What a project manager really does

Over the years I have often heard people say that project management is a dry job, too technical. Certainly not creative. As I see it, it is the opposite: the PM is perhaps the role that needs creativity most of all. You need it to foresee problems, and to find solutions every day for the ones that couldn’t be foreseen.

The preface of Deliver or Die puts it the way I explain it to my parents: the PM’s job is turning problems into opportunities. Or, more simply, sorting out messes.

What a PM does

A project manager turns an idea into a concrete result, within time, cost and quality. Put like that it sounds simple; in practice it means:

• planning: working out what needs doing, in what order, by whom, with what resources;
• coordinating: bringing different skills together, internal and external, so they pull in the same direction;
• keeping time and the books: tracking progress and budget, spotting deviations early;
• ensuring quality: that the result lives up to expectations and stays true to the original idea;
• communicating: being the point of reference for the client, the team and the stakeholders;
• solving problems: with method, with calm, and with a plan B.

The PM is responsible for the quality of the output, but not for the creative choices. It is a subtle and essential distinction: the PM leads the process, without taking the place of the people who create. The job is to put others in the conditions to do their best.

What about pitches?

Should PMs also run pitches and pre-sales? There is no single answer: it is an organisational choice, and I have known agencies that did it and others that didn’t. A PM is particularly useful when the proposal team is large (beyond three or four people, self-organisation gets complicated), when time is very tight, and when the client is already known, because the PM brings the memory of what happened before. But it takes specific skills: leading a creative team through ideation without giving orders, revising plans in real time, and knowing when a proposal is complete and well told.

Why the role matters

The most common comparison is the orchestra: every musician has their talent and instrument, but without someone holding the voices together the result is noise. A creative project, however full of brilliant ideas, risks sinking without someone to line up skills, timing and priorities.

The simplest way to see what a PM is for is to look at what happens when there isn’t one:

• direction disappears: everyone works on their own part, and nobody has the big picture;
• communication fragments: the client hears different versions, the team finds out about decisions by chance;
• resources are wasted: overloaded people next to idle ones, delays, overruns;
• nobody sees problems in time: they are discovered when they have already become crises.

The criticisms, and what is true in them

PMs are accused of micromanagement and bureaucracy, of not really understanding the team’s work, of becoming a filter that slows communication down, of caring more about process than results. And with the spread of agile methods, some argue the role has become unnecessary.

There is some truth in it: a bad PM does exactly those things. But the answer is not to get rid of the role, it is to do it well. A good PM reduces bureaucracy instead of adding to it, knows the work well enough to understand its difficulties, opens channels instead of closing them. And even in the most autonomous teams someone has to hold client, time, cost and risk together: the name changes, the function doesn’t.

Doing it the right way

The PM serves the team, not the other way round: one step ahead on problems and one step back on credit. The skills to cultivate:

• critical thinking: weighing the options, questioning the first solution;
• creativity: finding new routes when the known ones are closed;
• flexibility: projects almost never go as planned;
• negotiation: with clients, suppliers, colleagues;
• time management, your own before anyone else’s;
• business understanding: grasping the client’s logic, to help them strategically too;
• leadership: inspiring, delegating, deciding when it is needed;
• communication, listening and empathy: understanding what people really want, even when they don’t say it.

And an attitude: not having all the answers, but knowing how to ask the right questions. Faced with a new problem you don’t need a ready-made solution; you need curiosity, the ability to question your own assumptions, listening, and the courage to ask.

How you become a PM

There is no single path. A background in economics, management, engineering or the creative disciplines helps; courses, master’s degrees and certifications (such as those from PMI or PRINCE2) bring method and credibility. But what matters most is experience: starting alongside someone, in assistant or coordination roles, and learning in the field. Because the craft is learned above all through the crises you go through, and what you learn about yourself going through them.