productivity remains mixed. This dynamic echoes the "productivity paradox" of earlier technology waves, where organizations invested heavily before fully realizing gains.

Future of Work leaders see this moment as an opportunity—and a warning. A narrow focus on productivity alone risks sidelining skills development, engagement, and long-term capability. Instead, leading organizations are shifting attention to how work is designed, distributed, and supported across human and digital contributors.

2026 Future of Work Priorities:

Members of i4cp's Future of Work Board identified four priorities that define the function's agenda for 2026.

Redesigning work due to AI (80%)

Redesigning work is the top priority by a wide margin. Rather than focusing solely on job replacement, organizations are increasingly deconstructing roles into tasks to identify opportunities for augmentation.

Progressive organizations involve employees directly in this process, fostering psychological safety while uncovering high-impact automation opportunities. This co-creation approach helps reduce fear of displacement and accelerates adoption by aligning transformation with frontline realities.

The result is work that is more modular, adaptable, and responsive to change.
Reimagining enterprise organization design (70%)

Rigid, job-based hierarchies are increasingly seen as barriers to agility. High-performing organizations are moving toward project- and task-based models that enable talent and capabilities to flow across the enterprise.

Internal talent marketplaces are becoming a critical enabler of this shift, allowing organizations to match skills to work dynamically. While the technology exists, mindset remains the primary obstacle—leaders must move beyond the "job mentality" and embrace fluid deployment of talent.
Helping the organization become skills-centric (70%)

Skills are rapidly becoming the connective tissue of modern organizations. Future-ready enterprises are significantly more effective at cataloging current skills, forecasting future needs, identifying gaps, and offering targeted upskilling opportunities.

When work is viewed through a skills lens, organizations can respond more quickly to disruption, redeploy talent more effectively, and make better decisions about where to automate versus invest in human capability.

This shift thrives in learning-centered, inclusive, and collaborative cultures—making skills-centricity as much a cultural transformation as a technical one.
Improving talent mobility (50%)

Talent mobility continues to gain traction as a driver of agility and engagement. Formal mobility programs enable organizations to adapt faster, improve collaboration, and retain critical talent by offering meaningful career movement.

High-performing organizations are far more likely to emphasize mobility, yet relatively few have formalized programs. Building a culture where movement is expected—and supported—remains a defining opportunity for Future of Work leaders.

2026 Future of Work Predictions:

Looking ahead, Future of Work leaders shared several predictions that underscore the function's growing strategic influence.

Strategic workforce planning becomes a boardroom imperative.
Workforce planning will evolve into a continuous, scenario-based discipline that integrates human and digital talent decisions at the highest levels.
AI literacy becomes a core enterprise skill.
AI fluency will be treated as a new form of business acumen, embedded into performance expectations and leadership development.
Productivity metrics are redefined around capacity creation.
Organizations will move beyond output-based metrics toward measures that assess how effectively human and digital systems expand capacity to learn, adapt, and innovate.
The human operating system gets an upgrade.
As cognitive load becomes a limiting factor, organizations will increasingly design work to optimize attention, energy, and well-being—treating human capacity as a strategic asset.

In 2026, Future of Work leaders will be counted on to design adaptive architectures that determine how work gets done, who does it, and how quickly organizations can respond to change.

Their role sits at the intersection of strategy, technology, and culture—helping organizations move from static structures to living systems of work. The companies that thrive will be those that treat work as something to be continuously redesigned, not preserved.

To read the full perspectives of CHROs and senior HR leaders who serve on one of i4cp's executive Boards, download i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report.

What Retail CHROs are Doing About AI, Skills, and the Future of Work (i4cp login required)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:00:00 GMT

I recently moderated a CHRO panel in Seattle featuring leaders from Costco, Starbucks, and Nordstrom, three iconic retailers with very different models, but a shared reality: their workforce is overwhelmingly frontline, customer-facing, and human-centered by design.

The conversation was framed around i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions research, specifically these four overall market predictions:

1. Companies increasingly use AI-driven layoffs as a strategic lever

2. Skills become the new operating system of work

3. Digital work twins won't seem like science fiction

4. Workforce design becomes more fluid and adaptive

But what stood out was how consistently the CHROs pointed to a deeper truth: the future of work isn't being driven just by tech headlines, but is being built through execution discipline, governance, and culture.

AI hasn't driven layoffs in retail—but it is beginning to reshape work in the sector

One of our most debated predictions is that companies will increasingly use AI-driven layoffs as a strategic lever. While many large enterprises are now more openly talking about workforce reduction as a deliberate outcome of AI adoption, none of the panelists' organizations have used AI to eliminate roles. Workforce reductions, where they occurred, were driven by strategy shifts or organizational simplification, not AI integration. That said, AI is beginning to change how work gets done in high-volume, hourly workforce environments.

With over 50 case studies published since 2024, i4cp offers the largest library of real-life stories on AI in HR—clear, practical, and easy to apply.

At Nordstrom, a virtual agent now handles high-volume, low-complexity service tasks like order status and returns. As CHRO Lisa Price shared, the goal is twofold: reduce customer friction and free up human agents for nuanced interactions. Starbucks echoed this at scale. Tools like Green Dot Assist help store partners access information in the flow of work, designed to enable more human connection, not replace it. As Starbucks CHRO Sara Kelly put it, "Humans own the work. AI is enhancing the work." Across all three companies, AI is viewed as a productivity multiplier, not a headcount reducer.

Skills matter but pragmatism rules

One of the predictions that resonated with the entire group was i4cp's prediction that skills will become the operating system of work. Our recent study on Skills-Based Talent Practices found that only 12% of large organizations report systematic effort and sustained investment in skills-based practices, while 44% remain in the planning or pilot stage. The CHROs agreed: this is a journey, not a checkbox.

At Costco, the priority is leadership capability, especially with an aging workforce and expansion underway. Brenda Weber shared that their new Leadership Academy uses simulations designed for operational environments to develop frontline managers. Nordstrom is co-creating shared skills profiles with other employers and focusing internally on five critical career pathways where demand is highest. Starbucks is cataloging skills role by role while aiming to fill 90% of retail leadership positions internally within three years. AI is already supporting high-volume hiring, especially where prior experience isn't required. The common thread? No one is "boiling the ocean." Skills strategies are anchored in clear needs and operational realities.

Explore i4cp's AI Case Studies in Hiring.

Digital work twins? Not so fast

The prediction that generated the most unease among our panel was that digital work twins, or AI tools that can own tasks end-to-end and simulate or execute work on someone's behalf, will no longer sound like science fiction.

All three CHROs expressed deep hesitation, especially for judgment-driven, people-centric roles. As Brenda Weber of Costco put it, "If it misses the nuance and gives the wrong advice, I don't get to blame my twin." Still, AI is being used for preparation and simulation, from interview screening to board Q&A rehearsal. The line is clear: AI can assist, but accountability stays with the human.

An adaptive workforce is about governance, not gigs

Our fourth prediction focuses on fluid, modular, adaptive workforce design. In practice, the panel made clear that this looks far less like an internal gig economy and far more like tight prioritization, clear governance, and faster decision-making.

Starbucks shared perhaps the most explicit example, describing how they reduced more than a thousand active initiatives down to a single-page set of priorities, supported by weekly governance forums and CEO-level oversight. No project gets resourced without passing through that system. Nordstrom is testing "micro-squads" in tech—small, AI-augmented teams to accelerate development. Costco, meanwhile, leans on informal flexibility: managers shift or share talent based on capability rather than title. Different approaches, same principle: agility comes from clarity, not chaos.

Culture is the force multiplier

One theme ran through every topic—AI, skills, org design, compensation: culture. Each CHRO emphasized that values, leadership behavior, and trust are what enable real change. Sara Kelly put it simply: "If you stay true to your mission and values, you can navigate a lot of change. When companies don't, that's when it breaks." This echoes our extensive research on culture: technology may accelerate change, but culture determines whether it sticks.

Future readiness hinges on a change-ready culture. Read i4cp's latest research.

Bold leadership in a brave new world

For large retailers, and other industries with hourly, customer-facing workforces, the future of work isn't being driven by bold declarations or the latest buzz. It's being methodically built through prioritization, discipline, governance, skill-building, and values-led leadership. It's being built by bold leaders like these. In organizations where the human experience is the product, that bold leadership may be the most important success factor!

4 Priorities for Total Rewards Leaders in 2026 (i4cp login required)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:00:00 GMT

For Total Rewards leaders, 2026 arrives amid intensifying pressure from nearly every direction. Rising healthcare costs, moderating pay growth, regulatory demands for transparency, and shifting workforce expectations are forcing organizations to rethink how rewards are designed, delivered, and justified.

In this environment, "competitive" is no longer enough. Reward strategies must be more precise, more personalized, and more tightly aligned to business and workforce needs than ever before.

"The next era of total rewards blends human judgment with machine intelligence. Our challenge isn't replacing decisions—it's amplifying them with data and integrity."

— Nick Larson, VP of Compensation, T-Mobile

The Expanding Scope of Total Rewards

Total rewards has evolved well beyond salary and standard benefits. Today's rewards portfolio includes pay, benefits, well-being, flexibility, recognition, and career opportunity—elements that collectively shape attraction, engagement, and retention.

At the same time, organizations face real constraints. Core benefits can represent a significant percentage of total compensation, while merit increases have moderated from post-pandemic highs. Employees increasingly expect personalized reward experiences, yet most organizations still rely on one-size-fits-all designs.

This tension defines the challenge for Total Rewards leaders in 2026: delivering meaningful value while managing cost, complexity, and scrutiny.

2026 Total Rewards Priorities:

Members of i4cp's Total Rewards Leader Board identified four priorities shaping the function's agenda for the coming year.

Evaluating healthcare coverage to reflect rising costs (88%)

Healthcare costs continue to climb, making this the most urgent priority for Total Rewards leaders. Organizations are re-evaluating plan design, network strategies, and incentives to manage cost while supporting employee well-being.

For many, this evaluation is no longer just a financial exercise. Health benefits strategy is increasingly linked to talent attraction, retention, and employer brand—requiring closer alignment between rewards, workforce strategy, and organizational values.
Implementing AI technology or services (50%)

AI represents a significant opportunity for Total Rewards functions, but adoption remains early-stage. While interest is high, relatively few organizations are using AI for core compensation planning or rewards design today.

The promise lies in analytics and decision support: forecasting cost impacts, identifying equity issues, personalizing reward recommendations, and modeling different reward scenarios. As expectations rise, AI-enabled capabilities will increasingly differentiate rewards teams that move from administration to strategic value creation.
Restructuring the total rewards function to align with business needs (50%)

As expectations expand, many organizations are rethinking how the Total Rewards function is structured. New capabilities—analytics, technology enablement, data governance, and design thinking—are becoming essential.

In some organizations, rewards teams are being more closely integrated with HR strategy or people analytics to improve responsiveness and insight. This evolution reflects a broader expectation: Total Rewards must operate as a proactive, business-aligned function rather than a standalone silo.
Aligning rewards to organizational objectives (50%)

Aligning rewards to strategy delivers the highest impact. Rather than benchmarking solely against peers, leading organizations are asking a more strategic question: what reward investments will drive the behaviors and outcomes we need?

This might include incentives tied to innovation, recognition that reinforces collaboration, or reward structures that support internal mobility and skill development. The focus shifts from matching the market to shaping performance.

2026 Total Rewards Predictions:

Looking ahead, Total Rewards leaders shared several predictions that reflect how the function will continue to evolve.

Personalized, data-driven rewards accelerate.
One-size-fits-all designs will give way to more tailored experiences enabled by analytics, segmentation, and choice.
AI shifts rewards from reactive to proactive.
Advanced modeling and decision support will allow rewards teams to forecast impact, test scenarios, and guide strategy in real time.
Greater scrutiny on ROI and alignment.
Reward investments will increasingly be evaluated on their contribution to retention, productivity, mobility, and business performance—not just competitiveness.
Demographic and career shifts reshape rewards models.
Longer careers, multi-generational workforces, and hybrid models will require more flexible, modular reward architectures.

In 2026, Total Rewards leaders will be expected to act as strategists—balancing cost discipline with meaningful employee value, and aligning rewards investments with organizational priorities.

Those who succeed will move beyond benchmarking to build reward systems that are dynamic, data-informed, and closely tied to how the organization creates value. In an increasingly complex talent landscape, the ability to design rewards that support agility, equity, and performance will be a defining capability.

To read the full perspectives of CHROs and senior HR leaders who serve on one of i4cp's executive Boards, download i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report.

4 Priorities for People Analytics Leaders in 2026 (i4cp login required)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:00:00 GMT

For People Analytics leaders, 2026 is about moving beyond insight to influence.

As organizations navigate persistent uncertainty—economic volatility, regulatory change, and rapid advances in AI—intuition alone is no longer sufficient. When the past is an unreliable guide to the future, leaders increasingly turn to data to reduce uncertainty, test assumptions, and guide action.

This shift has elevated People Analytics from a reporting function to a strategic capability. High-performing organizations are far more likely to leverage people analytics as a core business discipline—one that informs workforce decisions, strengthens culture, and drives measurable performance outcomes.

Analytics in an Age of Uncertainty

People Analytics helps organizations move beyond anecdotes and gut instinct by providing evidence-based insight into how work gets done, where risks exist, and what actions will matter most.

Mature analytics functions no longer focus solely on describing what happened. Instead, they predict and prescribe—modeling outcomes such as attrition risk, productivity trends, leadership readiness, and future skill gaps. In doing so, they enable leaders to align workforce strategy directly with business goals.

Just as importantly, analytics plays a critical role in fairness and trust. By uncovering patterns in hiring, promotion, pay, and experience data, organizations can identify bias, improve inclusion, and design interventions that support engagement and well-being.

"We are living through a tornado of change in organizations. When things change, our old practices often don't work as well—or, we're worried that they won't work as well. So, we change them—often on pretty shaky evidence. But most of the time when we do this, we are looking at a symptom—not at the root cause."

— Alexis Fink, Chair of i4cp's People Analytics Board and former Meta VP, People Analytics & Workforce Strategy

2026 People Analytics Priorities:

Members of i4cp's People Analytics Leader Board identified four priorities shaping the function's agenda for 2026.

Connecting people analytics to business strategy (63%)

The most effective analytics work begins not with data, but with the business. Leading People Analytics teams start by understanding the strategic question at hand—whether it involves growth, innovation, retention, or productivity—and then design analyses that illuminate barriers and opportunities.

Rather than proving assumptions right, high-performing teams adopt a scientific mindset, rigorously testing hypotheses and exploring alternative explanations. This approach helps leaders avoid costly missteps and focus on the levers that truly drive performance.
Workforce planning and scenario modeling (63%)

In an increasingly volatile environment, workforce planning and scenario modeling have become essential. While fewer than one-third of organizations rate their workforce planning as highly effective, high-performance organizations are nearly three times more likely to use scenario modeling to guide decisions.

By integrating skills data, demographics, performance metrics, and external labor trends, People Analytics leaders enable organizations to anticipate change rather than react to it. Yet many analytics teams remain only loosely integrated with workforce planning—highlighting a critical opportunity for greater strategic alignment.
Implementing AI technology or services (50%)

AI is accelerating the evolution of People Analytics from retrospective reporting to real-time insight. Organizations are using AI to forecast turnover, identify emerging skill gaps, and simulate workforce scenarios with greater speed and scale.

Generative AI, in particular, is making analytics more accessible—allowing leaders to ask questions in natural language and receive evidence-backed explanations and recommendations. The value lies not in replacing human judgment, but in augmenting it.

At the same time, adoption must be thoughtful. Data quality, transparency, privacy, and bias remain central concerns. Trust will be a defining differentiator for analytics functions in 2026.
Demonstrating the impact and ROI of talent initiatives (50%)

As scrutiny increases, People Analytics leaders are under pressure to demonstrate how talent programs translate into business value. This means linking workforce metrics to financial and operational outcomes—such as showing how engagement predicts customer satisfaction or how development investments reduce attrition.

The most effective teams involve business leaders early, define success in business terms, and collaborate closely with finance, strategy, and operations. By framing insights around risk, ROI, and performance, analytics becomes a driver of decision-making rather than a reporting exercise.

2026 People Analytics Predictions:

Looking ahead, People Analytics leaders shared several predictions that signal the function's continued evolution.

AI becomes the co-pilot of workforce intelligence.
Advanced analytics and AI will increasingly interpret data, simulate outcomes, and recommend actions—elevating the strategic influence of analytics teams.
From people analytics to organizational intelligence.
Boundaries between HR, finance, operations, and customer data will blur, creating a more holistic view of how people, performance, and outcomes connect.
Ethical analytics becomes a boardroom issue.
Transparency, governance, and explainability will move from technical concerns to executive priorities as organizations face greater scrutiny.
Scenario intelligence drives agility.
Continuous scenario modeling will enable leaders to stress-test strategies and turn volatility into a competitive advantage.

In 2026, People Analytics leaders will increasingly serve as strategic foresight engines—helping organizations see around corners, quantify uncertainty, and make smarter decisions faster.

Those who succeed will move beyond dashboards to deliver clarity, confidence, and actionable intelligence. As workforce decisions grow more complex, the ability to translate data into insight—and insight into action—will define the next generation of analytics leadership.

To read the full perspectives of CHROs and senior HR leaders who serve on one of i4cp's executive Boards, download i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report.

Future-Ready Workers are M-Shaped (i4cp login required)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Alexis Fink, Ph.D., who has led People Analytics and workforce strategy at Meta, Microsoft, and Intel, and now chairs the i4cp People Analytics Board-recently joined the i4cp community for a Next Practices Weekly session, AI at the Core: From Bolt-On to Built-In.

She framed the discussion with a powerful reminder:

"The future belongs to people who can combine multiple peaks of expertise-and underpin them with curiosity and courage."

Drawing on her background in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, she highlighted a pivotal shift in the future of work: the rise of the M-shaped employee, individuals who bring multiple areas of deep expertise, connected by the human capabilities that turn knowledge into impact.

For years, the "T-shaped" employee-depth in one discipline, with enough breadth to collaborate across others-was the model of choice. That framework worked in a slower, more predictable world.

But today, disruption demands more. Organizations can no longer rely on single-specialty experts or even T-shaped generalists. Instead, the future of work calls for M-shaped employees-individuals who bring multiple areas of deep expertise (the uprights of the "M"), connected by the breadth and meta-skills needed to integrate them.

These employees aren't simply versatile generalists; they are multi-specialists who bridge disciplines, fuel innovation, and reflect the larger shift toward skills-based organizations, where value comes from adaptable talent ecosystems rather than rigid job descriptions.

Beyond Expertise: The Human Edge

Having multiple specialties is only part of the story. What sets M-shaped employees apart is their ability to activate those specialties through enduring human capabilities, the human edge that enables people to learn quickly, collaborate effectively, and thrive in uncertainty.

Fink points to four of these capabilities as essential:

Curiosity and experimentation - Asking better questions, testing new ideas, and reframing problems.
Courage and resilience - Embracing ambiguity, bouncing back from setbacks, and moving forward stronger.
Influence and collaboration - Turning expertise into impact by aligning others and shaping decisions.
Learning agility and pattern recognition - Spotting connections across domains and adapting faster than the pace of disruption.

These are the qualities that transform multi-specialists into true change agents.

The Challenge: Building the Edge for an AI Future

The rise in the number of M-shaped employees is not about piling on additional specialties. It is about cultivating curiosity, courage, collaboration, and agility that allow expertise to scale across changing environments.

HR and talent leaders have a pivotal role to play in shaping conditions where these human capabilities can thrive. Practical steps include:

Make curiosity routine. Dedicate time for exploration, encourage experimentation, and reward questions that spark new thinking.
Normalize resilience. Create psychological safety, ask leaders to share failure stories, and frame setbacks as growth moments.
Elevate collaboration. Train managers in storytelling with data, reward cross-silo achievements, and measure influence as well as outcomes.
Accelerate agility. Rotate employees across functions, use AI-driven skill maps to expand growth paths, and recognize those who connect the dots across disciplines.

When these practices are woven into performance reviews, leadership development, and recognition systems, they send a clear message: technical expertise matters, but what creates long-term value is how employees apply that expertise across contexts.

The Path Ahead

As Fink illustrated, the challenge is clear: build systems and cultures that make these capabilities visible, valued, and rewarded-because the future will belong to those who bring them to life.

By embedding them into daily work, leadership expectations, and cultural rituals, organizations can ensure their workforce is not just multi-skilled but future-ready, able to adapt, innovate, and thrive in an AI-driven world.

Watch the 4-minute video clip with more commentary from Alexis.

4 Priorities for Talent Acquisition Leaders in 2026 (i4cp login required)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:00:00 GMT

For Talent Acquisition leaders, 2026 represents a fundamental shift in role and relevance. As hiring slows across many industries and AI reshapes how work gets done, TA functions are moving away from high-volume recruiting toward higher-value workforce strategy.

The future TA organization will likely manage fewer requisitions—but it will play a far more influential role in skills mapping, internal mobility, workforce planning, and AI governance. This evolution is not a retrenchment. It is a strategic recalibration.

"Now more than ever, leaders recognize that filling open roles is just the beginning. The real opportunity is taking a strategic view of the long-term talent pipeline—identifying critical roles, defining the skills that drive success, and crafting meaningful careers that inspire people to stay and grow."

— Chelle Wingeleth, VP Talent Acquisition, Edwards Lifesciences

A Changing Hiring Landscape

Hiring activity has softened globally, driven by economic uncertainty, cost pressures, and changing business models. One of the most visible impacts has been a slowdown in early-career hiring, as organizations experiment with AI-enabled productivity models that rely on smaller, more experienced, and AI-augmented teams.

While AI is often cited as the cause, TA leaders recognize that multiple forces are at work. Regardless of the driver, the implication is clear: talent acquisition can no longer be defined solely by external hiring volume. Instead, its value lies in how effectively it helps organizations identify, develop, and deploy talent—wherever that talent resides.

2026 Talent Acquisition Priorities:

Members of i4cp's Talent Acquisition Leader Board identified four priorities shaping the function in 2026.

Implementing AI technology or services (65%)

AI remains the top priority for Talent Acquisition leaders—and TA continues to be the most advanced HR function in adopting AI. Yet maturity varies widely.

Many organizations still use AI for basic tasks such as drafting job descriptions or scheduling interviews. The greatest returns, however, are coming from more strategic applications: skills matching, personalized candidate engagement, predictive sourcing, and improved decision support.

As AI adoption accelerates, TA leaders must also focus on governance—ensuring fairness, transparency, and compliance as AI becomes embedded in hiring workflows.
Improving internal talent mobility (61%)

Internal mobility has become a critical lever as external hiring slows. TA leaders increasingly recognize that redeploying internal talent enables faster response to business needs, strengthens engagement, and reduces time-to-fill and hiring costs.

Formal mobility programs also help early-career talent gain exposure across the organization—an important counterbalance as AI reshapes entry-level work. High-performing organizations are significantly more likely to emphasize mobility, yet relatively few have fully formalized programs, creating opportunity for differentiation.
Restructuring the TA function to align with evolving business needs (48%)

As priorities shift, TA operating models are changing. Many organizations are moving toward centralized or hub-and-spoke structures, integrating TA more closely with talent management, learning, and workforce planning.

AI adoption, budget pressure, and skills-based hiring are accelerating this transformation. In 2026, TA functions will increasingly segment work—using AI-first workflows for high-volume hiring and human-led approaches for complex, strategic roles.
Leveraging data analytics to guide recruitment decisions (43%)

Talent Acquisition is becoming more data-driven—but progress remains uneven. Leading organizations are embedding analytics into forecasting, skills gap identification, sourcing optimization, and quality-of-hire measurement.

Rather than focusing solely on time-to-fill or cost-per-hire, TA leaders are expanding their metrics to include internal fill rates, mobility velocity, hiring scalability, and downstream business impact. Analytics is no longer just a reporting tool—it is foundational to strategic decision-making.

2026 Talent Acquisition Predictions:

Looking ahead, TA leaders shared several predictions that reflect the function's ongoing evolution.

TA becomes AI-first and more data-driven.
Recruiting workflows will increasingly be designed around automation, analytics, and AI-enabled decision support—freeing human recruiters to focus on strategy and relationship-driven work.
The shift toward skills-first and mobility-enabled hiring accelerates.
TA will work more closely with learning, workforce planning, and internal marketplaces to deploy talent based on skills and adaptability rather than job history alone.
Talent attraction becomes more authentic and peer-driven.
Employer branding will rely less on polished messaging and more on employee voices, creator-led content, and trust-based engagement.
TA evolves into a strategic business partner.
The function's success will be measured not by requisitions filled, but by how effectively it supports workforce agility, internal deployment, and future readiness.

In 2026, Talent Acquisition will no longer be defined as a staffing service. It will be a workforce strategy partner—shaping how organizations build, access, and deploy talent at pace.

TA leaders who embrace this shift will help their organizations navigate uncertainty with greater agility, insight, and confidence. Those who cling to transactional models risk being left behind as the architecture of work continues to evolve.

To read the rest of the predictions from i4cp's other boards, download i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report.

4 Priorities for Chief Learning & Talent Officers in 2026 (i4cp login required)

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:00:00 GMT

For Chief Learning & Talent Officers, 2026 will be defined by one central question: how quickly can the workforce adapt?

As organizations confront accelerating AI adoption, shifting workforce expectations, and persistent economic uncertainty, learning has moved from a support function to a strategic enabler. The ability to build skills at speed—and apply them effectively—has become a defining advantage for high-performing organizations.

i4cp's research makes this connection clear. High-performance organizations are far more likely to have strong learning cultures, and nearly three times as likely to express high confidence in their workforce's skills readiness. In contrast, organizations that struggle to adapt often find themselves constrained by outdated skills, rigid development models, and leadership pipelines that can't keep pace with change.

Learning Culture as a Competitive Advantage

There is one cultural attribute that consistently predicts an organization's ability to navigate disruption: a culture of learning.

Learning cultures don't just encourage development—they normalize it. In these environments, acquiring new skills, sharing knowledge, and experimenting with new ways of working are embedded in daily behavior. i4cp research shows that high-performance organizations are four times more likely than low performers to say they have a strong learning culture, underscoring its role as a performance multiplier.

As AI reshapes work, the ability to continuously reskill and redeploy talent has become essential. For CLTOs, this means shifting from episodic programs to learning systems that are adaptive, personalized, and deeply integrated with the business.

"Championing a culture of high performance is a catalyst for success. By integrating AI and automation into our talent systems, we can simplify complex processes, sharpen decision-making, and help employees see how their work drives meaningful outcomes."

— Amber Alexander, VP, Global Talent Management, Medtronic

2026 CLTO Priorities:

Members of i4cp's Chief Learning & Talent Officer Board identified four priorities that will shape the function in 2026.

Upskilling the organization's workforce (59%)

Upskilling remains the top priority for CLTOs—and increasingly, it starts with AI.

Organizations with high confidence in their workforce's skills readiness are significantly more effective at offering upskilling opportunities. They are more likely to have cataloged workforce skills, identified gaps, and determined which tasks are best performed by humans versus AI.

Despite this, most organizations acknowledge that forecasting future skills remains difficult. This creates an imperative for learning leaders to pair skills data with experimentation—using AI to identify emerging needs while designing development experiences that build both technical and human capabilities.
Leadership development (54%)

Leadership development continues to demand attention, but the challenge is growing. Leadership pipelines are shrinking as fewer employees seek traditional leadership roles, even as the demands of leadership increase.

Today's leaders must manage distributed teams, collaborate across boundaries, and increasingly, lead alongside AI-enabled coworkers. i4cp research shows that leaders in high-performance organizations are far more effective at managing distributed work, largely because they build the skills required to adapt leadership behaviors to context.

CLTOs are responding by rethinking leadership development—moving toward more experiential, scenario-based learning, leveraging AI for coaching and mentoring, and involving senior leaders more directly as teachers and sponsors.
Increasing manager effectiveness (46%)

The effectiveness of people managers remains a persistent concern. Many first-time managers receive little preparation before stepping into the role, and a majority of employees rate overall management quality as average or worse.

High-performing organizations address this by emphasizing not just what results are achieved, but how they are achieved. They focus on developing managers who can coach, develop talent, support mobility, and sustain engagement—capabilities that are especially critical in AI-enabled and hybrid environments.

For CLTOs, improving manager effectiveness means embedding development into the flow of work rather than relying solely on formal programs.
Implementing AI technology or services (43%)

AI is rapidly reshaping how learning is delivered, experienced, and measured. From adaptive learning platforms to AI-powered coaching and mentoring, learning is becoming more personalized, timely, and applied.

At the same time, AI holds the promise of improving upskilling effectiveness—an area where many organizations still struggle. By mapping skills to roles and recommending targeted development opportunities, AI can help close gaps faster while improving the employee experience.

2026 CLTO Predictions:

Looking ahead, CLTOs shared several predictions that point to how learning and talent strategies will evolve.

AI-powered learning becomes the norm.
Learning will become more experiential, inclusive, and emotionally intelligent, with AI enabling personalization and real-time support.
Early-career talent pipelines become more fragile.
As AI reshapes entry-level work, organizations that fail to invest in early-career development risk long-term talent shortages and weakened leadership pipelines.
An "always-on" talent ecosystem emerges.
Talent identification, development, and succession will become more continuous, supported by AI that keeps skills and readiness data current.
In-person learning experiences experience a renaissance.
Despite advances in digital learning, leaders and employees continue to value in-person experiences for building trust, connection, and core leadership capabilities.

Across these priorities and predictions, the role of the Chief Learning & Talent Officer is expanding. CLTOs are no longer just stewards of programs—they are architects of adaptability.

In 2026, learning leaders will be judged not by how many courses they deliver, but by how effectively they build skills that translate into performance, leadership capacity, and organizational agility. As the pace of change continues to accelerate, the organizations that thrive will be those where learning is not an event, but an operating system.

To read the full perspectives of CHROs and senior HR leaders who serve on one of i4cp's executive Boards, download i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report.

The CHRO of Tomorrow: Leading with Strategy, AI, and Enterprise Impact (i4cp login required)

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:00:00 GMT

How Future-Ready Organizations are Redefining the CHRO Role

Why future-ready organizations are redefining the CHRO role, and the new capabilities that deliver enterprise impact.

The Questions Boards Want the CHRO to Answer

A board member asks:

"We've invested $40 million in AI tools this year. What productivity impact are we seeing, and how will we know whether it's actually delivering measurable business value?"

The CFO follows up:

"Our cost per employee is up 18% while revenue per employee is flat. Why are we increasing spend without seeing a corresponding impact on revenue, and what's going to change?"

These aren't rhetorical questions. They are now essential for CHRO credibility, and most CHROs cannot answer them with confidence.

The gap isn't effort or intent. It's structural.

The CHRO role was built for relative stability: attract, develop, retain, repeat. But boards are no longer asking about retention curves or engagement scores. They want to know whether the organization can absorb continuous change without breaking, whether AI will enhance enterprise capability or simply compress costs; and whether leadership pipelines can produce the judgment required to operate under sustained uncertainty.

To address these challenges, the CHRO of tomorrow must develop a different set of capabilities to satisfy the board's elevated expectations and the expanding demands of the role.

Boards are rewriting CHRO expectations: as AI transforms work, labor costs surge, and market volatility intensifies, the new mandate is clear—connect workforce decisions to productivity metrics and enterprise risk, not just talent programs.

What the Research Shows

The Institute for Corporate Productivity's (i4cp) research on high-performance organizations reveals a consistent pattern: CHROs who create durable enterprise value do not operate as functional leaders managing HR systems. They operate as enterprise leaders who bring strategy to life —accountable for how work is designed, how capacity is allocated, and how productivity is sustained amid changing assumptions.

This pattern has been reinforced repeatedly—including through i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report, which draws on insights from more than 150 senior HR leaders across i4cp's seven executive functional board communities. According to the report, boards of directors are increasingly looking to HR to ensure the enterprise is not just delivering short-term results, but also prepared for what's next. CHROs must be ready to lead that conversation.

Three capabilities equip the CHRO of tomorrow to deliver the level of enterprise impact today's boards demand.

Capability 1: Enterprise Business Leadership & Judgment

Enterprise decision-making, trade-offs, and value creation

In high-performing organizations, CHROs spend significantly more time in enterprise-level strategy discussions than their peers. The 2026 Priorities & Predictions report reinforces this reality: boards increasingly expect CHROs to ensure enterprise readiness amid AI disruption, economic uncertainty, and continuous transformation.

When CHROs frame talent decisions in terms of margin protection, growth acceleration, and enterprise risk, they are operating as business leaders—not HR advocates. This is the foundation of enterprise leadership for the CHRO of tomorrow.

What does this look like in practice?

Consider a hypothetical but representative scenario in a global, publicly traded services organization facing margin compression amid rising labor costs. Rather than defending headcount, the CHRO reframes the discussion around workforce deployment:

"Labor accounts for 64% of operating expenses, yet less than a quarter of total capacity is directly tied to revenue-generating or customer-facing work. By redesigning roles and reallocating approximately 200 hours per week from internal process work to client-facing activity, we can stabilize margins while improving growth and service outcomes."

In this framing, the conversation shifts from HR programs or staffing levels to a clear operating trade-off—one the CFO and board can evaluate immediately.

This is business judgment: the ability to frame workforce decisions in the same way boards make decisions—through value creation, risk exposure, and enterprise outcomes.

Capability 2: Workforce Capability & Capacity Strategist

Aligning talent, skills, and operating capacity to strategy

Enterprise-minded CHROs do not treat AI as a technology initiative or a talent program. They treat it as a lens that reveals misallocated work—clarifying how to deliberately map people with AI, not replace them, in order to extend organizational capacity and accelerate strategy execution.

i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report is explicit: AI is forcing organizations to deconstruct roles into tasks, determine which work should be done by humans versus machines, and redeploy capacity toward higher-value outcomes. In high-performing organizations, this shift has less to do with tools and far more to do with how work gets done across the enterprise.

This places workforce strategy—not technology adoption—at the center of AI-driven transformation.

What does this look like in practice?

Consider a representative scenario in a SaaS organization exploring agentic AI. Instead of debating how many roles AI might replace, the CHRO reframes the conversation around capacity:

"Before we add headcount or cut costs, let's assess how work and capacity are deployed. If AI can absorb routine internal processes, we can reallocate hundreds of human hours toward product quality, customer retention, and growth—without increasing spend."

In this framing, AI is not a cost-cutting narrative. It is a capacity-release mechanism.

This is where judgment becomes visible. CHROs operating at this level use AI to surface trade-offs executives already understand:

What work should disappear?
What work should be automated?
What work becomes more valuable when humans are freed to do it?

i4cp's research shows that organizations with high confidence in skills readiness are far more likely to make these distinctions effectively. The differentiator isn't adoption, it's judgment.

Capability 3: Future-Ready Resilience Architect

Uncertainty navigation, foresight, and enterprise optionality

CHROs with enterprise business judgment understand that their value lies not in providing certainty, but in helping leadership navigate uncertainty. At the board level, this distinction between workforce management and enterprise risk leadership is crucial.

Boards increasingly view strategy as dynamic rather than fixed. Workforce decisions are evaluated through the lens of risk, resilience, and optionality, not efficiency alone.

What does this look like in practice?

Consider a representative board discussion about leadership continuity during a strategic pivot. Market conditions are shifting, AI assumptions are evolving, and the CEO has asked for flexibility in how the organization scales over the next 18-24 months.

Rather than presenting a static workforce or succession plan, the CHRO reframes the conversation:

"The risk isn't whether our current leaders can execute today's strategy, it's whether we've designed leadership capacity that can adapt if the strategy changes. Our goal shouldn't be to lock in successors for specific roles, but to preserve leadership optionality across various scenarios."

The CHRO then walks the board through a small set of scenarios—growth acceleration, margin compression, and regulatory constraints—and demonstrates how leadership bench strength, critical skills, and redeployment capacity hold up in each case.

In this framing, succession and workforce design are no longer compliance exercises. They become instruments of enterprise risk management. The board isn't debating names or headcount; it's evaluating how resilient the organization will be if assumptions break.

This is what a future-ready resilience architect looks like. Trusted CHROs don't provide certainty, they help boards understand where the organization is flexible, where it is brittle, and what decisions preserve optionality when conditions change.

From functional excellence to enterprise decision-making

The future of the CHRO role won't be determined by how well HR runs. It will be determined by whether the CHRO can think, decide, and frame tradeoffs at the same altitude as the board—when certainty is unavailable and the cost of being wrong is high.

This perspective builds on themes explored during an Up Next Thought Leader conversation with Dave Gartenberg and Alexis Fink, which focused not on HR capability, but on the decision-making patterns that distinguish CHRO-ready leaders. It is further informed by the Up Next Cohort, a CHRO-readiness experience for senior HR leaders operating at enterprise scale. If you're navigating CHRO succession planning or executive leadership development in your organization, we welcome the opportunity to discuss Up Next as a solution.

For additional perspective on how boards are prioritizing talent, AI, and enterprise readiness, see i4cp's recent brief, "What Boards Want Now: 5 Insights Every CHRO and Business Leader Should Act On."

4 Priorities for Impact & Belonging Leaders in 2026 (i4cp login required)

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:00:00 GMT

For Impact & Belonging leaders, 2026 follows one of the most challenging periods the function has faced. Legal scrutiny, political polarization, shifting regulations, and public skepticism have tested not only budgets and programs—but also narrative, legitimacy, and resilience.

As one board member observed, "It is hard to predict 2026 when so much that you thought was impossible is happening unchecked in 2025." That uncertainty continues to shape the operating environment for leaders responsible for advancing inclusion, equity, and belonging across the enterprise.

Yet even amid these pressures, the work is not disappearing. It is evolving.

From Standalone Programs to Embedded Impact

One clear shift is underway: impact and belonging efforts are moving away from isolated initiatives and toward deeper integration into core systems.

Organizations are increasingly embedding inclusion into hiring, performance management, leadership development, and rewards—ensuring equity is operationalized rather than episodic. External language may soften to meet the moment, but internally, many organizations continue to measure, track, and advance progress.

The result is a quieter, more durable form of impact—one designed to endure volatility rather than react to it.

"We know that inclusive teams are pivotal in boosting employee engagement, a key driver of our culture, innovation, and accelerating business performance. Inclusive teaming isn't reserved for big moments—it's built in everyday actions."

— Pamela Hennard, Chief Belonging Officer & VP, NetApp

2026 Impact & Belonging Priorities:

Members of i4cp's Impact & Belonging Leader Board identified four priorities that will guide the function in 2026.

Promoting and embedding inclusive leadership practices (65%)

Inclusive leadership is increasingly viewed as a core leadership expectation, not an optional competency. Leaders who consistently surface diverse perspectives, foster psychological safety, and invite dissent drive stronger engagement and performance. i4cp research shows that organizations with very healthy cultures are significantly more likely to cite inclusiveness as a defining trait. Conversely, low-performance organizations are far more likely to report that lack of inclusiveness undermines trust among teams and leaders.

Embedding inclusive leadership into daily behavior—not standalone training—is central to sustaining belonging at scale.
Strengthening impact and belonging strategies to align with organizational goals (62%)

As scrutiny intensifies, alignment has become essential. Impact and belonging strategies must now demonstrate coherence with broader business, risk, and governance objectives.

This includes ensuring legal defensibility, consistency across geographies, and clear linkage between inclusion outcomes and organizational performance. Leading organizations are proactively auditing policies, partnering closely with legal counsel, and embedding impact and belonging into enterprise governance frameworks rather than treating it as a parallel effort.
Leveraging AI to enhance program effectiveness (44%)

AI is increasingly viewed as a tool for enabling fairer outcomes. From bias detection to transparency in decision-making, AI offers new ways to uncover inequities and guide more objective processes.

High-performance organizations are more likely to leverage AI to support inclusive hiring, development, and advancement—while recognizing the importance of governance, transparency, and oversight to maintain trust.
Eliminating bias in processes, decisions, and systems (35%)

Bias often resides not in intent, but in systems. Impact and belonging leaders are expanding their focus beyond programs to address bias embedded in hiring practices, performance management, pay decisions, and advancement pathways.

This work increasingly intersects with Talent Acquisition, People Analytics, and Total Rewards—underscoring the need for cross-functional collaboration and shared accountability.

2026 Impact & Belonging Predictions:

Looking ahead, leaders shared several predictions that reflect how the function is adapting.

Integration replaces isolation.
Impact and belonging will increasingly be embedded into enterprise systems, governance, and performance frameworks rather than housed in standalone programs.
Legal and brand pressure intensifies.
Organizations will exercise greater caution around disclosures and identity-specific programming, emphasizing measurable outcomes, compliance, and defensibility.
Data becomes the anchor.
Hiring, promotion, and pay decisions will continue shifting toward data-backed processes, linking inclusion outcomes directly to business performance.
The lens widens.
Focus will expand beyond traditional demographics to include age, neurodiversity, accessibility, and other dimensions that connect directly to future workforce strategies.

In 2026, Impact & Belonging leaders will increasingly operate as enterprise integrators—connecting culture, compliance, analytics, and strategy.

Success will not be defined by visibility alone, but by durability: how deeply inclusion is embedded into how the organization hires, develops, rewards, and leads. In a volatile environment, the most effective impact and belonging strategies will be those that quietly strengthen trust, fairness, and performance—regardless of external pressure.

To read the rest of the predictions from i4cp's other boards, download i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report.

M&A is Heating Up Again, But Culture Remains the Dealbreaker (i4cp login required)

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Following a few quieter years marked by economic uncertainty, M&A activity surged this past year. Rising confidence in the markets, ongoing digital transformation, and pressure to scale and innovate pushed boards to revisit their non-organic growth agendas. U.S. M&A deal value in 2025 was approximately $1.6 trillion, one of the highest totals in the past decade. In Europe, deal value rose by about 37%, and in India, domestic consolidation hit $104 billion in 2025. Analysts project that the momentum will accelerate into 2026, particularly in sectors such as AI-related tech, healthcare, and financial services.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: even as activity surges, the fundamentals of successful deal-making haven't changed. One factor continues to make or break the value of those deals over time: culture compatibility.

The Culture Gap That Continues to Sink Deals

The Institute for Corporate Productivity's (i4cp) decades of research into high-performance organizations reveals a consistent, troubling pattern: most M&A integrations underperform not because of strategy flaws or financial miscalculations, but because leaders underestimate the complexity and importance of cultural synergy.

Whether it's incompatible decision-making norms, misaligned leadership behavior, or lack of clarity on "how things get done," cultural friction is still one of the most persistent—but preventable—drivers of deal failure.

Examples include:

Microsoft & Nokia struggled under competing operating philosophies that slowed execution and eroded talent, ultimately writing off billions.
AOL & Time Warner, which many labeled "the worst merger in stock market history," spectacularly collapsed under obvious cultural mismatches that made collaboration nearly impossible.
Even Amazon & Whole Foods, while still successful in many ways, revealed early tensions between data-driven efficiency and a purpose-driven retail ethos, requiring years of cultural work to stabilize.

What CEOs, boards, and heads of corporate development often miss: you can acquire assets, technology, and market share, but it will all be for naught if the cultures don't mesh. This should be explored rigorously alongside the financial and market opportunities, and post-transaction, resources must be devoted to aligning and integrating the acquired culture.

Five Culture-Based Actions to Reduce M&A Risk

Drawing from i4cp's research on high-performance organizations and years of advising executives through complex integrations, here are five pragmatic moves organizations can make to protect value and accelerate synergy:

Diagnose cultural compatibility early.

Most organizations skip this critical step. Before signing an Indication or Letter of Interest, it is important to diagnose and understand any potential cultural mismatches through climate surveys that don't tip off the workforce that a potential deal is in the works. Even in the Due Diligence phase, organizations should focus on policies, philosophies, and company norms that could cause major issues in the future.
Define the future culture with precision.

Too many integrations fail because no one articulates what the combined culture should actually look like. CEOs should set the tone: What do we preserve? What do we blend? What must change?
Align the top team first.

i4cp research shows CEO and leadership alignment is the single biggest cultural accelerator when renovating a culture. If the senior team models the future culture quickly and consistently, the rest of the organization follows.
Identify and activate culture carriers.

Every organization has influencers and energizers who set the internal tone. Often, they are buried in the hierarchy and can be difficult to locate. Identify them, and get them engaged early; they are the fastest way to infuse new behaviors across legacy boundaries.
Establish a measurement system for culture integration.

If you can't measure it, it won't move. High-performance organizations monitor culture signals just as rigorously as operational ones, tracking trust, decision velocity, collaboration, and alignment during integration.

Culture isn't a soft issue; it's a strategic bet.

When an acquisition is consummated, CEOs face intense pressure to quickly prove the value of the combination. The organizations that win won't be those with the cleanest financial model or the most synergistic technology, but those that treat culture as a strategic asset, recognizing it as the single biggest factor that can either scale the value of a deal or quietly erode it.

Now is the moment for CEOs and senior teams to get ahead of the next wave of acquisitions and ensure culture becomes a catalyst, not a constraint.

4 Priorities for CHROs in 2026 (i4cp login required)

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:00:00 GMT

For Chief Human Resources Officers, 2026 will not be defined by incremental change. It will be defined by how effectively HR leaders architect organizations that can absorb disruption, adapt quickly, and still perform at a high level.

As one member of i4cp's CHRO Board noted, "As HR leaders fundamentally transform and prepare the workforce to thrive in an AI-powered future, we will need to navigate levels of disruption we've never seen before." That sentiment captures the reality facing CHROs globally: the scale and speed of change now outpace traditional HR capacity and models.

The mandate is clear. Future-ready CHROs are no longer simply responding to change—they are actively driving it.

The Three Dimensions of Readiness

i4cp's research points to three forms of readiness that increasingly define organizational advantage:

Culture readiness: A culture that treats change as manageable and opportunistic rather than threatening.
AI readiness: A workforce and environment that enable responsible, effective use of AI.
Skills readiness: Ongoing confidence that the workforce has the capabilities needed for the next one to three years.

As disruption accelerates, these dimensions of readiness are no longer abstract aspirations—they are competitive necessities.

2026 CHRO Priorities:

Based on input from i4cp's global CHRO Board, four priorities rise to the top for 2026.

1. AI-related workforce initiatives (68%)

AI is now a dominant priority for HR, driven by both technological advances and CEO expectations. Boards are increasingly looking to CHROs to ensure the enterprise is prepared for AI's impact on work, workforce design, and culture.

Importantly, this is less a technical challenge than a leadership one. AI experimentation that succeeds begins with real business problems, not abstract pilots. Organizations that learn fastest are those that study how peers are applying AI in practical, business-specific ways—reducing risk while accelerating impact.

2. Leadership development (57%)

Leadership development remains a top priority, but its definition is changing. In 2026, effective leadership is less about managing hierarchy and more about enabling networks.

As work becomes more distributed, leaders are expected to orchestrate collaboration, trust, and connection across boundaries. i4cp research consistently shows that leaders who build strong networks of purpose and energy drive significantly higher performance—especially in hybrid and AI-enabled environments.

At the same time, leadership pipelines are shrinking. High-performing organizations are responding by involving senior leaders as teachers, sponsors, and mentors, and by using AI to personalize development journeys and accelerate readiness.

3. Strategic workforce planning and work redesign due to AI (50%)

CHROs increasingly face a new mandate: demonstrate why work cannot be done using AI before asking for more headcount.

Leading organizations are responding by deconstructing roles into tasks, clarifying where AI can augment or replace work, and where human judgment remains essential. When paired with skills data and internal talent marketplaces, this approach enables rapid redeployment of talent and more accurate forecasting of future needs.

Workforce planning is no longer about static headcount models—it is about continuously redesigning work itself.

4. C-suite succession (50%)

Executive turnover continues to rise, exposing a persistent gap in succession readiness. i4cp research shows that only a minority of organizations believe they have ready successors for executive or mission-critical roles.

In response, high-performing organizations are expanding succession efforts beyond the C-suite, building succession talent pools rather than naming single successors, and leveraging people analytics to understand bench strength, risk, and readiness. Succession planning is becoming a broader capability strategy, not a narrow replacement exercise.

"This year is about doing more with more. It starts with skilling and re-skilling. HR leaders can use technology and AI as a platform to help innovate and grow skills in the team. Innovation can bring people and ideas together."

— Amy Linsin, EVP and CHRO, Prisma Health

2026 CHRO Predictions:

Looking ahead, CHROs offered several predictions that frame how the function itself will evolve.

Treat 2026 as an "intern year" for agentic AI.
Agentic AI will require supervision, not blind trust. The most effective organizations will treat AI agents like interns—capable, fast learners that still require oversight, context, and clear boundaries.
Agility will matter more than resilience.
Resilience helps organizations recover. Agility helps them stay ahead. In an AI-infused world, CHROs will increasingly design for anticipation and adaptability rather than recovery alone.
Uncertainty becomes the operating backdrop.
Economic, political, and regulatory uncertainty will continue to shape decisions in 2026. CHROs will be called on to provide clarity, discipline, and focus in environments where predictability is scarce.
The rise of the intelligent, adaptive HR ecosystem.
The traditional three-pillar HR model will continue to give way to a more fluid, intelligence-driven ecosystem. HR business partners evolve into performance enablers, centers of expertise into enterprise intelligence architects, and shared services into experience engines—powered by AI and analytics.

Across all of these priorities and predictions, one theme is unmistakable: the CHRO role is expanding. HR leaders are no longer stewards of programs alone—they are architects of organizational capability.

In 2026, the CHRO's impact will be measured by how effectively they help the enterprise sense change, redesign work, and build the skills and culture required to thrive.

To read the full perspectives of CHROs and senior HR leaders who serve on one of i4cp's executive Boards, download i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions report.

CHRO Succession Planning: How to Build a Future-Ready HR Leadership Pipeline (i4cp login required)

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:00:00 GMT

The true measure of a great Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) isn't just the culture you build—it's who is ready to carry it forward.

Today's CHRO isn't just a people leader; you're a business strategist, a cultural architect, and often the steady voice in the CEO's ear. But that influence also makes CHRO succession planning one of the most critical—and often overlooked—leadership priorities in business today.

When a company loses its CHRO without a ready successor, the cost extends far beyond recruitment fees. It slows transformation, weakens cultural continuity, and leaves the CEO without a trusted strategic partner during crucial moments.

That's why succession planning for CHROs and Chief People Officers (CPOs) has become a strategic imperative, not just an HR project.

Why CHRO Succession Planning Is Business-Critical

Most organizations have a well-defined CEO succession plan. Far fewer have a true CHRO succession strategy—or even a visible pipeline of ready-now successors for the Chief People Officer role.

Here's what the data shows:

CHRO turnover has risen 36% year over year among Fortune 200 companies (Talent Strategy Group, 2025 CHRO Trends Report).
Nearly one in four CHRO roles remain vacant for months after a departure (Talent Strategy Group, 2025 CHRO Trends Report).
73% of CHROs are hired externally, and 10% of companies are now placing non-HR executives into the role (HR Succession Is Broken, Fortune).

What happens when there's no CHRO succession plan?

Disruption in HR strategy and execution
Loss of momentum in culture and engagement initiatives
Reduced CEO confidence and Board visibility
Increased cost and time-to-fill for executive search

With average CHRO tenure hovering near three years, succession readiness is now a form of leadership insurance.

The Strategic Case for CHRO and CPO Readiness

Succession planning for CHROs isn't about replacement; it's about continuity of leadership, culture, and capability.

A strong CHRO pipeline ensures:

Business continuity through leadership transitions
Consistency in people and culture strategy
Sustained CEO confidence and enterprise credibility

It also means that you can step into your next chapter—whether that's the boardroom, a portfolio career, or an advisory role—with the assurance that what you built will last.

What Effective CHRO Readiness Looks Like

High-impact CHRO development programs don't just identify successors; they build leaders capable of sustaining enterprise performance.

According to i4cp's 2025 Priorities and Predictions report, and Mark Englizian, founder of i4cp's CHRO development program Up Next, future-ready CHROs are much more than just people leaders. What does CHRO readiness look like?

Business and financial fluency: Understanding markets, value creation, and financial levers to position people strategy as business strategy.
Strategic acumen: Operating as an enterprise leader who connects HR priorities to growth, performance, and transformation outcomes.
C-suite influence: Building trusted, strategic partnerships with the CEO, CFO, and board while balancing advocacy with accountability.
Governance and board literacy: Navigating executive compensation, ESG, risk, and stakeholder expectations with credibility.
Change and culture leadership: Designing adaptive, resilient cultures that thrive through disruption and transformation.

These capabilities define the next generation of future-ready CHROs—leaders who translate talent strategy into measurable business impact. A powerful byproduct of involving your team in CHRO-level work is that it expands their exposure to enterprise-level challenges while freeing you to operate higher up the value chain, whether that means deeper partnership in the C-suite or simply creating more space for balance and perspective.

How Leading CHROs Build Their Bench

Forward-thinking organizations are treating CHRO succession as a cornerstone of enterprise stability.

Top CHROs are:

Integrating CHRO succession into enterprise succession planning—ensuring HR models the discipline it champions.
Developing layered talent pipelines with ready-now, ready-soon, and emerging leaders.
Using data and predictive analytics to track readiness, skill development, and leadership exposure.
Investing in peer-based executive learning experiences that simulate the complexity of the C-suite.

This proactive approach transforms CHRO succession from a reactive search process into a strategic differentiator.

CHRO Development in Action: i4cp's Up Next Cohort

To meet the growing demand for CHRO succession readiness, i4cp created the Up Next Cohort—a 10-week executive development program designed to prepare senior HR leaders for the top seat.

Founded by Mark Englizian (Walgreens, Amazon, Microsoft) and guided by i4cp's Chief HR Officer Board, Up Next develops the strategic, financial, and leadership acumen required for CHRO success.

Participants gain:

Direct learning from sitting CHROs and board advisors
Simulations focused on CEO and board dynamics
Personalized executive coaching and mentorship
Immersive exposure to enterprise-scale HR leadership

Nearly 50% of Up Next alumni have advanced into CHRO or enterprise HR leadership roles, making it one of the most effective CHRO readiness programs available.

"It gave me the tools to speak the language of finance and demonstrate how HR drives business outcomes. These skills propelled me into the C-suite."

— Stephanie Greenberg, CHRO, Stratolaunch & Up Next Alum

What's at Stake

When organizations make CHRO succession readiness a strategic priority, they build more than a leadership pipeline—they build resilience.

Confidence that culture and performance endure through change.

Assurance that CEOs and boards always have a trusted HR partner.

Continuity that sustains organizational identity and leadership legacy.

CHRO succession planning is no longer optional—it's the foundation of sustainable leadership. For today's CHROs, readiness isn't just about who's next—

It's about what lasts.

Build your CHRO bench strength with the Up Next Cohort.