In the most successful companies, HR doesn’t just support the business. It scales it. Shapes it. Sometimes, saves it. But for that to happen, CEOs must stop asking their Chief People Officer to run better processes and start expecting them to drive performance transformation.
That kind of shift doesn’t come from dashboards or engagement programs. It comes from bold partnership. To learn more about what this partnership between the CEO and CPO should look like, I had the chance to interview Elaine Page. Page has built high-impact cultures inside fintechs and tech startups and transformed a Fortune 100 healthcare system with over 80,000 employees. As a CHRO and GM, she’s led remote-first scaling, restructured underperforming functions, integrated $2B acquisitions, and rebuilt trust after cultural breakdowns. At the center of each success story? A CEO who treated HR as a strategic growth function, not a support one. “Great HR isn’t a department,” said Page. “It’s a system of leverage for the business.”
“But the CEO has to want it,” Page elaborated. “Most CEOs say people are their greatest asset, but then they treat HR like a liability. That disconnects costs from companies more than they realize.”
From Performance to Possibility
The difference between HR that performs and HR that transforms comes down to one mindset shift: Stop asking what HR can do for you. Start asking what kind of company you want to become.
The best CHROs—the ones who drive business value—ask questions like:
- What future are we trying to build, and what talent systems will get us there
- What culture will help us outperform, retain, and adapt?
- What leadership behaviors will unlock innovation and trust?
Specifically, Page said that CEOs should expect their CHROs to pull three enterprise levers:
1. Build the system, not the slogan
When Page took on a culture transformation at Northwell Health, she didn’t start with posters or PowerPoints. She started by listening to thousands of employees, from emergency room nurses to IT leads, to understand what truly mattered to them.
From that came a bold new Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that moved far beyond branding. It shaped how the organization hired, onboarded, promoted, recognized, and paid its people. It wasn’t just a culture statement. It was an operating system.
The results?
- Trust scores soared.
- Turnover dropped.
- Patient satisfaction improved.
- And Northwell Health landed on Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work list—climbing from bottom-decile engagement scores.
“If your EVP lives in a slide deck, it’s dead on arrival,” said Page. “If it lives in hiring rubrics, bonus plans, and performance reviews, then you’ve built something real.”
2. Lead from the Future, Not the Past
At Stripe and other fintech companies, Page faced a different challenge: scale without chaos. Rather than defaulting to plug-and-play HR templates, she asked leaders what outcomes truly mattered, and then built simple, agile systems to drive clarity, energy, and momentum.
The result? Performance systems that matched the business’s pace. Talent strategies that flexed with growth. Leadership frameworks that aligned to outcomes, not just values. “Great HR doesn’t mean complex. It means aligned,” she said. “At scale, you need simplicity that drives consistency, not bureaucracy that slows things down.”
3. Disrupt the Noise with AI and Insight
Today, AI is forcing every function to evolve, and HR is no exception. Page is currently advising a tech company on embedding AI into the employee and recruiter experience. They’re using it to:
- Automate time-draining tasks in recruiting.
- Enhance candidate-to-role matching.
- Elevate employee insights from frontline data and explore a new performance management tool that scrapes data from all tooling used by employees to build “real-time” performance cues.
“AI shouldn’t be a buzzword in HR,” Page said. “It should be a scale enabler. A trust builder. A real-time insight engine.”
The Hard Truth: Most CEO-CHRO Partnerships Stay Too Safe
Page is candid about where CHROs fall short and where CEOs miss the mark. “Even the most talented CHRO can only deliver at the level the CEO allows,” she said. “And the highest-impact partnerships are forged in truth.”
She’s seen too many HR leaders stuck in compliance land because their CEO didn’t invite them into the business. She’s also seen CHROs shy away from hard feedback out of fear of rocking the boat.
The best partnerships share three traits:
- Truth-telling: Hard conversations are had early, and often.
- Shared ambition: Culture is tied to outcomes, not optics.
- Mutual courage: The CHRO challenges the CEO, and vice versa.
“I’ve made mistakes,” Page admits. “I’ve stayed quiet when I should have pushed. But the longer I’ve done this work, the clearer it’s become: you don’t earn a seat at the table by playing nice. You earn it by delivering results and telling the truth about what’s in the way.”
What Bold CEOs Should Be Asking Right Now
If you’re a CEO reading this, ask yourself:
- Does my CHRO understand what we’re really trying to build?
- Are we solving for performance or just process?
- Are we willing to hear hard truths – and invest in hard fixes?
- Is HR funded to drive transformation, not just administration?
And perhaps the most important question: “Do I want HR to run more smoothly – or do I want the business to run better?”
There’s a difference. And it shows up in trust, speed, retention, and results.
The New Standard
Page’s message is clear: The CHRO you need isn’t the one who runs HR well. It’s the one who helps you run the business better – through people, performance, and possibility. And when that partnership clicks? That’s when HR stops performing… and starts transforming.
