Recently, while recording a podcast, I found myself talking about something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: how much harder HR is than people give it credit for.

We tend to see HR as “soft” compared to the other seats in the C-suite. CFOs, COOs, and CTOs have hard numbers and clear metrics. They work in a world where things are either right or wrong. But HR? HR lives in the gray.

And I’ve come to believe this: HR is more art than science.
That’s exactly what makes it so hard—and so undervalued.  This week’s Friday’s Five, explains why HR is so difficult (and undervalued):

1. HR Operates in the Messy Human World

Accounting and finance are governed by rules and logic. HR deals with human beings, which means emotions, personalities, conflicts, potential, and fear. There’s no formula for managing people. What worked brilliantly with one person may fail with another. It’s more like painting or composing music than solving math equations.

2. Hiring Is One of the Hardest—and Riskiest—Skills

It is widely known that highly experienced leaders are only about 50/50 when it comes to making successful hires. Why? Because interviews are theater. Candidates put forward their best selves, and your job is to see through the performance and predict how they will act under real pressure, on real teams, over real time.

That’s not a science. That’s pattern recognition, intuition, and sometimes luck—the hallmarks of art.

3. HR’s Wins Are Invisible

When HR does its job well, nothing dramatic happens. Culture is stable. People work well together. Turnover stays low. But these wins rarely show up on spreadsheets. Unlike revenue or expenses, you can’t point to a single line item that says “HR succeeded.”

HR’s impact is critical on an organization, but often invisible until it’s gone.

4. Finding the “Obvious” Is an Art

In Obvious Adams by Robert R. Updegraff, Adams becomes legendary not because he’s more analytical than everyone else, but because he sees what others overlook.

As he explains:

“Picking out the obvious thing pre-supposes analysis, and analysis pre-supposes thinking… They don’t gather all the facts and then analyze them before deciding what really is the obvious thing.”

And:

“I never stopped to think in those days whether a thing was obvious or not. I just did what occurred to me naturally after I had thought things over.”

That’s what makes it art.

It looks simple only after he says it — but seeing it requires a cultivated instinct. HR works the same way. The best people decisions rarely come from spreadsheets. They come from the hard, quiet work of observing patterns, understanding human behavior, and having the courage to trust your judgment.

5. HR Shapes the System Everyone Else Operates In

Every other C-suite role relies on having the right people in the right seats. HR creates that system. They build the culture that makes execution possible. They influence the trajectory of every hire, every promotion, every leader.

And yet—because their work is hard to quantify—they often don’t get the credit. They are judged on lagging indicators, which are often not valued until they are missing from the organization.

The Takeaway

We undervalue HR because we expect it to behave like a science, when it’s actually an art.And art is harder.

If you lead in HR—or support those who do—remember: you’re doing one of the hardest jobs in business. Just because it’s hard to measure doesn’t mean it’s not the most important.

And if you want a quick, powerful reminder of how to see the truths others miss, I highly recommend reading Obvious Adams — it’s one of the best short business books I’ve ever read, and I think every business executive should read it.