21.7.25

PERSONNEL DETERMINE PERFORMANCE.

I have been hoping, all year, to be able to write some posts taking stock of assorted developments that might have been percolating for some time and might be headed to some sort of resolution, or at least to some entertaining intellectual combat.  But events keep getting in the way.

Case in point:  Jennifer Sey, who once headed Levi's only to part ways with the company over a variety of Culture Wars things, subsequently to form XX-XY Athletics to sell sports wear with the message that men ought not be playing in women's sports.  She then wrote a column for New York's Post with the provocative headline, "I’ve ditched HR to free my company from the social-justice police."

Her complaint, stated pithily, is that mission creep swallowed the personnel department.  "Over the last two decades, HR has gone from operational support to Operation Head Girl Hall Monitor."
My statement touched a nerve because anyone who has worked in corporate America has been subjected to the censorious “Head Girl” rule-making emanating from HR departments.

And they are tired of it.

When I started my business career in the early 1990s, HR was responsible for recruiting, benefits and payroll — that was it.

As I moved up the ladder and found myself in executive meetings, the HR leader weighed in last on key business decisions, if at all.

Thirty years on, HR leaders are calling themselves “Chief Human Resources Officers,” and they proclaim their power with reckless and off-topic abandon.

HR departments today are packed with Tracy Flicks, the way-too-eager high schooler played by Reese Witherspoon in the movie “Election.”

Flick is the archetypal “Head Girl,” a term derived from the British school system and its tight hierarchy of internal discipline — ambitious and officious with little actual skill or intellect.
That passage had lots of stock-taking potential.  With the coming of the 21st Century came a bunch of unfunded mandates out of Washington that saddled personnel managers with additional duties.  It was sometime around that time that I became familiar with the term "chief jailable officer," which is to say, that functionary who could be brought to book if an organization did not comply with the unfunded mandate calling for sexual harassment training (Northern Illinois University subjected everyone to a couple hours of this circa 2004, solely to tick a box that the relevant programming had taking place, and there are ways for the discontented to rat out people who are creating hostile learning environments); there was a similar functionary who could be brought to book if the recycling initiatives or "sustainable" manufacturing wasn't what Our Progressive Betters wanted.

To Ms Sey, it was all too much.
British academic Bruce Charlton explains the Head Girl “can never be a creative genius because she does what other people want by the standard they most value.”

That’s why the Head Girls of HR made everyone add pronouns to their email signatures starting around 2020: Social standards. Not because it drove the business.

No, these time-suckers shift focus away from the business.

Front-of-house employees — builders, makers and service providers — must spend a significant amount of time thinking about the words they use rather than their actual jobs.

Critics of my viral comment pushed back at me: “You need HR to avoid unnecessary risk!” they chorused.

Right. That’s the fear HR leverages to maintain its unearned influence.
Right on schedule, John Hyman, who no doubt earns his keep advising the Chief Jailable Officer on the best way to Not Be Jailed, argues back.  "What HR is—done right—is the foundation of every successful, scalable, and sustainable company. It's the function that recruits the people who build your business, builds the culture that retains them, and puts the guardrails in place to keep you out of court and off the front page."  Maybe.  The personnel department vets the job applicants, but it's on the line managers to keep the employees productive.  The trade association of personnel managers no doubt approves of his continuation.
Who's addressing burnout, fixing dysfunction, making sure your managers actually know how to manage, and keeping you out of court? Spoiler alert: It's HR.

Any company that wants to grow needs HR to have a real seat at the table, shaping strategy alongside finance, operations, marketing, tech, and every other core function.

If your idea of "freedom" is the ability to ignore harassment, pay women less than men, deny accommodations, and build a company where "disruption" means no rules and no respect—then you're not running a business. You're running a liability factory.

HR doesn't kill creativity; it enables it—by creating a workplace where people feel safe enough to take risks, speak up, and do great work.

Requiring employees to be respectful human beings isn't a threat to your bottom line. It's the bare minimum.
A lawyer whose salary depends on chief jailable officers not being jailed is of course going to take that stance.  On the other hand, you might expect a guy who is hawking a book about fighting autocracy to toss off a bunch of strawmen about how without the head girls the guys revert to treating the office like bowling night.  It's bourgeois norms that have been deconstructed, not that the head girls are having their claws drawn.  Meanwhile, one of the head girls, Sara Yahia, engages Ms Sey's gripes, granting some and questioning others.  Her salary depends on head girls continuing to wield undue influence in the conference room, and predictably she argues, "Criticizing HR isn't wrong.  But abolishing it is like firing the fire department because they failed to save one building."  Depends on what that one building is, but I'm getting ahead of my story.  Ordinarily we could have wrapped up the stock-taking with observations by Zach McCue of Texas Public Policy Foundation.  "The typical HR regime — endless training sessions, speech policing, pronoun mandates, and risk-averse hiring filters — doesn’t just waste time. It demoralizes bold thinkers. It cultivates mediocrity."  That's a testable hypothesis: might there be some way to capture the partial effect of all those new unfunded mandates on productivity in industry or on learning in education?

And thus might the stock-taking have ended, with a call for further research.  But then the wrong building burned down.
That's the notorious kiss camera incident from a recent Coldplay concert in which Astronomer honcho Andy Byron and the Lead Head Girl, one Kristin Cabot, had themselves a tender moment.
The stunned words uttered by the CEO of a billion-dollar company who was caught cozying up to a female colleague on a Coldplay concert kisscam have been revealed.

As he caught view of himself on the big screen, he appeared to snap 'f**king hell, it's me'.

Andrew Byron, 50, made the outburst after the camera exposed him with his arm around co-worker Kristin Cabot's waist during the gig at Boston's Gillette Stadium Tuesday night.

The pair work at artificial intelligence start-up Astronomer. Chief People Officer Cabot, 56, seemingly uttered a more measured 'This is awkward' on realizing she and Byron were on a big screen.

They quickly turned their backs to the camera and tried hiding from its lens - but Coldplay singer Chris Martin was quick to crack a joke about their awkwardness.

'Oh look at these two! Oh what? Either they're having an affair, or they're just very shy.'
What were those defenders of the Human Resources empire telling us about harassment?  One of the surest ways to create that hostile workplace environment might be to openly and notoriously fish off the company pier, and here, on the big screen, are two very big fish!  The standard corporate-speak isn't going to help this time.
Public records suggest both are married - but that they live at different addresses to those listed as their spouses.

Daily Mail has contacted Byron, Cabot and Astronomer for comment.

The company provides generative AI software to a number of major companies including Uber, Ford and LinkedIn.

Byron heaped praise on Cabot in a November 2024 post about her appointment to the firm.

'Kristin’s exceptional leadership and deep expertise in talent management, employee engagement, and scaling people strategies will be critical as we continue our rapid trajectory,' he said.

'She is a proven leader at multiple growth-stage companies and her passion for fostering diverse, collaborative workplaces makes her a perfect fit for Astronomer.'
Normals didn't see it that way.
Apparently the canoodling pair had a co-worker along at the concert, and they're playing house.
Put your knife with a fork and a spoon and it looks innocent, doesn't it?

And now, Mr Byron has tendered his resignation as CEO.  The "Department of People" gals?  Still on the payroll.  It's all too much for Twitchy's Brett T., who quips, "You'd think HR of all people would frown on intra-office affairs."

Well, yes, but perhaps rather than an earnest stock-taking of the creativity-reducing consequences of stronger Departments of People, appropriately directed laughter and memes and mockery might be more effective.
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