Hi Reader,
One of my project sponsors recently asked me, “Isn’t that what project managers do?”
The funny part? What she was asking me to do had absolutely nothing to do with project management. It was more like a vague, hand-wavy instruction to “create a thing”, with no details, no direction, and no clear definition of what done even meant.
I laughed it off and told her I’d take care of it.
What “it” actually was, though, I still had to figure out.
Everyone's a PM
It reminded me of something a CEO I once reported to told me years ago: anyone in his organization could manage projects.
This was coming from the same leader who kept towering piles of paper on his desk, with no system at all. The same one from my Time Suck article who made me dig through a mountain of paperwork to find a signed change request because he insisted on everything being printed.
Did this CEO know how to manage projects? Nope.
Was he the best person to decide who would be good at project management? Also nope.
Let’s step away from project management for a moment and ask a simpler question: what does a pilot do? We’d all agree a pilot flies planes.
And yet, this is how flying sometimes gets imagined: you press a few buttons, the plane takes off, and later it lands itself. Easy, right? Of course not. Flying a plane is wildly complex and it just looks easy because someone highly trained is doing it well.
Many people can manage projects alongside their regular jobs. But can they be a dedicated project manager, responsible for large, complex, messy projects? Maybe.
This is where things get controversial, as not everyone is cut out to manage projects all the time.
Just as a pilot knows exactly what to do when an instrument fails, a good project manager knows how to respond the moment a warning light comes on.
Getting a project back on track takes real effort. It often involves creating a “back on track” plan with updated timelines, adjusted stakeholder roles, and regular standups (if they aren’t already in place) to stabilize the work and keep it moving forward. To those looking in from the outside, this work is easy to miss.
When a project looks calm, it’s usually because someone is quietly making dozens of difficult decisions to keep it that way.
A thousand tradeoffs
Anyone can push a few buttons when everything is smooth. Real project management shows up when the warning lights start flashing, the timeline slips, and “just take care of it” turns into creative thinking.
So yes, many people can manage projects. But being a project manager means knowing what to do when things stop being predictable and easy.
To all you CEOs and project sponsors out there - if your project is cruising along effortlessly, congratulations! You probably have a good one in the cockpit.
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Barbara Kephart, PMP
Founder and Chief Project Officer
Projects Pivot
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