3 Ways Business Leaders and Shared Services Misunderstand Each Other
I've spent a lot of my career working in and around shared services, across HR, IT, finance, procurement, and other operational functions.
And one thing I've learned is that business leaders and Shared Services can sit in the same meeting, hear the same conversation, and walk away with two completely different interpretations of what just happened.
The business says: "Why does this have to be so complicated?" Shared Services says: "Why do they keep going around the process?"
The business wants an answer. Shared Services wants the right answer. The business wants flexibility. Shared Services is trying to create consistency.
Neither side is necessarily wrong. But when we don't understand what the other side is trying to protect, frustration builds quickly.
Here are three misunderstandings I've seen repeatedly.
1. The Business Thinks Shared Services Owns Everything That Touches the Process
This is probably one of the biggest misconceptions about Shared Services. If something goes wrong in a process managed by Shared Services, the assumption is often that Shared Services owns the problem.
But most end-to-end processes don't actually work that way.
A hiring process may involve a manager, recruiting, HR, compensation, IT, payroll, security, and Shared Services. An employee change may start with a business leader, require HR approval, move through a system workflow, and eventually land with payroll.
Shared Services may execute part of that process, but it doesn't necessarily control everything upstream or downstream. That distinction matters.
I've seen Shared Services teams spend enormous amounts of time fixing problems created somewhere else in the process. Missing information. Late approvals. Incorrect data. Decisions that were never communicated. Eventually, the team becomes known as the place where things get "stuck," even though the actual breakdown happened three steps earlier.
At the same time, telling a business leader, "That's not our part of the process," isn't particularly helpful either. The employee or leader doesn't care which box on the process map owns the problem. They just want it resolved.
One lesson I learned is that ownership and accountability are not always the same thing. You may not own every step, but if you are the front door, you have some responsibility for helping people understand where the issue is and what happens next. That requires Shared Services to understand the whole process, not just its piece of it.
2. Shared Services Thinks Standardization Is the Goal
I believe in standardization. You cannot scale an organization if every leader, location, or business unit gets its own version of every process.
But I've also learned that standardization can become a goal in itself. That's where Shared Services can lose the business.
A process can be beautifully standardized and still be a terrible process. It can meet every SLA, follow every workflow, and require 14 clicks to accomplish something that should take two. It can also be designed around what makes life easier for the function rather than what makes sense for the person using it. That is usually when the business starts creating workarounds. And workarounds tell you something.
Sometimes they mean people simply don't want to follow the process. But sometimes they are telling you the process doesn't work.
I think Shared Services leaders have to be willing to ask an uncomfortable question:
Are people resisting the process, or is the process creating unnecessary resistance?
Those are very different problems. The best Shared Services organizations I've worked with still standardize, but they understand why they are standardizing. The goal isn't conformity. The goal is to remove unnecessary variation so the organization can operate more consistently, efficiently, and effectively.
If a standard process isn't accomplishing that, protecting the process just because it is "the process" doesn't help anyone.
3. The Business Thinks "Customer Service" Means Saying Yes
This one can get complicated. We tell Shared Services teams to think of employees and leaders as customers. I agree with the intent. But somewhere along the way, customer service can get interpreted as, "Give the business what it wants."
That isn't always good service. Sometimes the answer should be no. Sometimes a request creates compliance risk. Sometimes an exception for one leader creates 20 more exceptions later. Sometimes what feels like a quick solution today creates a much bigger operational problem six months from now.
Shared Services has visibility the individual business leader may not have. The team can often see patterns across functions, locations, or even countries that one leader cannot. That perspective has value.
But there is another side to this. "No, because that's the policy" is rarely enough. If Shared Services wants the business to see it as a partner, it has to explain the why, understand what the leader is actually trying to accomplish, and help find another path when possible. The answer may still be no. But there is a big difference between being a gatekeeper and being a partner who happens to deliver an answer someone doesn't like.
What Actually Works
The strongest Shared Services models I've seen don't eliminate tension between the business and Shared Services.
They make the tension productive.
A few things help:
- Design processes with the business, not for the business. Bring the people who actually use the process into the conversation. Not just leaders. Managers and employees will often tell you where the real friction is.
- Measure the entire experience, not just the Shared Services portion. A three-day Shared Services turnaround doesn't mean much if the end-to-end process takes three weeks. Measure what the customer actually experiences.
- Treat exceptions as data. If everyone keeps asking for the same exception, stop treating it as an exception. There may be something wrong with the design.
- Give Shared Services permission to challenge its own processes. "We've always done it this way" is just as dangerous inside Shared Services as it is anywhere else.
One Thing I'd Challenge
We talk a lot about getting the business to understand Shared Services. I think Shared Services has an equal responsibility to understand the business.
That means understanding how the organization makes money or delivers its mission. It means understanding what leaders are accountable for. It means knowing when the business is entering a busy season, integrating an acquisition, opening a location, restructuring a team, or trying to hit an important customer commitment.
You cannot design great services from the process map alone. And business leaders have a responsibility too.
Shared Services isn't an administrative machine sitting somewhere in the background waiting for requests. Done well, it creates the infrastructure that allows an organization to grow without adding unnecessary complexity every time it does.
The relationship works best when neither side treats the other as an obstacle. The business brings context. Shared Services brings scale, process discipline, data, and an enterprise view. You need both.
Maybe that is the real misunderstanding. Shared Services isn't supposed to win against the business. And the business isn't supposed to win against Shared Services.
The process should work well enough that nobody has to win.
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About the Author
Amy Wang shares real-world insights of organizational transformation across HR, IT, finance, and shared services. With experience spanning higher education, healthcare, and automotive industries, she brings a grounded perspective to leading change in complex environments. Amy also serves as a strategic advisor on AI integration, helping organizations align technology with workforce strategy.
She started using #HRRealTalk to open up more honest conversations about leadership, change, and the human side of complex systems. She writes about what actually works, lessons learned, and how to lead with both clarity and empathy.
Connect with Amy on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amywang168
Amy Wang | Voice of Real Talk in HR and Organizational Transformation
