True PM cannot be led as a technology project. And except in very rare instances, it can’t be led by HR. I think PM must be led by Sr. Line Management. Any other approach is likely to fail. For most organizations, moving from a non-PM culture to a PM culture is a huge shift, and there must be significant weight behind it. Starting at the top.

Without this senior leadership and comittment over time, I think any PM initiative is doomed.

So, does HR own PM? N0 – they do not. HR facilitates, designs, administers, coaches PM – but they do not own it.

Tom O’Brien

When I hear that talent management is “owned” by HR I get the same feeling. What I think separates good from great (to borrow a phase) is when you begin to blur that ownership across multiple functions/departments/divisions. In other words there are no silos of ownership but peaks of focus that are connected by valleys of communication that connect those peaks (weird description but that’s the best I can do after spending 9 hours in airports today.)

I do believe HR has a focus on talent management and they should reside at the intersection of all the talent needs of the company – but to confer the “ownership” word on them gives all others permission to be uninvolved.

In Art Kleiner’s book, Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success, Art grapples with the purpose of the Core Group. In my experience both reading and thinking about this thought leadership, it really depends on how the core group interacts with the social network and the relationship of HR to the Core Group in a social network analysis before you can design a purpose that HR can own and act on.

I have been for a number of years following the progress of Pay for Performance experts out of Ed Lawlor’s community and people who are workeffectiveness consultants internal to an organization. Based on what I have learned, HR practice is shaped effectively or ineffectively based on authoring a purpose and mission from which they can actually work. I find in HR, too many people make blanket states about HR responsibility and more without factoring in and developing a conversation where the core group and social network actually step forward and align on defining a networked relationship for the workforce within a company that is owned by the core group in service of their purpose and given the resources to work well for the social network at large (even beyond traditional forms of employment).

In response to Rick:
Again, I love a good fight, but I think we agree at the core of this one. My argument is that the whole point is to create engagement. At that point that engagement is achieved, you have self managing employees.

And to Donald Taylor:
Donald brings up a great point with the technology integration. I’d just keep broadening that to functional integration as well. I already used the job and compensation example, but I’ve also used the competency model here before. Competencies are a critical layer surrounding all of the talent processes. Both job and competencies (ideally) live in Core HR. Strategy is great, the next layer is the execution of the processes, and the end is the manager/employee interaction. All must happen without a hitch. Maybe this is why performance management sucks?

Lavinia:
Purhaps your question of the purpose is why we’re having so much trouble with this question. I’d suggest that the purpose is simple and goes back to my definition of HR strategy: “to shape the workforce” as ambiguous as it is. But it leaves room for each organization to interpret the appropriate approach for themselves.

-Dubs

What I think I was trying to communicate is that as a manager in a smallish company (250 employees) I believe it is my responsibility to understand the needs across my management team (my same level) and be constantly on the look out for talent – or identifying talent in my own group that may be better served moving to one of my colleagues groups. I own that responsibility. I look to the HR function in my own organization to bring me the things I don’t know about – new systems, new tools for identifying latent talent, new places to look for talent, and unfortunately, the legal rules and regulations relating to employees.