The week that was: week 50 2021.
The biggest news everywhere was Leena Nair moving from her already coveted position as CHRO of Unilever to CEO of Chanel. This is a big news and big win. Firstly, she is the second woman of Indian origin, after Indra Nooyi, to lead a Global organization. Secondly, she is a rare CHRO who has made it to CEO position.
While she is not the first CHRO to make CEO, there is a difference.
There have been studies to support the case for CHRO to progress as CEO in the past decade or so. One of the most popular and widely reference study was conducted by Dave Ulrich and Ellie Filler. They published their research stating CHRO is among the top three highest paid professionals after CEO and COO. Good CHROs are rare and extremely valuable to the companies they work at. They also researched Leadership qualities expected of CEO and presented that CHRO leadership qualities overlapped significantly with CEO leadership qualities. Read the details here – https://hbr.org/2014/12/why-chief-human-resources-officers-make-great-ceos.
There have been several articles since this study highlighting how CHROs are great with people skills or referring to Collin famous saying “First who then what”. But these headlines don’t paint the real picture.
Like this article – https://www.cornerstoneondemand.com/resources/article/meet-5-hr-pros-who-became-ceos/, lists 5 CEOs who had a previous CHRO stint. When you read carefully, you see that they had a HR stint in their long career spanning other functions including P&L responsibility. Leena on the other hand was a pure HR professional throughout her near 30 years career. This is what makes her journey unique and incredibly inspiring.
Leena has been a leader in propagating purpose driven culture. She has paved a way forward for Indians, for women professionals and for HR fraternity.
