Can AI Build Gartner's "HR Strategy on a Page"?

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Our Point/Counterpoint conversation with AI. We start with an article developed by AI under my direction. AI’s research generates an article based on all publicly available content. But my 20+ years of experience in consulting has taught me a few things about application, so I add my tips and insight based on my experience working with clients' strategic projects – my counterpoint - in italics. This week, we discuss Gartner's "HR Strategy on a Page" template - a tool to develop your own HR strategy.

AI says:

Artificial intelligence is changing Human Resources. But perhaps not in the way we think.

Much of the conversation about AI in HR focuses on what AI can do: write job descriptions, summarize policies, analyze employee comments, create communications, develop interview questions, or automate administrative work.

Those applications are valuable. But there is another opportunity that may ultimately be more important:

AI can help HR professionals think.

A good example is Gartner’s HR Strategy on a Page template. Gartner developed the tool to help CHROs create and communicate an HR strategy to the C-suite. The framework moves through three broad phases—Discovery, Design and Delivery—and asks HR leaders to identify business scenarios, assess HR capabilities, create the strategy, establish metrics, communicate the strategy, and continuously revisit priorities. https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/7541249

It is a strong framework.

But there is an important distinction between having a framework and knowing how to use it. That is where AI becomes interesting.

My Executive Insight

So I’m a little skeptical about the claim AI can help HR professionals think. However, I will say I recently heard a TED talk where the speaker said this, “if you are passionate about a subject – you’ve trained in it, you study it continuously, you are deeply knowledgeable – then AI can put a jetpack on your abilities.” Having experienced that myself, I have to consider this claim objectively.

AI says: Don't Ask AI to Write Your HR Strategy

The easiest thing to do would be to upload the Gartner template into an AI tool and type:

"Create an HR strategy for my organization."

Don't do that. AI doesn't know enough yet. Instead, use the Gartner framework to structure a conversation with AI.

The process begins with Discovery. Gartner recommends identifying business priorities and emerging scenarios involving technology, industry shifts and economic factors—and then determining the talent implications of those scenarios.

That means the first information you should give AI isn't your HR plan. Give it your business plan.

Upload the strategic plan. Add the annual report. Provide the CEO's priorities. Include workforce data, customer information, financial goals, operational challenges or other relevant information.

Then start asking questions.

"What business priorities do you see?"
"What assumptions does management appear to be making?"
"What workforce capabilities would have to exist for this strategy to succeed?"
"What talent risks could prevent the organization from accomplishing these objectives?"

Now AI isn't creating your strategy. It is helping you analyze the business.

That distinction matters.

My Executive Insight

The methodology described is solid and could produce good results. But it won’t. I see three glaring problems with the Discovery process described above…

First – as has been for decades - Gartner simplifies all Discovery into the standard approach and its impact on “Talent”. HR has been trapped here, trying to predict the talent that will be needed and how to ensure the organization has that talent when it is needed. The glaring problem here is the absence of management. Human Resources does not have the intimate knowledge about how the work of an organization is done unless the organization only does HR. Management has that knowledge. And without the interaction and collaboration of management – front line managers, project managers, directors, sales, etc. – HR cannot fully comprehend the research. To boil your HR Strategy into one strategic output is outdated and constrained, i.e., NOT strategic.
Evaluating the organization’s strategic plan is solid research and should be done. But it is highly unlikely that HR is very familiar with the strategic plan or the additional information that is requested such as CEO’s priorities, customer information, or financial goals. So unless these insights are included in the strategic plan, it may not be available. It’s also important to realize that the strategic plan – if it is publicly available – is produced for an “audience”. The wording and positioning of information will have than audience in mind and may not be entirely accurate or plainly stated. Is the process of analyzing the business worthwhile? Yes, absolutely.
The methodology makes no mention of the impact HR can make on costs. Human Resources is an administrative expense, yes, but its influence is not isolated to its ability to hire. HR influences 30-35% or more of an organization’s expenses through its impact on workforce costs, i.e. compensation, benefits, training and management quality. Yet, we are still getting the advice to focus on hiring talent – an area where we have much less impact and control. And frankly – this is where your CEO wants you to spend the majority of your time – reducing costs and improving management.

How, then, do you proceed through this step? The best advice is to have a conversation with your CEO and CFO. First, do your homework and learn everything you can about the organizational strategy from the information available to you. Second, document your understanding in a summary for yourself with key points, then make a list of questions. Your questions should help you focus on HR’s role in the organization and its impact on organizational strategy. This might be where AI can help you. After you have this “cheat sheet” built, load it into AI and ask for an evaluation. Ask questions such as…what strategic advantage can HR create or support? What am I missing? What capabilities does HR need to have and/or develop to serve the organizational strategy I’ve outlined? Very similar to the questions outlined above. Then set up a 30 minute meeting with the executives or ask to attend an executive meeting for 15 minutes to ask questions. You may be pleasantly surprised how glad they are that you asked for their input – but BE PREPARED!

AI says:

Turn the AI Around and Analyze HR

Next, Gartner recommends assessing HR's maturity across its activities, processes, human capabilities and technology. This creates another powerful AI exercise.

Give AI information about your HR function. Your organizational structure. HR technology. Staffing. Processes. KPIs. Employee complaints. Audit findings. Service levels. Projects. Budget. Even your backlog.

Then ask AI to compare what the business needs with what HR can currently deliver.

You might ask:

"Based on the business requirements we identified, where does HR appear to have capability gaps?"

Or:

"Which HR processes are most important to achieving these business objectives?"

Or even:

"What evidence would we need before concluding that this is actually a capability gap?"

That last question is particularly important.

AI should help you investigate—not simply confirm what you already believe.

My Executive Insight

This is good advice. The problem is humans – which means all functions in an organization do this – assume they know more than they actually know. This is human nature – we are arrogant. We think because we are working in it every day that we have insights into how well things are working throughout the department. That is a false assumption.

What we may be aware of are symptoms, complaints, bottlenecks, manual processes, report delays. But these are not the capability gaps we need to solve. They are symptoms of root causes that need to be solve too increase capability. So starting a conversation with AI about what you know will produce false results.

The process step is valuable. The use of AI here is not since AI can only evaluate the information that you, the human, provide to it. For AI to be valuable here, you need a more objective process to gather the information. Which, paradoxically, might involve another human.

AI Says:

Now Build the Bridge

This is where the Gartner model becomes especially useful.

Its one-page strategy template connects the current state to a future state through a relatively small number of strategic initiatives. Gartner recommends identifying four to seven metrics describing the current state, four to seven assumptions, four to seven initiatives, and four to seven metrics defining the desired future state.

Think about what this does:

It forces prioritization.

And AI can help you test those priorities. Suppose AI identifies 15 possible HR initiatives. Don't ask it which five you should implement. Ask it to evaluate the 15 against criteria you establish:

Business impact. Cost. Risk. Urgency. HR capacity. Workforce impact. Technology dependency. Time to value.

Then challenge the results.

· "What happens if we don't implement Initiative #3?"

· "Which initiatives depend on another initiative being completed first?"

· "Which recommendation has the weakest evidence?"

· "What assumptions would have to be true for this initiative to succeed?"

Suddenly, you aren't using AI as a writer. You are using it as an analytical partner.

My Executive Insight

Again, the methodology is good. If you haven’t recognized it – this is a SWOT analysis, an organizational assessment. So, the methodology is sound. It is the APPLICATION of the methodology that is difficult.

IMO ,if you haven’t defined your “current state” yet because you’ve taken the approach of light analysis, you only have surface information about HR’s capabilities based on symptoms. Do you need deep information before you proceed with HR Strategy? Ultimately, it will depend on the initiatives you choose for your strategy. If you choose initiatives where your capabilities are weak, you will embarrass the department and damage your credibility by making promises you can’t keep and/or can’t measure. So, you will move faster through the process of defining your HR strategy but you increase the risk that your strategy has flaws and is built on a weak foundation making it difficult to execute.

As for the future state, I still question what you can actually know. You can know how to improve HR’s capabilities, capacities, and services in your future state. But defining the talent needed? Not without management.

AI Says:

Metrics Change the Conversation

One of the strongest elements of Gartner's approach is the connection between current-state and future-state metrics. The template specifically cautions against filling the strategy with detailed measures of routine day-to-day performance. Instead, metrics should establish the baseline, track progress toward the target state and capture risks to mission-critical business priorities.

This is another place AI can help. Give AI your proposed strategic initiative and ask:

"How would we know whether this worked?"

Then keep going.

· "What metric measures activity?"

· "What metric measures an outcome?"

· "What metric would matter to the CFO?"

· "What data would we need to calculate it?"

· "How frequently should management review it?"

That conversation moves HR away from "We completed the project" toward "Here is what changed because we completed the project." That's a very different conversation with the executive team.

My Executive Insight

It’s true. Metrics do change the conversation. But there are three evaluations you should always perform on any metric BEFORE you implement it…

· Is it relevant?

· Is it repeatable?

· Is it reliable?

Relevance answers the question if it matters to the CEO, CFO and executive suite. And “time to hire” does not matter.

Repeatable asks if you can repeat this measurement every week, month, quarter, year with the same formula and get consistent results. If you have to change the formula each time you run the report – you don’t have a reliable metric because the calculation is always changing. (attention...I’m looking at you, headcount.)

Reliable analysis takes time to confirm. It answers whether the metric answers the same set of questions consistently, i.e. has a consistent cause and effect type of relationship so your metric is measuring data that reliably indicates a cause or a predictive impact i.e. it creates business intelligence.

Also, metrics is where a shallow dive into the current state of HR capabilities can really trip you up. If the assessment of the current state doesn’t evaluate the ability to create metrics objectively and quickly, you will again make promises you can’t keep and damage your credibility and embarrass the department.

AI Says:

The Human Still Makes the Decision

There is one final step. Close the AI.

Look at the strategy yourself.

AI can organize information, surface relationships, challenge assumptions, generate alternatives and help evaluate competing priorities.

But HR leadership still has to decide.

Gartner's model ultimately calls for HR to prioritize initiatives, establish milestones and deliverables, cascade priorities throughout HR, and regularly monitor and re-prioritize the portfolio.

Those are management decisions.

And that may be one of the most important lessons as we integrate AI into Human Resources:

Don't use AI to replace your thinking. Use AI to make your thinking better.

The Gartner template gives you the structure. AI gives you an extraordinarily powerful tool for working through that structure.

Your experience, judgment and knowledge of the organization turn the analysis into a strategy.

That's AI in HR.

My Executive Insight

I agree. This is an important point. But here’s another thing to remember…

AI assumes you provide objective information. So, if you feed information into this model, you are going to get results that look great based on the data you provided to AI.

But human data without objective analysis is flawed. Human data is full of assumptions, misconceptions, gaps, and missing answers. As IT has said for years – it’s “garbage in, garbage out” – as PWC recently found out in their thought leadership articles.