Asymmetric HR Advisory

Andrew
Lobo

HR Advisor with a CPA. I help CHROs and HR Teams develop Business and Financial Acumen and ensure the work of HR drives enterprise value in all its forms.

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Andrew Lobo
The thesis

Why Asymmetric?

Since 1975, the composition of enterprise value has inverted. Tangible assets once drove 80% of what a company was worth; today, intangible assets—brands, human capital, intellectual property, platforms—account for 90%. That means nine-tenths of what makes a company valuable is invisible on its financial statements.

Intangibles carry value because they contain real options: the embedded ability to expand, pivot, or capture future opportunities. And real options have a defining financial characteristic—their payoff is asymmetric. The downside is bounded. The upside is not.

Asymmetric HR Advisory exists because human capital is one of the largest and least-captured sources of that asymmetric value. We help leadership teams see the options embedded in their people decisions, then build and execute strategies to grow enterprise value by capturing them.

Read the academic paper on SSRN →
Background

An HR advisor who speaks CFO, CEO, and CMO—fluently.

I help CHROs translate talent, leadership, and culture initiatives into the same financial and strategic logic used for capital allocation, risk management, and growth decisions. HR does not create value by "supporting the business." It creates value by increasing optionality, reducing non-obvious risk, and accelerating growth in ways most executives don't know how to model. I help make that value visible—to CEOs, CFOs, and Boards.

My background is highly unusual for HR, and that's exactly the point.

I help with your CFO. I'm a CPA with an MBA in Finance. I've raised $55M, built cash-flow models, developed business plans, and professionally valued companies. I understand how CFOs think, what they trust, and what makes them skeptical. I help frame HR investments so they are financially robust—not "HR-reasonable."

I help you with your CEO. I was a strategy consultant at two firms and later built and led the Strategy function for a $3B company. I helped design and execute a business-model transformation that doubled market cap in under two years. I translate HR initiatives directly into growth narratives CEOs care about.

I connect HR and Marketing—by treating them as the same discipline. HR and Marketing solve the same problem: influencing human behavior at scale. The only difference is the market served. Marketing targets prospects and customers; HR targets candidates and employees. The mechanics are identical—segmentation, branding, communications, pricing, adoption, and lifecycle management. I help CHROs use proven marketing tools rather than invent new HR methodologies.

I bring genuinely different lenses to HR problems. Forget generic ROI. Think business case. Some HR programs resemble business-interruption insurance. Others are best understood through real-options logic because the value they create is flexibility under uncertainty. I make this intuitive for you, your CFO, and your CEO.

I ground all of this in real empathy. I've been a 2× CHRO for PE-backed portfolio companies and held global HR leadership roles in multi-billion-dollar organizations. I know how hard your job is.

30+
Years practitioner experience
2×
PE portfolio company CHRO
$70M+
Capital raised, startup co-founder
CPA · MBA
Finance & Marketing
  • CHRO — two PE portfolio company roles
  • Strategy consulting — enterprise clients
  • CFO-level financial fluency (CPA licensed)
  • HR financial acumen program developer
  • Co-founder, tech company — $70M+ raised, successful exit
  • MBA — Finance and Marketing
  • Published: SSRN paper on real options in enterprise valuation
What I do

Four distinct engagements.

01
HR Real Options: Identifying & Building Strategic Value

A structured engagement to identify, quantify, and build the real options embedded in your HR capabilities—translating human capital decisions into the financial language of enterprise value.

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02
CHRO Business & Financial Acumen Advisory

One-on-one advisory for CHROs who want to operate as genuine strategic partners—not the people function at the table, but someone who can hold their own in a capital allocation discussion.

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03
Business & Financial Acumen Workshop for HR Teams

A two-day intensive for intact HR teams covering financial statements, business valuation, strategy frameworks, marketing, and productive dialogue—tailored to the client's own company and industry.

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04
Strategic CHRO Transition for Non-HR Executives

A structured onboarding framework for executives stepping into a CHRO role from outside HR—using analogies from finance, marketing, and supply chain to accelerate the learning curve.

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Contact

Start a conversation.

Engagements are selective. If you're a CHRO or HR leader looking to develop genuine business and financial fluency—or a CEO or PE Investor looking to improve HR impact on measurable enterprise value—reach out directly.

Email andrew@asymmetrichradvisory.com
Phone (216) 559-0669
Web asymmetrichradvisory.com
A note on fit.

This work is most useful to HR leaders who already sense that their function is creating value that isn't being measured, recognized, or leveraged—and who want the analytical tools to change that. It's not for those looking for validation of existing practices. The premise is that the current HR measurement and positioning framework is inadequate, and the path forward requires a different mental model.