WORK
MAINTAINERS, FIXERS, BUILDERS AND STRATEGISTS
I've worked in the world of HR/People for over 30 years. And in that time, I've been all four of these. I wrote briefly about this on LinkedIn awhile back, but I wanted to expand on it here, because I think even those of you NOT in HR will resonate with this.
I started as a Maintainer.
Not because I wanted to be. That's just what HR rewarded back then. Hold onto the policies tightly. File the paperwork. Make sure everyone got paid. Say no a lot because that was the way it was always done.
Maintainers are the steady ones. They run open enrollment without missing a beat. They keep handbooks updated when nobody else is thinking about handbooks. They make sure the audit goes clean, the comp data is right, and the I-9s are where they should be. They're the reason HR doesn't fall apart on a random Tuesday.
We don't talk enough about how much skill that takes. The function genuinely cannot exist without them.
But it's not enough on its own anymore.
Then I was a Fixer.
I deeply love to fix things. Many of us do! We're great dealing with the culture crisis nobody saw coming. The leader who quits with no notice. The acquisition that uncovers a hundred problems in week one.
Fixers run toward what's broken. The investigation. The hard termination. The team that's coming apart at the seams. The senior leader who's been quietly making people miserable for years, and somebody finally has to deal with it. They're calm when everybody else is panicking. They know how to triage.
I lived here for years. Most of us did. HR became the people you called when something was on fire. And we are GREAT at putting out fires.
The work matters. But if you spend your whole career fixing, you never get to the part where you stop the fires from starting.
Then I became a Builder.
This was the hardest stretch of my career. And the best.
Building can look a lot like fixing. I look at redesigning a function (and to some extent, a company) as building. I loved that work. Designing onboarding where there was none. Replacing paper-first processes with people-first ones. Standing up career frameworks. Creating things that didn't exist, usually with no budget and not a lot of support.
Builders look at what isn't there and decide to make it. They're allergic to "we've always done it that way." They sketch on whiteboards. They prototype. They get told no a lot, and they keep going anyway.
That kind of building is still everywhere. But the Builders I'm watching now are doing it differently.
They're creating AI agents to handle the repetitive questions. Automating the reports that used to eat entire afternoons. Reclaiming hours their teams used to lose to admin work nobody should have been doing in the first place. And so much more than that. There are many leaders experimenting with Claude to create career frameworks, systems and processes that work for their unique businesses.
AI will change the HR function. It already has. These builders are putting the systems and processes and agents in place, AND building these skills in their teams to be ready as change continues.
And now I'm a Strategist.
That's the mode I live in today. Seeing around corners. Trying to figure out what the world of work is going to look like before it gets here. Helping leaders connect their people decisions to the business in a way that actually makes sense to them.
Strategists sit in the conversations many HR people aren't invited to. The ones about acquisitions, market expansion, succession, what the next five years actually look like. They translate between people and business. They're not down in the weeds, but they know which weeds matter.
But the best Strategists I know aren't only Strategists. They still maintain when the foundation needs holding. They still fix when things go sideways. And right now, they're learning to build, because if they don't, they're going to get left behind.
Why this matters right now
HR is in the most interesting moment of my career.
AI is changing what we can actually do. The workforce is more deskless, more distributed, and frankly more skeptical than ever. The leaders who are going to thrive over the next decade aren't the ones who picked a mode early and stayed there.
They're the ones who can move between all four. And who know which one a moment is calling for.
A few questions worth asking yourself this week:
- Which mode are you in most days?
- Which mode is your organization rewarding right now?
- Which mode do you avoid — and what's it costing you?
- What would it take to become a builder this year?
For the leaders hiring HR people
The same framework applies to how you build your people team.
You don't need an HR leader who's only a Maintainer. You need someone who can hold the foundation, fix what's broken, build what's missing, and see around the corner. Sometimes all in the same week.
That's a different kind of HR leader than most companies have ever had. And it's the only kind that's going to keep up with what's coming.
COMMUNITY
I wrote the piece on maintainers, builders, fixers and strategists for
If you're running a warehouse, a plant floor, a route, a branch, or a crew, you're already moving through these modes every day. You just may not have a name for it yet.
You're a Maintainer when you're making sure the schedule is right, the safety meeting actually happens, and the new hire gets through their first week without falling through the cracks.
You're a Fixer when two of your best people aren't speaking to each other, when somebody walks off the line, when the customer call comes in at 4:55 on a Friday and somebody has to figure it out.
You're a Builder when you redesign the way your team handles handoffs because the old way kept breaking. When you start a stand-up. When you build a training checklist because nobody ever wrote one down. When you rewrite a job description so it actually reflects the work.
You're a Strategist when you step back from the day and ask why are we doing it this way? When you're thinking about who's ready for the next level. When you're looking six months out instead of six hours.
The best frontline leaders I've worked with (and I've worked with a lot of them!) move between all four without thinking about it. The ones who get stuck usually got stuck in one.
Here's where community comes in.
Look around the people you trust most. The other supervisors at your company. The peers you text when something blows up. The mentor who's been doing this longer than you have. The new hire who's seeing things with fresh eyes.
Are all four modes in your circle?
The veteran who knows exactly how to run a clean shift change because they've done it ten thousand times.
The one who's been through the hard conversation you're dreading and can tell you what to watch for.
The one who's already trying something new like a different scheduling approach, a new way to onboard, an AI tool that's saving them an hour a day. They are probably willing to share what's working.
The one who pulls you out of the weeds and asks the question nobody else is asking.
The leaders I lean on most have all four around them. And the times I've felt most stuck in my own career were the times my circle had collapsed into one mode.
When I was deep in Fixer years, I needed Builders around me. When I was building, I needed Strategists to remind me to look up. Maintainers keep me honest about the foundational stuff I sometimes want to skip past.
So the question for this week isn't just which mode are you in.
It's who's in your circle, and what are they teaching you?
If you are stuck, it may be because everyone around you is too similar to you. That sometimes feels right in the moment, but we're all better of by surrounding ourselves with people who are not just like us.
Time to widen the circle.
COFFEE
We are very fortunate to have a couple of local coffee places in our city that feel like home. People we recognize from all of our visits. And, baristas who know our orders. I like my ice with a little espresso, the baristas at William & Sons know that. And I love that there is a place I can go that knows my order!
See you next week!
One more thing!
While my primary focus at work is CPO advisory, transformation and project work with Distribution, Manufacturing and other frontline companies, I'm also building something with Lever Talent. Drew Fortin, formerly CGO at The Predictive Index, founded the talent strategy agency of the future a few years ago, and about a year and a half ago, we started chatting about doing some work together. I wanted to stay a solopreneur and did not want the headache of building out my company. Drew wanted the headache. And so, the seeds of a fractional practice were planted! We are now several engagements in, and I'm thrilled to add Chief People Officer in Residence and Head of the Fractional Practice to my portfolio career. I believe in Drew and in Lever and we're already doing some incredible work together (the practice, and version 3 of my AI in HR workshop, now powered by Lever with Drew's brilliant ideas running through it!)
Watch for more in future newsletters, or reach out with any questions!
