I was sitting in an HR leadership team meeting watching a project slowly die in real time.
The project manager – a talented, credible HRBP – was presenting a straightforward performance management redesign. Clear scope. Six-month timeline. Solid business case.
Around the table sat representatives from Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, HR Ops, and three different business unit HR teams.
For the next 45 minutes, I watched each representative raise concerns “on behalf of their stakeholders”. New requirements got added. Scope expanded. Dependencies multiplied. By the end of the meeting, the six-month project had morphed into an 18-month initiative that needed to wait for the HRIS replacement that wasn’t even budgeted yet.
The project manager looked exhausted.
The team congratulated themselves on “thorough stakeholder engagement”.
We involve people in projects to defend against project deliverables
Here’s what nobody wants to admit: in most HR functions, project team members aren’t there to help the project succeed. They’re there to protect their particular faction’s interests against whatever the project might change.
A project gets kicked off with a clear owner – usually the process expert who knows what needs to happen. Makes sense.
Then suddenly every HR leader wants “their person” on the project team. The rationale sounds reasonable: “We need representation from all functions to ensure alignment.”
What actually happens?
The representative spends meetings raising objections for people who aren’t in the room. They relitigate decisions that were already made. They introduce new requirements that expand scope. They slow everything down while reporting back to their leader that they’re “protecting our interests.”
And away from the project, they get praised for it.
In a nutshell, this is toxic HR politics 101.
I’ve watched talented project managers ground down by this pattern. They spend 60% of their energy managing internal HR politics and only 40% on actual project delivery. The business is waiting for the solution. HR is busy negotiating to get past itself.
Why this happens
Most HR functions operate as competing fiefdoms rather than integrated teams.
Each sub-function has its own priorities, metrics, and ways of working. Projects threaten that autonomy. So leaders dispatch representatives not to contribute, but to ensure their function doesn’t lose power or resources.
It’s an immune system response. The project is the foreign body. The “representatives” are the antibodies.
And because we rarely hold anyone accountable for failed projects, there’s no consequence to this behavior. Projects die quietly. We cite “lack of alignment” or “competing priorities”, and everyone moves on.
The cost of protective involvement
Research shows 84% of HR projects fail to deliver intended outcomes. This pattern of self-sabotage is a major reason why.
When you involve people specifically to protect against deliverables:
- Projects take 2-3x longer than necessary
- Scope expands until nothing ships
- Decision-making becomes consensus-seeking theater
- Your best project managers burn out or leave
- The business loses faith in HR’s ability to deliver
And here’s the kicker: the work still needs to happen. So your team grinds away on doomed initiatives while the business problems persist.
There are two other patterns just like this
Protective involvement is only one of three self-sabotage patterns that consistently kill HR projects.
The other two are just as damaging and just as invisible to people inside the system.
Together, these three patterns explain why HR functions hit a wall when trying to transition from generalist to federated models. You’re suddenly managing multiple overlapping projects with no governance, no integrated view, and team members actively working to protect the status quo.
What actually works
The solution exists. It’s called Program Management – and no, that’s not just “better project management.”
Program Management is Air Traffic Control for your HR initiatives. It provides:
- Portfolio visibility across all projects
- Governance that makes decisions stick
- Clear accountability that prevents the protective involvement pattern
- Integration so you can see where three projects are about to hit the same manager population in the same quarter
Organizations with mature program management meet their goals 2.5 times more often. They waste 28 times less money on failed initiatives.
The challenge? A full-time Program Manager costs $180K+ fully loaded – impossible to justify when you’re not sure the approach will work in your culture.
Want the full picture?
I’ve written a detailed white paper that covers:
- All three self-sabotage patterns (including the two I haven’t mentioned here)
- The three core capability gaps that make HR project management so difficult
- What strong governance actually looks like in practice
- How one organization cut 140+ chaotic projects to 40 aligned initiatives and shifted from majority-RED to majority-GREEN status
- How to get program management capability at 70% the cost of hiring
Download “How Program Management Shifts the HR Value Equation” at vpmhr.com
If you recognize the protective involvement pattern in your organization, the white paper will help you understand why it persists – and what to do about it.
Want to make the ground-level work? Get the wisdom of my battle scars in “Project Management for Human Resources”
