After more than two decades building and scaling HR organisations across semiconductors, high tech and global capability centres, Jeevant Ojha has seen growth from every angle. During his tenure at Lam Research, he helped grow the India organisation nearly sixfold in five years. Today, as a Consulting CHRO to SMEs and startups, he works closely with founders navigating rapid scale, culture pressure, and the promises and pitfalls of AI in HR.
- After decades in large MNCs, you now advise SMEs and startups. What is the most uncomfortable truth you’ve had to tell a founder about how they think about people or culture?
- Lam Research India grew nearly six times during your tenure. What actually made that scale possible, beyond headcount and process?
- Everyone is talking about AI in HR. Where do you see leaders overestimating what AI can do, and where are they still not using it enough?
- If you were starting your HR career today, which skills would you prioritise that barely mattered earlier?
- When you evaluate senior leaders today, especially in fast-scaling tech or GCC environments, what signals do you trust most?
- What leadership behaviour looks impressive at 100 employees but becomes harmful at 1,000?
- If you had to remove one widely accepted HR system or process tomorrow, which one would you remove?
- No matter how advanced technology becomes, what part of HR should never be outsourced or automated?
In an exclusive conversation with StrongYes Media, he breaks down the uncomfortable truths founders resist hearing, the real enablers of scale beyond headcount, and why judgement and human connection remain non-negotiable in HR.
After decades in large MNCs, you now advise SMEs and startups. What is the most uncomfortable truth you’ve had to tell a founder about how they think about people or culture?
Jeevant: There are two recurring conversations that founders struggle with.
The first is the tension between loyalty and competence. As startups scale, founders begin questioning whether early employees still have the energy or skills required for the next phase. At the same time, they see external hires who are sharper or more experienced but also more transactional and more likely to move on.
Founders often want a definitive answer on what matters more. My view is that loyalty still matters deeply, because trust matters. Competence is important, but unless you are working in extremely specialised or mission-critical domains, the answer is rarely replacement. It is balance. You need people you can trust and people who can stretch the organisation.
The second uncomfortable truth is about culture. Startups grow quickly without realising when they have crossed the point where behaviour is constantly observed. Culture is not what you write as values. It is how consistently leaders reward and penalise behaviour aligned to those values.
Founders often underestimate how closely people watch their decisions. Once you scale, inconsistency becomes culture. Someone has to say that out loud.
Lam Research India grew nearly six times during your tenure. What actually made that scale possible, beyond headcount and process?
Jeevant: Experience helped. I had scaled similar organisations before, which reduced trial and error.
Beyond hiring and process, branding was a major lever. Lam works on some of the most advanced technologies globally, but the Indian talent market did not fully see that. We invested in telling those stories and positioning Lam India as a serious engineering destination.
Internal alignment mattered just as much. Global stakeholders needed to see what India could realistically deliver. Exposure to examples from other global engineering organisations helped them visualise scale and value.
The most important factor was leadership. We built a strong leadership team early, and many of those leaders continue to scale the organisation today. As the company grew rapidly, we also protected culture deliberately. Values were treated as operating principles, reinforced through rewards, decisions, and accountability.
Scale only becomes sustainable when leadership depth and cultural consistency grow alongside numbers.
Everyone is talking about AI in HR. Where do you see leaders overestimating what AI can do, and where are they still not using it enough?
Jeevant: AI is often misunderstood. Leaders overestimate its ability to replace judgement. AI cannot fix culture, accurately assess potential, or develop people. Intelligence is becoming democratised, much like information did with the internet. Access alone does not create advantage.
I have seen organisations use AI for resume matching and realise that candidates labelled as medium fit often perform better than high-fit profiles once humans engage with them. That judgement gap still exists.
Where AI is underused is in enabling HR to show up better prepared. An HR business partner today can walk into conversations with real-time business trends, talent data, engagement signals, and external benchmarks. That dramatically improves the quality of dialogue.
AI does not make weak HR professionals strong. It makes strong ones significantly more effective.
If you were starting your HR career today, which skills would you prioritise that barely mattered earlier?
Jeevant: Understanding business remains non-negotiable. HR exists to serve business outcomes. You need to understand products, margins, capital flows, competition, and profitability.
The second critical skill is storytelling. Influence comes from connecting data, people, and context into a narrative leaders can act on. As transactional HR work gets automated, relevance will come from interpreting information, architecting change, and influencing outcomes.
That is where the future of HR lies.
When you evaluate senior leaders today, especially in fast-scaling tech or GCC environments, what signals do you trust most?
Jeevant: I look for whether a leader has moved from execution to strategy.
At smaller scales, leaders succeed by delivering outcomes directly. At scale, leadership is about direction, anticipation, and enabling others. Leaders who remain deeply operational at larger scale often struggle because the organisation expects them to create future opportunity, not manage daily activity.
What leadership behaviour looks impressive at 100 employees but becomes harmful at 1,000?
Jeevant: Being the first person to speak. When senior leaders voice opinions too early, independent thinking shuts down. At scale, leaders must create space for ideas rather than unintentionally steering every conversation. Listening becomes more important than asserting views.
If you had to remove one widely accepted HR system or process tomorrow, which one would you remove?
Jeevant: Traditional performance ratings. Ratings create artificial class systems and shift attention from real performance to labels. Over time, this damages trust and weakens culture.
The alternative is frequent, meaningful conversations. Regular check-ins supported by data and insights, where AI helps managers prepare but does not replace the conversation. If I were building an organisation today, I would avoid annual ratings altogether.
No matter how advanced technology becomes, what part of HR should never be outsourced or automated?
Jeevant: Human interaction. Transactional work can be automated. But wherever empathy, judgement, or care is required, automation should stop. Employee relations, conflict, harassment cases, and moments of vulnerability need human presence.
When organisations automate those interactions, they lose something fundamental. We have already seen this fail before. That lesson has not changed.
