5 Lessons from Navigating People-Related Crises as a CHRO

One of the most challenging people-related crises I faced was serving as Chief People Officer of a school network during COVID. We were making decisions in circumstances none of us had faced before (nor could have envisioned), often very quickly, and those decisions affected hundreds of people.

What became really important for me was creating a framework for making decisions instead of reacting to the emotion of the moment. I kept coming back to a few questions: What problem are we actually trying to solve? What values are we trying to uphold? What are we prioritizing, and what tradeoffs are we willing to make?

We also made sure there were diverse voices in the conversation, because no one person could see every implication of a decision. That helped us make choices that were more human-centered and equitable, while still being consistent enough to work across a large organization.

The other thing I learned was how important it is to have a real-time pulse on your people. During a crisis, you don't always have time to launch a survey and wait for the results. You need trusted relationships and regular channels of communication so you already have a sense of what people are experiencing.

The lesson I'd share with aspiring HR leaders is: when things get messy, get disciplined. And I want to be clear here- this is not because process matters for the sake of process, but because a good process can be one of the ways you take care of people. The process also prepares you to communicate your decision afterwards. Be clear about the problem, your values, and your priorities. Bring in perspectives beyond your own, and stay close enough to your people that you understand what your decisions will actually mean for them.

The hardest people-related crisis I faced as a founder was reducing Otto Media to two employees after agentic AI changed the volume and type of work the business required. The decision forced me to separate task volume from human value. AI could handle research preparation, task breakdowns, briefs and handoffs, while people retained opportunity selection, evidence, public claims, client promises and final approval. That gave the remaining roles clearer ownership instead of leaving people to supervise a queue of machine-generated work. My lesson for aspiring HR leaders is to redesign the work before judging the people. Map what disappears, what becomes AI-assisted and what still requires accountable human judgement. Then explain the structural reason directly. Clarity cannot remove the difficulty of workforce change, but vague language about 'efficiency' creates unnecessary fear and weakens trust among the people who remain.

I once had a client that needed to cut a staff, which he preferred to do in a week before a board meeting, even if it meant losing the numbers favored the cutters. It was because the model did not reflect the fact that one of the people being laid off was the only one who knew a process that nobody had ever documented and that the week-long timeline had no handover. I argued that we could take three weeks instead of one, which is a small thing but was the entire argument.

We got two. It was sufficient, barely, and the cost of the delay was a fraction of the gap it would fill.

The lesson I'd give is the finance justification for speed is almost always about certainty than money. People want it to occur before anything else can, and it's worth saying out loud because, once it's said, it can be weighed against the thing you're going to lose.

My notable experiences are rooted in crises emerging from people difficulties due to the resistance and fear that arise whenever a large-scale transition of the enterprise system is being made. When an organization changes its entire operational system, staff members think of new technology as being dangerous to their jobs instead of as a means of increasing efficiency. I have faced a drastic situation when I had to introduce a new ERP system, struggling with the seriousness of the problem caused by the lack of internal support that could have blocked the project. Although the technical setup could have worked perfectly, the human component was in crisis because of the misunderstanding of the IT plan by the company.
In this situation, I suggested switching from the strictly technical approach to the empathy management strategy. I organized sessions between the operations directors and engineers so that they could clarify their visions of project success. We shifted our focus from general directives imposed from above to open discussion on a department level, which allowed people to see how their positions would develop instead of disappearing. By acknowledging the fear of job loss and including the employees in the configuration process, we turned opponents of the project into its champions.

They have been in long term recovery. They have relapsed. It's not just HR. It's patient safety. It's licensure. It's confidentiality. It's all your coworkers that care about this person and are watching this.

How do we make sure we are protecting patients and staff? What is the law? What would I want for myself if I were in their position? Once we can answer those three questions, the decision stops being agonizing. That individual was removed from risk that day. The information was transferred to the people the law allows to see it. The process for returning to work was clear, not based on hallway rumor. We sat down with our clinical team to develop the return to work policy, not just HR because I am not a clinician. Playing pretend to be a clinician will not work. This is the lesson every person willing to step into this work should receive: a policy manual is no better than the worst week you will ever experience.

When you are calm, write down who has the responsibility to make decisions and rehearse your crisis procedures.

There is no conflict between documenting the crisis and compassion. I split the questions apart because they are three different things, but documentation is the aspect of compassion that survives in a crisis.