CHROs, marketing's digital transformation has a lesson for you

Who owns AI within an organization?

The CIO has a claim, as do the COO, CFO and CEO, but what about a CHRO?

Workday’s UK&I GM Dan Pell believes there’s a precedent for CHROs to leverage. Before Workday, he ran Salesforce's Marketing Cloud business across EMEA and watched the CMO's role get rewritten in real time.

The 2010s saw a “big shift in the world of the CMO” with the explosion of digital marketing, digital advertising and social media.

According to Pell, CMOs had a “very clear remit” until digital marketing arrived. The role didn’t just shift sideways – they kept the old job and took on the new one simultaneously.

With agentic AI embedded in the workforce and org chart of the future, Pell’s bet is that CHROs are about to undergo a similar rewrite.

UNLEASH put the theory to CEOs, CMOs, CHROs and analysts to uncover what CHROs can learn from marketing’s digital reckoning as they make decisions on AI.

Agentic AI, data and decisions: Is the CHRO having a ‘CMO moment’?

Mini Peiris, CMO at Cornerstone agrees with Pell that CHROs are having a marketing-style reckoning with digital advancements.

“For CHROs, agentic AI is a similar catalyst,” she shares, adding that the CHROs having agentic AI “at their fingertips” has “the same magnitude of disruption” as marketeers with digital tools.

Both CMOs and CHROs have “had to evolve from supporting the business to shaping business strategy,” notes Hannah Yardley, Chief People & Culture Officer at Achievers.

“The rise of digital marketing and arrival of agentic AI are also similar in how they put more actionable data into the hands of C-Suite leaders.” This isn’t about collecting more data, but using the insights to “make faster, more informed decisions.”

Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio, former CMO of Smartsheet, argues that “we’re in a Moneyball moment for People decisions” – decision making needs to shift, with gut feeling replaced with “rigorous data analysis.”

She shares that “CMOs were forced to move resources from the ‘creative’ side to data analytics. The same thing is happening with CHROs. Reports on engagement and culture are not enough,” meaning HR teams now need to tie AI opportunities to business outcomes.

Workday’s Pell agrees. Like marketing in the 2010s, “there’s so much new technology, and it’s all happening at the same time.” This requires CHROs to become tech-savvy and hands-on with the tools, as well as data-driven in decision making.

“If you’re running marketing or advertising campaigns, your data about your consumer has to be perfect. The same needs to apply in the world of the CHRO.”“If you’re running marketing or advertising campaigns, your data about your consumer has to be perfect. The same needs to apply in the world of the CHRO.”

Pell is clear that these technical and data competencies are an “additive skillset – the skills of the past around culture and places are still as important as ever” for HR.

Rebecca Wettemann, CEO & Principal Analyst at Valoir, argues that CHROs have historically been “better stewards of data than many other departments.”

The issue is that HR leaders haven’t always communicated that expertise effectively; “CHROs can take clues from CMOs in marketing their initiatives in terms that are compelling beyond the walls of HR.”

Offering a different angle, AMS Global CMO Kimberly Armstrong argues that “the biggest lesson marketing can offer HR isn’t how to adopt AI. It’s how to lead through it.”

“The lesson marketing learned is one HR can benefit from: Don’t start with the technology. Start with the business problem you’re trying to solve and experiences you’re trying to improve. Then determine where AI can help,” notes Armstrong.

Yardley agrees. “As CMOs learned years ago, buying the latest tools didn’t automatically create better experiences. Success came from bringing employees along for the journey, providing the training, resources and expectations they needed to change the way they worked.”

That’s an optimistic view of the CMO-CHRO parallel – but it’s not necessarily the full picture HR needs before taking action.

It’s not just different for CHROs, the stakes are much higher

While CHROs can take inspiration from marketing’s digital transition, the direction of travel for HR is different, according to Armstrong. That ship has sailed, because digital technology has already “changed how HR recruited, built employer brands and engaged talent online.”

For Chris Fudge, CMO at Achievers, the digital transformation was “a matter of survival” for CMOs and although there is a similar feel for CHROs now, “the scale is different.”

Therefore, it’s important that CHROs don’t just “copy the marketing playbook,” says Eightfold AI’s CMO Navneet Singh. “The stakes are even higher” for CHROs: “People aren’t customers, and work isn’t a marketing funnel. CHROs have a greater responsibility to balance productivity with fairness, transparency and trust,” shares Singh.

“AI in workforce decisions carries a very different level of organizational responsibility than AI in marketing campaigns.”“AI in workforce decisions carries a very different level of organizational responsibility than AI in marketing campaigns.”

Cornerstone’s Peiris notes that while marketing could experiment with tools and processes, this “isn’t always the case for CHROs when decisions impact someone’s livelihood.”

AI is a 'shared endeavor,' not a solo one

Another element that makes the agentic AI decision different and harder for CHROs, according to Wettemann, is that CHROs are starting from a credibility deficit CMOs never had.

“No-one questioned the appropriateness of the CMO to step up and lead the transformation of marketing.” By comparison, “there’s considerable debate about how many HR leaders are up to the AI transformation challenge,” she argues.

This deficit is compounded by scale – marketing’s digital shift touched one function, but AI touches all of them. This leaves CHROs with a specific decision – how much to own AI alone, and how much to share.

Peiris argues HR cannot claim complete AI ownership; AI must be “a shared endeavor” across the C-Suite and mandated by the board.

Workday’s Pell sees the flip side of this as a CHRO advantage that CMOs never had. Marketing’s transformation happened largely in isolation – there was some support from IT, but “the CMO was making a lot of decisions about tech and the future of the business” alone, at pace.

CHROs do not need to repeat that siloed decision-making. Achievers’ Fudge suggests that other C-Suite leaders, including CMOs, can act as “thought partners: sharing what’s working, stress testing strategy together, and fine-tuning enablement efforts.”

None of that shared AI ownership means CHROs can shirk their AI responsibilities. Eightfold’s Singh is direct about where the line is: “CHROs don’t need to own every AI initiative, but they do need to lead the conversation about how AI changes work.”

Precisely because AI affects “technology, economics, leadership and work simultaneously, the CHRO’s unique contribution is connecting those changes back to people and organizational performance.”

The risk of making the wrong decision is real and tangible. If CHROs don’t take ownership, “the alternative is AI transformation seen through the lens of productivity and efficiency, instead of opportunity,” notes Syndio’s Colacurcio. This future “isn’t good for anyone, including IT,” concludes Peiris.

That brings the question back to: Who owns AI? The uncomfortable answer is nobody, and everybody. CHROs must decide to own the part no other function is positioned to: making sure that decisions get made with people, not just processes, at the center.