Business Strategy Without People Strategy Is Just a PowerPoint: Why HR and CEOs Must Align to Grow Fast – Jacob Morgan | Best-Selling Author, Speaker, & Futurist | Leadership | Future of Work

This article was written by Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks

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Let me make a bold statement: If you’re a CEO and you’re not deeply aligned with your CHRO, you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose the race for talent, the race for innovation, and ultimately, the race for growth. Not because your strategy was flawed or your product wasn’t strong enough,but because your people strategy was disconnected from your business strategy and you didn’t fix it fast enough.

Throughout my career, I’ve watched too many organizations treat HR like a service center rather than a strategic function. That mindset is broken. When CEOs and HR leaders align, performance transformation isn’t theoretical — it’s operational.

Alignment looks like HR bringing forward not just engagement data, but insight-rich dashboards that reveal where talent is blocked, where potential is hidden, and where managers need to grow. It looks like the CEO reviewing those insights weekly (not once a year) and using them to shape business strategy.

Alignment looks like goals that connect the C-suite to the front line, feedback that’s ongoing and actionable, and recognition that isn’t performative, but tied to real performance. When HR and the CEO operate as a unified force, you don’t just create better culture — you unlock faster execution. Better decisions. Stronger leadership at every level. And a workforce that doesn’t just show up, but can respond with agility as your organization grows.

Alignment between HR and the C-suite is a growth engine. Organizations that scale fastest are the ones where HR is not only at the table, but driving change, steering the culture, and challenging leadership with hard truths backed by hard data.

Your People Strategy Is Your Business Strategy

Every CEO I know is under pressure to deliver faster results with fewer resources. And now, market volatility and an uncertain global business environment compound that urgency. But here’s the truth we don’t talk about enough: That pressure cascades and it doesn’t just land on your product or sales leaders. It lands on your people. With a modern performance management system, you also know who your top performers are and can be sure to nurture those relationships. In today’s economic environment, you also know who your non-performers are and can take action from there.

If you’re not enabling performance with the same rigor and urgency you apply to revenue growth or market expansion, you’re holding your business back. Your CHRO should be your co-pilot in driving organizational agility. Not a compliance checkpoint, not an event planner, but a strategic architect of a high-performance culture that can help your business perform optimally in every business condition. The person who can tell you whether your managers are actually leading or just surviving.

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A Call to Action for HR Leaders

If you’re in HR, don’t wait for the CEO to come knocking. Walk into the room like you own the business, because you do. You own its future. Know your CEO’s top priorities. Not what was on the board deck last quarter, but what’s keeping them up at night right now? And then show how your people strategy accelerates those goals.

Use the data. Betterworks customers, for instance, aren’t just measuring performance. They’re connecting it to engagement, goal achievement, learning outcomes, and real-time feedback. They’re surfacing hidden talent and tying feedback loops to business goals. This is the level of insight CEOs are starving for and the level of leadership HR must provide.

Culture Moves at the Speed of Trust — And Truth

When leaders insulate themselves from feedback, the business slows down. We’ve all heard the story of the executive no one dares to correct. The leader whose calendar is filled with polite nodding and zero pushback. That’s not leadership. That’s stagnation with a corner office.

At Betterworks, I count on the people around me to tell me when I’m wrong. To challenge my assumptions. To show me where the culture needs work — even if it means calling out my own blind spots. Because accountability, real accountability, lets you course-correct before it’s too late.

If you’re a CEO reading this, ask yourself: Who in my company has permission to push back on me and do they actually use it? If not, you’ve built a culture of fear, not feedback.

The Future Belongs to Aligned Leaders

The best-performing organizations don’t just have strong individual leaders. They have aligned leadership teams where HR and the CEO operate as a united front. When your business strategy and people strategy move as one, the whole company moves with you.

These companies make faster decisions because they’re working from a shared understanding of talent data. They’re developing people in real time, not just during an annual review cycle. They’re surfacing performance trends early, so they can double down on what’s working and intervene where it’s not. They’re building trust and engagement with employees because accountability isn’t a one-time event, it’s a cultural constant.

It’s Time to Lead Together

Here’s my challenge to every CEO and CHRO reading this: Stop thinking of alignment as a meeting. It’s a mindset. A shared obsession with unlocking potential, removing friction, and making work better together. Culture doesn’t scale from the bottom up. It scales from the center: when the CEO and HR are rowing in the same direction, powered by performance, fueled by feedback, and unapologetically focused on growth.