Jennifer Sey struck a nerve when she declared that her company, XX-XY Athletics, operates without an HR department.

“They produce nothing,” Sey said at Freedom Fest earlier this month. “They monitor our words. They tell us what we can and cannot say. They inhibit creativity. It’s bad for business.”

The DEI bureaucracy has hijacked creativity and initiative across American institutions. The answer is more vision, more empowerment, and more responsibility.

That viral moment — now with more than 5 million views on Instagram — and her subsequent op-ed resonated for one simple reason: She’s right. HR’s bureaucratic grip is choking American innovation. The diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy is killing creativity. Worst of all, it’s draining the humanity from the workplace.

At the Texas Public Policy Foundation, we’ve embraced a different path. We ditched the traditional HR model and built a self-governing culture grounded in vision, empowerment, and personal responsibility. And it works.

We’re a 100-person organization working across nearly every area of public policy. Every legislative session, we help pass dozens of reforms in Texas. We do this without the heavy hand of HR.

The typical HR regime — endless training sessions, speech policing, pronoun mandates, and risk-averse hiring filters — doesn’t just waste time. It demoralizes bold thinkers. It cultivates mediocrity.

Instead, we’ve built a culture on three pillars.

1. Vision

Every member of our team knows why we’re here: to advance liberty, opportunity, and prosperity through principled policy. We don’t need compliance officers to enforce that vision. It’s clear. It’s motivating. And it’s shared.

A 2016 study in the International Journal of Economic and Administrative Studies backs this up. Researchers Gary S. Lynn and Faruk Kalay found that clarity of vision — meaning shared understanding and communication around goals — had a significant positive effect on performance.

In plain English: Clear goals drive real results. Ditch the hall monitors. Trust your people.

2. Empowerment

We replaced top-down control with radical trust. No mandatory seminars. No endless policy reminders. Just continuous mentorship, honest feedback, and the freedom to take risks — even fail.

This culture empowers innovation. We hire people with integrity, not compliance credentials. And we trust them to deliver.

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Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

When someone missteps, we don’t need HR to issue a demerit. The team steps in — graciously but directly — with shared accountability.

As Sey put it, HR’s approach produces “mediocre people with no opinions.” We hire big thinkers with strong character. Then we let them run.

3. Personal responsibility

A self-governing culture demands ownership. No hall monitors or permission slips. Each person knows his or her role — and takes it seriously.

This attracts the kind of people who actually get things done. It’s the reason we’ve succeeded in passing bold, controversial policies despite heavy opposition. We don’t wait for permission. We build.

Jennifer Sey’s stand against HR’s dead weight is more than a media moment. It’s a call to action.

The DEI bureaucracy has hijacked creativity and initiative across American institutions. But the answer isn’t more rules. It’s more vision, more empowerment, and more responsibility.

At TPPF, that formula has unleashed our team’s potential — and it can do the same for any organization willing to stop cowering before rule-makers and start trusting risk-takers.

The soul of your business — and the soul of America — depends on it.