Who will own performance management, redux

Last week I posted a question about performance management - who will own it and why? The answer has profound implications on the future shape of the human capital management landscape. There are so many different categories of vendors (talent management, HRIS, compensation, etc.) out there with their own take on this question that I thought it would be appropriate to get some other voices into the mix.

Here's a quick digest of some of the thoughts:

• Morethanaliving suggests that you buck up and own your own performance management.
• Donald Taylor chimed in from the other side of the pond and thinks that without integration with the organization's existing processes, the value is lost.
• SystematicHR says that talent acquisition vendors masquerade as talent management vendors, and that talent management departments do in fact exist (although are not prevalent).
• Incentive Intelligence argues that the tail is wagging the dog here, i.e. that managers own the performance of their people and they should be dictating what tools are most valuable to them.

The discussion that ensued highlights the real scope of the problem - too many silos, too many disjointed processes, too many stakeholders with a piece of the same pie and vendors only thinking about the business problem from one audience's point of view. Paul Hebert's response on SystematicHR's blog was more in line with my way of thinking:

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.)

If the vendors have their way, your company will have tools that only solve one set of problems for one group of people. Yes, you own your own performance management, and you also own the types of tools that will be at your disposal and the right ways to use them in your organization. Speak up. 

Comments

[Rick Turoczy]

Buck up, indeed!

Great conversation starter. Thanks for throwing the question out there.

I'd agree that the "blurry lines of peaks and valleys" should be the goal. Maybe some day it won't be "you own your own performance management," but "everyone owns everyone's performance management."