In this age of AI, digital transformation, and constant change, what does good C-suite leadership look like? Helen Russell, Chief People Officer (CPO) of tech business HubSpot, suggests that “future-fit” leaders have​ to​ embrace their “inner founders.”
HubSpot is best known for its suite of customer relationship management (CRM) tools, available through a ​unified​ AI-powered platform. Russell was previously CHRO at larger businesses such as vehicle manufacturer Rivian, as well as start-ups. She also has extensive experience working with founder-CEOs. But while these are disparate organization types, she sees an overlap in the attributes required to manage them.
“Today, all leaders need to be able to fly at 30,000 feet one moment and then to dive down to two feet the next,” Russell argues. Her point is that, while leaders at large organizations with substantial teams to delegate to have the luxury of contemplating the big picture, founders have always had to adopt a dual focus on broad-brush strategy and day-to-day detail.
Leaders will need to become more comfortable with failure.
In practice, that means modern leadership requires new capabilities. Russell singles out three areas where there is a particular urgency for CEOs and their C-suite peers to upskill.
“First, proximity to the business’s work is now essential,” she says. “If you rely on second-hand reports and updates, you’re not really going to understand how the business is transforming.”
Proximity could be seen as the “flying low” element of the challenge. In established businesses with tried and tested practices, the C-suite needs to form a clear picture of how the business operates, despite not directly executing operational tasks or working on the front line. They trust their workforce to execute effectively. But developing businesses are in a constant state of innovative flux, including experimentation with emerging technologies such as AI. Their leaders must be more than part of the conversation; they must steer the narrative. Otherwise, they risk becoming remote figures who are out of touch with their businesses.
Russell’s second key capability is more akin to “flying high.” Modern leaders are transitioning from map readers to compass bearers, she argues. “Historically, leaders relied on pattern recognition. As their careers advanced, they could apply lessons learned in previous situations to each new challenge,” she explains. “But in this new world, those maps are no longer relevant. Instead, leaders must take constant compass readings to set their direction.”
It’s a shift that means moving away from “this is what worked before” to “this is what might work this time.” Leaders must systematically set out a hypothesis, test it, and then recalibrate as required. “Leaders will need to become more comfortable with failure,” Russell points out. “That may be difficult [for them] because ​​th​eir careers have been built​ on being right.”
That feeds through to Russell’s third goal for modern leaders. Armed with greater insight about their changing organizations and with a newfound willingness to experiment and iterate, they must review how they build their teams.
“Increasingly, businesses are going to rely on hybrid teams of human beings and AI agents,” she says. Leaders will face the challenge of which tasks to assign to AI and which to their human colleagues, as well as the emotional effect this may have on the latter.
“Once you’re comfortable getting things wrong, you’ll use failure as a learning exercise.”- Helen Russell, CPO of tech business Hubspot
Russell urges leaders to get out into their organizations and spend time really understanding its processes. She points to the “gemba walks” (“gemba” is Japanese for “real place”) pioneered by Japanese automotive giant Toyota, renowned for its lean manufacturing approach.
“The idea is that, by moving through the business’s processes and practices, you get to understand them in detail,” she says. “Rather than just receiving updates on what’s going on, you’re in a position to ask the right questions and then to help make improvements.”
New types of training and leadership development work can also be effective. At HubSpot, Russell hosted a two-day exercise for directors and leaders in the business. They took part in a simulation in which they had to manage a company facing a series of different scenarios, from the emergence of a new competitor to a pandemic-induced shutdown.
“The goal was to force that proximity to work, and to encourage directors to understand the trade-offs that are made at every turn by our senior leadership team,” Russell explains. “It also encouraged people to build breadth and to think more horizontally.”
In a world where AI increasingly takes on specialist work, she argues, leaders must add a broad, generalist knowledge of different business processes to their deep domain expertise. “We want people to be more T-shaped,” Russell confirms.
Russell is also an advocate for humility in the leadership team. “Once you’re comfortable getting things wrong, you’ll use failure as a learning exercise,” she says. “But that requires people to be okay ​​with ​not having all the answers and seeing failure as a learning opportunity.​”
Emotional intelligence becomes critical. If you’re creating these new hybrid teams, you have to create trust quickly.
CPOs and CHROs will naturally be at the forefront of this transition. But alongside the need to drive learning and development, Russell points to another challenge. “It’s incumbent on CPOs to create organizations of high trust,” she says.
The workforce must feel that AI is there for them, as a supporting tool, not as something they should be wary of embracing for fear that it becomes too useful. Only then, Russell suggests, will they be keen to learn to use it effectively.
Russell’s final piece of advice for future-fit leaders is that some of the qualities they have already nurtured – notably, emotional intelligence and vision – will remain as important as ever. “One task, amid all this noise, is to ​​deliver the focus and clarity​ while building the trust​ that the business is looking for,” she says. “And emotional intelligence becomes critical. If you’re creating these new hybrid teams, you have to create trust quickly. Otherwise, people will worry you’re out to replace them.”
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