Friends,

I love spotlighting cool stuff happening in the people space. So here’s one for you.

I ran a poll a few editions back that showed a real spread in where people place themselves on AI capability against their peers.

And while plenty of people felt they were at or ahead of others, the comments offered a deeper level of insight.

People pro’s explained how they felt they didn’t have the chance to practically apply a lot of the knowledge they had, or where to get started on seeing AI deliver tangible results.

So imagine my surprise when my pal, Jessica Zwaan, posted about a new program she’s running, where the literal goal is to get you building and running agentic AI in. your. business.

It’s called the Agentic HR Accelerator program, and they’re accepting applications until 31 December. I hope it can help you.

Enjoy this week’s edition ✌️

Matt

In case you’re new here (or just missed it) here’s the past three editions of the FNDN Series:

Leaders will ask how your plan compares to peer companies.

Pave and Alpine Rewards asked compensation and total rewards leaders how they’re planning for 2027, from merit and promotion budgets to AI talent premiums to how much of the pay range shows up on job postings.

Whether you’re defending a budget, building a pay-for-performance strategy, or deciding how much of your ranges to publish, you’ll find the market context you need.

See where you stand and enter planning season with data you can defend.

Thank you for supporting our sponsors, who keep this publication free.

Know a startup Head of People looking for answers 🙋 why not forward this to them for some instant karma? ✨

This edition is based on the latest episode of the FNDN Series podcast, with Danny Seals.

Danny Seals is the founder of Knot, a People experience and transformation advisory, and the author of The Insightful Innovator. He built his craft at innovation consultancy, What If! (later acquired by Accenture), then inside Legal & General and Dubai's RAKBANK, designing employee experience the way product teams design services. He writes Knot Another Newsletter, where his recurring argument is that HR designs for process when it should design for experience.

Danny Seals has a theory about the HR business partner: today, it's the appendix of the People function.

"You've got this thing, but it doesn't really serve much of a purpose," he told me. "It's just hanging about from evolution."

He has worked with all kinds of HRBPs:

His problem is with the title and the architecture around it.

In most scale-ups I work with, the first HRBP conversation starts somewhere between 150 and 300 people, usually when a department head wants "their own" HR person.

Before you open that req, answer Danny's question:

What does the role uniquely own that nobody else can own?

The HRBP model took off in the late 1990s, off the back of Dave Ulrich's work.

The problem it solved was distance.

In Danny's words, HR "had become too detached from the reality of the business", so you needed someone close enough to understand what leaders wanted and translate it back to the specialists.

Nearly 30 years later, a People function should already understand the business.

And the role isn't delivering the strategic work it was designed for anyway. HRBPs spend about a fifth of their week on strategy.

Danny's conclusion:

"We have to 100% protect the capability, but I'm not 100% sure we have to protect the JD."

The most common answer to Danny's question is "the relationship with the business".

Danny thinks that's weak, and I agree.

The Talent team should understand the business. So should Reward and L&D. They "shouldn't need a translator to be creating value for the business."

When they do rely on one, the HRBP becomes the bottleneck.

The business talks to the HRBP, the HRBP talks to the Talent team, and the answer comes back or gets stuck. As Danny puts it, "rather than a bridge, it becomes a bit of a blocker."

At 50 to 500 people, there's often nobody behind the HRBP to translate to, so your first HRBP is really a generalist hire.

That's why the test matters even more.

I've seen this from both sides (once as the HRBP, once in the specialist team behind them):

And let's be real. AI is also taking routine work off the table.

IBM's AI agent answers 94% of typical HR questions, which leaves whoever remains to spend their time on judgement calls.

Some answers do pass the test.

If the actual answer is employee relations and the hard conversations at exit, that's a real job. Hire for it, and call it what it is.

If it doesn't pass, Danny sees two options:

Others land in a similar place.

Deloitte's Gary Johnsen argues for renaming and re-scoping the role, which is Danny's second option in all but name.

At startup scale, it looks like this.

A 180-person company. The VP of Engineering says their managers are struggling.

The standard response is to hire a generalist HRBP for Engineering.

The better response is to run the test first. What would that hire own that the Head of People and the managers can't?

Usually the honest answer is "work out what the problem actually is".

That's a capability. Someone still has to own it (you, or a manager with the time and the tools), but it doesn't need a new seat to start.

Danny works out what the problem actually is with a diagnostic he calls a Team MRI, and he's run it across more than a hundred teams.

In one example, a client told him people were leaving and proposed that onboarding was the fix.

But his discovery said otherwise.

The 'leak' sat between day 12 and day 37, when new starters finished the company onboarding and moved into their team onboarding.

The problem was the team, which wasn't working.

Of the issues that raise their head, decision-making is a classic gap that often looks something like:

The common fix is a workshop on empowerment. Danny's fix is an experiment.

For four weeks the team makes the calls, and every week they check whether to persevere or pivot.

In Danny's experience, the team often decides better than the manager would have, and the manager realises: "maybe I am the problem."

But "change isn't a talking sport, it's a doing sport." And it's the part most often missed in this work.

Case in point:

How often have you been to a company offsite where everyone leaves high-fiving one another, and then walks back in on Monday, reverting immediately to the same habits?

The underlying idea holds up beyond Danny's method. Google's research on 180 teams found how a team works together matters more than who's on it.

That is true business partnering.

Someone going into the team to find the real problem, with no translation layer required.

When I asked Danny for the one idea he'd want a People leader to steal, he went straight to problem valuation.

Pitch a shiny new program and "your CFO literally doesn't care". Walk in with "here is the cost of the problem" and the conversation changes.

Take the onboarding leak from earlier. If ten new starters a year leave in their first few months, and each costs $25,000 to replace, that's a $250,000 problem (illustrative numbers, but you get the idea). That's a conversation your CFO will stay in.

So before you write the HRBP job description, run the test.

Name what the role would uniquely own. Then find the problem the business is actually feeling, and put a cost on it.

If the answer is still "a relationship", protect the capability and skip the hire.

I'm curious how this lands for you.

If you have HRBPs today, what do yours uniquely own? Hit reply and tell me.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe.

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