In the latest edition of CHRO Association’s Lessons from the Field podcast, American Express CHRO and Association Executive Committee Member Monique Herena sits down with Association CEO Tim Bartl to trace her remarkable HR career path from an inadvertent career fair encounter to F100 C-suite executive.

Highlights include:
-
Business leader first, HR leader second. Successful HR goes beyond focusing only on functional excellence. The talent and culture strategy must stem directly from the business strategy, and anyone in the role should understand the business as deeply as their peers do.
-
Collective intelligence beats the lone expert. Drawing on her basketball background, Ms. Herena argues that leaders get better outcomes by drawing on everyone’s skills and bringing in people closest to the problem who aren’t heard enough. In her words, “you can’t leave people behind on the field.”
-
AI is a leadership transformation, not a technology one. Nobody has the answers on how AI will play out for jobs and performance. Ms. Herena urges leaders to build AI into daily work rather than treating it as a side project, and to keep asking second- and third-order questions of its output.
Watch or listen to the full podcast here!