Starting in early 2023, there has been more talk about how AI can be the pixie dust that HR didn’t think it needed to make it more strategic in less time and with less effort than ever before. After all, all you had to do was sign on the dotted line of a 3-year SaaS licensing commitment, and the tech would take care of everything else, right?

Over the little while, I have learned that being ready for AI is less about knowing the technology and the technical stuff; and more about having clarity in your organizational objectives and adaptability in your execution. In a world filled with ambiguity and about to get much more ambiguous, having clarity in the end goal is the key to thriving.

I am sure we have all heard some variation of the “if they only understood what we do and how complicated everything is, then they would appreciate how little we are working with” sentiment. If we can bend reality, I would love for a world where each corporate function understands, appreciates, and empathizes with the pain of other functions. However, since reality is not ideal, we need to work with what we have and can control— the HR function and everything in it.

One of the most profound questions I heard recently was, “Is HR creating outcomes or just generating outputs?” That sounds like a redundant question, right? Is there a difference between outcomes and outputs for HR?

The unfortunate truth is that large organizations will probably not move much faster than they are just by the inherent way they are organized. The good news is that you, as an individual contributor or mid-level manager, can do things to help speed that along instead of staring into the abyss for a day when a decision is handed to you.

This is the season when HR trends, predictions, and forecasts are published weekly, and everyone has an opinion on what is in store for the People business in 2024. I often find it interesting that while all trends posted by organizations are based on market research and surveys, they don’t always include the first-hand accounts of those who work on the frontlines of HR.

The crux of the problem isn’t necessarily businesses asking HR to quantify their requests and provide ROI on proposed initiatives. The problem is that HR practitioners were not historically trained to do this, and the HR function in most organizations today was never designed to do this.

We have always said AI is going to revolutionize the way we work. This sentence should no longer be in the future tense for HR teams globally. AI has changed and continues to change the world where we work and manage human resources. I realized over the past few months that this time, it’s different because AI is not a function-specific trend that’s unique to HR; it is changing how everyone works and accesses information.

There are many ways to categorize HR teams and HR leaders. In my (possibly overly) simplified view of the world, I usually like to categorize based on the Span of Stuff. The Span of Stuff, in my perspective, is defined by the amount of periphery topics and projects HR chooses to participate in that do not present as HR problems in the beginning but can have significant impacts on the organization.

I usually have a few ideas that don't quite make the cut for each article I publish. Since we are already ten articles into the series, I thought creating an "honorable mentions" list for the thoughts that didn't quite make it to the article stages would be a good idea.

There is such a thing as Leadership Privilege. This article is written with the hopes that leaders—especially HR leaders—will read it and hopefully become more aware of the unconscious biases and other factors that could be influencing their decisions. Even if one person makes a small change in their decision-making process because of this article, it will be well worth the effort.

This is a Hard-Lessons-I-Have-Learned-So-You-Don’t-Have-To and Nobody-Will-Say-This-Out-Loud-In-The-Workplace kind of article.

Here is the highlight reel of my thoughts on some comments I have heard in a professional setting, from someone in what would typically be considered an HR leadership role, and where more than one person was in the audience.