Brief Notes from a Project Manager’s Diary:

• We don’t live in a perfect world.  There isn’t a perfect system when it comes to dealing with the human factor.  And we’ll never have perfect and problem/stress-free project management.  A let-down for sure, but it’s true.  What does this mean?  This means that we have to fight this as much as possible by having a 95% perfect system.   It also means that we have to keep that 5% in mind, because we have to be flexible and understand that some clients, some projects, and some issues just aren’t fun and just aren’t easy or clear and part of our job is handling that gracefully using creativity, judgment, and flexibility.
• Human beings are not easy to manage.  Here’s my philosophy in a nutshell: it’s not project management that is ever the issue.  It’s human management.  It’s being able to understand, interpret, predict, and fulfill human desires, human emotions, human feelings, human concerns, etc… It’s the human element (as GE says in their commercials!).

And this leads me to believe that it’s oftentimes more important that you know how to manage humans (and everything that comes with them) than projects.  A project doesn’t get antsy.  A project doesn’t grow nervous or need to understand.  A human has a multitude of emotions and factors affecting their paradigm and everything they communicate.  Without attempting to contextualize humans when managing projects, a project manager will soon spin out even if they are the most  meticulous project manager out there and have the strongest technical background imaginable.  Sure, you can be PMP certified, but can you empathize with, relate to, predict, handle, and satisfy human wants and needs?