Only when you properly and fully align individual, team and organisational goals can you deliver a total strategy. Thus HR should play an essential role in executing strategy. If HR understands this, and can articulate it effectively, there should be no confusion about their role and the gap in understanding can be closed for once and for all.
To function effectively and sustain success any business, regardless of its type, has to be more organic: to operate more as an organism than an organisation. This means you have to create an environment where everyone works together to meet the organisational purpose.The collective capability is what creates the precision that powers and propels performance and sustains success.
Sustainability has to include sustainability of the organisation itself. Paradoxically that demands an external focus.