Future-ready HR leader leads like Product designer: CEIPAL's CMO Andy Weiss

HR today isn’t just about policies or people operation, it’s also about influence, experience, and transformation at scale. With Artificial intelligence accelerating faster than most organisations can adapt, and employee expectations shifting just as quickly, HR leaders are being asked to move with the kind of speed and precision once reserved for marketing teams. It’s a shift observed by a seasoned CMO, CEIPAL’s Andy Weiss. 

In a refreshing yet brief conversation, Weiss draws parallels between building brands and building culture. The message was clear from him: if HR wants to win hearts, shift behaviour, and embed change, it’s time to think more like a marketer i.e. blending storytelling, design thinking, and bold strategic clarity to meet this moment of transformation.

Excerpts from the video interview

What’s the one marketing skill every HR leader should master right now?

Storytelling. It's the single marketing capability HR leaders need to master. Whether you're selling ideas, shaping leadership, or leading change, storytelling resonates on an emotional level and makes messages stick. The finest marketers win hearts before minds—and successful HR leaders can do it too.

CMOs thrive in chaos. What’s one agile mindset shift HR leaders must adopt to do the same?

Shift from predicting to sensing. Like CMOs, HR leaders must embrace ambiguity and build systems that respond fast. So HR needs to ditch the five-year plans and think of them as five-day pilots. Agility today means sensing what’s emerging and adapting it in real time.

If you had to pick only one of your 6 frameworks for HR leaders to implement tomorrow, which one, and why?

Inversion. I believe that rather than inquiring how to recruit or retain talent, Hr should inquire: What's driving us to lose it? This subtle inversion will help uncover blind spots quicker than most tools and assists HR leaders in identifying wiser and more actionable solutions.

What’s one mistake HR leaders often make when trying to be ‘strategic’?

Often, both HR leaders and marketers skip the why. The strategy becomes a checklist of activities for example restructuring, hiring, deploying tech without connecting back to purpose. But the true strategy is the system. It should answer not just what we’re doing, but why now? and why this way? Communication plays a key role here. Say a new product idea or strategy shift starts within a small leadership group. That idea might evolve into a reorganisation or market response. But if we don’t communicate why we’re doing it and bring the rest of the organisation along, that shift will feels disconnected. It’s important to bring out the clarity. 

What defines an agile HR function in 2025?

Context really matters. HR and marketing leaders must stay attuned to their moment: What’s happening in your culture? What constraints are you facing? What forces are shaping your teams—both globally and locally? Context, combined with clarity of why, is what allows agile organisations to respond with pace and meaning. 

From your viewpoint,  what’s one thing HR gets underappreciated for?

HR leaders deserve greater credit for its capacity to soak up ambiguity. Marketing tends to need more data, HR typically has less. And yet HR has to deal with the most emotion, the haziest mandates, and still arrives with ​answers. That capacity to operate under high-stress conditions with little data is their fundamental strength that often goes undervalued.

What’s harder - building brand trust with customers or culture trust with employees?

Culture is the foundation of the brand. If employees don't find the mission credible, the brand collapses, this is because every customer interaction begins from within. Culture is not only fundamental; it's more difficult to construct than the brand. Hence, for both HR and marketing, this is where all things must begin.

Complete the sentence: “The future-ready HR leader leads like a…” ?

Product designers. Designers obsess over the user journey i.e. they test, iterate, and balance the form with function. HR leaders should do the same: design systems around how people actually behave, not how we wish they would. Also, storytelling plays a crucial role in making those designs not only functional but also meaningful and adopted faster. 

You will find Andy Weiss at People Matters TechHR India, where he will be sharing his experience in the session  Keynote: Lead Like A CMO: Agile Frameworks For HR Leaders In Flux. Join NOW!