2016 CHRO-CEO Roundtable

On Sep­tem­ber 22, Lon­er­gan Part­ners con­duct­ed a break­fast sem­i­nar for sit­ting Chief Human Resources Offi­cers (CHROs) from some of the largest pub­lic com­pa­nies in Sil­i­con Valley. 

The pur­pose of this gath­er­ing was to exam­ine the nature of the rela­tion­ship between the CEO and the CHRO – how they work togeth­er, how they build and dis­sem­i­nate strat­e­gy togeth­er, and best prac­tices for build­ing a rela­tion­ship with the CEO.

Discussion Leaders

Don Joos
CEO at $350 mil­lion Shore­Tel, a multi­na­tion­al sup­pli­er of net­work­ing sys­tems for business.

Tom Waechter
Until recent­ly Tom was the CEO at $1.9 bil­lion JDSU, a glob­al provider of sys­tems and com­po­nents for tech­nol­o­gy companies,

Paul Burgess
Paul is CEO and Founder of Link-Up Inter­na­tion­al, a lead­ing orga­ni­za­tion devel­op­ment com­pa­ny. Paul was the mod­er­a­tor of this event.

Topics Touched On

While details of the con­ver­sa­tion itself will remain con­fi­den­tial, the top­ics touched on in 90 min­utes ran a wide range.

  • Suc­ces­sion Plan­ning: how to advise boards and the CEO on real­i­ty-based suc­ces­sion plans, focus­ing on a tough­mind­ed assess­ment of the senior team
  • Devel­op­ment Plan­ning: how to cre­ate devel­op­ment plans that advance the careers of senior man­agers, includ­ing the CEO him/​herself
  • Strat­e­gy vs Man­age­ment: how to cre­ate orga­ni­za­tions capa­ble of run­ning effec­tive­ly, allow­ing the CHRO to work on high­er-lev­el issues
  • Pas­sive ver­sus Proac­tive Lead­er­ship: how to use the CHRO posi­tion as a way of antic­i­pat­ing changes and chal­lenges instead of only reacting
  • Cre­at­ing Change: work­ing with stub­born lead­ers (CEOs, Boards) in order to open them up for men­tor­ing and improvement