Why the barrier is rarely competence. It is confidence and a limited fluency in the language of finance.
By Dr Swastika Juggernath | Conversations With Swas
I left a recent HR conference with a question I could not shake. In a room full of capable, qualified HR practitioners, why did so many of them describe feeling like guests at their own Exco table rather than members of it? The answer, once I started listening properly, had very little to do with their grasp of people practice and everything to do with what happens the moment the conversation turns to money.
This is not a new complaint. It is, however, a solvable one and that is the more useful place to start.
The Seat Has Been Won. The Influence Has Not.
Over the past decade, HR has largely won the argument for a place at the top table. Research from the AIHR Academy shows that nearly 70% of publicly traded companies have seen rising engagement between their Chief Human Resources Officer and the board, with close to 60% of firms seeing the CHRO as now a regular fixture at board level. Having a seat, though, is not the same as being heard.
A Harvard Law School corporate governance forum review of the CHRO's evolving board role identified limited commercial and financial acumen as one of four recurring reasons HR leaders lose ground in the boardroom, alongside being perceived as purely administrative and having their access shaped by the CEO. One board member quoted in that review put it plainly: HR leaders who can speak the language of finance and operations carry far more weight in the room.
A hiring manager sits across from two candidates for the same regional sales role. One went to a similar university, uses the same turns of phrase, laughs at the same jokes. The other doesn't. Ninety minutes later, the manager can't quite explain why, but the first candidate just "felt right."
That feeling isn't chemistry. It's affinity bias doing exactly what it evolved to do: rewarding familiarity and mistaking it for fit.
The interview is over before it starts
Prickett, Gada-Jain and Bernieri's 2000 study filmed 59 real job interviews and showed observers nothing but the opening handshake and greeting. Their snap judgements of the candidates lined up closely with the interviewers' own final evaluations, made a full 20 minutes later, after the actual conversation happened. The interview content wasn't doing the work. The first few seconds were.
This is the uncomfortable part for anyone who trusts their read on a room: the remaining 45 minutes of most interviews function less as evaluation and more as confirmation.
The interviewer isn't gathering new evidence. They're building a case for a verdict they already reached.
Read more: Why gut-feel interviews fail and how you can measure competence instead
Executive job evaluation sits at the sharp end of organisational design and reward integrity. Get it right and the grade reflects true accountability, decision magnitude and the risk the role carries. Get it wrong and the entire structure drifts - grades inflate, internal equity collapses and external market comparisons become meaningless. Validity does not emerge from templates or title matching. It emerges from thousands of hours spent inside the living reality of different businesses: their size, structure, industry dynamics, geographic reach and the specific demands each places on a CEO, CFO or similar executive (Spencer Stuart, 2017).
A note on terminology is essential at the outset. Throughout this article, the term “transformative industries” refers to sectors characterised by rapid technological disruption, shifting regulatory landscapes, intense competitive pressure or fundamental changes in business models. These environments feature high uncertainty, incomplete or conflicting information, and compressed decision cycles. They stand in contrast to more stable or mature industries where parameters are relatively predictable and historical patterns retain greater predictive value. Typical examples include technology-enabled services, renewable energy and selected manufacturing sectors undergoing digital or green transition. The label is not a value judgement; it simply signals that the rate of external change materially elevates the problem-solving intensity and risk exposure carried by executive roles.
The parameters that matter are concrete. Industry character - transformative or steady-state. Organisational type - private sector standalone or listed group. Turnover bands, capital employed (total equity plus total liabilities), total assets, employee numbers, number of core businesses, operations or branches, and countries of operation. These are not administrative check-boxes. They are the architecture of complexity. A CEO or CFO in a single-unit private company with turnover of ZAR225–450 million, capital employed of ZAR110–225 million, fewer than 500 employees, one core business, one operation and one country carries a fundamentally different weight of accountability from the same title in a multi-business, multi-country group of similar headline revenue. The difference is not semantic. It is the difference between managing a contained enterprise and navigating cross-border regulatory, currency, tax and stakeholder interfaces that multiply decision risk.
Size is a proxy for decision magnitude and risk exposure
Turnover, capital employed and total assets are imperfect but powerful signals of the financial and operational consequences of executive judgement. Larger capital bases increase the absolute size of potential mis-steps in investment, working-capital or funding decisions. Employee numbers shape the people-risk surface and the span of indirect influence. Yet size alone is blunt. Two organisations of identical turnover can differ radically in capital intensity, asset composition and the velocity of cash conversion. The evaluator who has spent years inside both capital-heavy and asset-light businesses recognises that a given rand of turnover in a transformative industry often embeds higher uncertainty and faster obsolescence risk than the same rand in a mature, regulated sector.
Structure compounds the effect. A single-unit standalone company concentrates accountability. The executive has nowhere to hide and fewer internal buffers. Multi-unit or multi-business structures introduce matrix tensions, transfer-pricing complexity and the need to optimise across competing P&Ls. Number of operations and countries multiplies this further. One country and one branch keep the regulatory, cultural and logistical variables relatively contained. Cross-border operations introduce jurisdictional risk, reporting asymmetries and the requirement to hold coherent strategy across divergent market conditions. Research on organisational complexity shows that diversified firms place higher demands on executives and that the labour market for CEOs differs markedly between focused and complex organisations (Berry et al., 2006). The evaluator who has not lived these differences treats them as incremental. The evaluator with deep immersion treats them as step-changes in the freedom to act and the consequences of error.
Consider the practical contrast. The CEO of a mid-scale single-unit private company in a transformative industry owns the full enterprise strategy, culture and long-term viability. With limited specialist support the role demands continuous integration of external signals, capital allocation under uncertainty and direct leadership of the executive team. The parallel CFO role carries primary accountability for the entire financial architecture - liquidity, capital structure, reporting integrity and risk - with few internal layers to absorb technical complexity. Shift the same titles into a multi-business, multi-country group of comparable headline size and the picture changes. The group CEO operates through business-unit leaders and shared services; certain decisions are escalated or shared. The group CFO works through layered finance structures where specialised teams handle country or divisional reporting. Accountability remains high, yet the shape of the work and the required depth of personal problem-solving shift materially.
Industry character and organisational type reshape the cognitive load
Read more: What Makes Executive Job Evaluation Valid: The Imperative of Deep Business Understanding
Just 3 decades ago South Africa, the Rainbow Nation was the toast of the world. Now our people and our businesses are struggling to survive, and our African Dream has become a nightmare of poverty, crime, disunity and disintegration.
THE STATE OF OUR ECONOMY
THE ROOT CAUSE OF SA’s ECONOMIC DECLINE
Read more: Misuse of Artificial Intelligence Spells Business Suicide
Stop debating Return to Office policies and start focusing on personality. Learn how to assess for the remote-ready profile, focusing on autonomy and social contact.
By Caitlin Quibell, Talent Management Expert at Lumenii
We’re deep into 2026, and the great Return to Office debate has stalled. Across South Africa, executive teams are still burning hours arguing the same questions. Two days in the office or three? Tuesdays and Thursdays, or pick your own?
And yet, even with a carefully negotiated hybrid policy in place, HR leaders keep noticing the same frustrating pattern. Some employees are thriving - producing their best work, reporting high satisfaction. Others, in the exact same roles under the exact same policy, are quietly fading. Disengaged. Missing deadlines. Burning out from the friction of their week.
Why? Because we’re trying to solve a psychological problem with an administrative one.
A mandate can’t change human nature. Whether someone flourishes at their dining room table or genuinely needs the hum of an open-plan office has very little to do with their technical skill or your company policy. It comes down to personality.
To build sustainable, high-performing hybrid teams, we need to stop debating policy and start understanding the remote-ready profile.
Read more: The "Remote-Ready" Profile: Why Some Employees Thrive at Home and Others Fade
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