The Project Manager Who's Managing Nothing

Your project manager is busy. Extremely busy.

They're on site visits. They're in client meetings. They're updating schedules. They're answering superintendent calls. They're dealing with submittals. They're putting out fires. They work 55 hours a week and never complain about it.

But here's what they're not doing: managing projects.

I don't mean they're bad at their job. I mean the job they're doing isn't project management. It's project coordination. It's firefighting. It's being the most responsive person in the room. And you're paying $80-100K for someone who's essentially doing advanced customer service.

The symptoms are everywhere. Jobs finish late but nobody saw it coming. Costs creep up but there's no early warning system. The same mistakes repeat across projects because there's no mechanism to capture what went wrong. Your PM can tell you what happened yesterday, but they can't tell you what's going to happen next week.

You keep thinking the problem is workload. "They're managing too many projects." So you consider hiring another PM. But adding another coordinator doesn't fix a management problem. It just distributes the chaos across more people.

Here's What Actually Happens

Real project management has three components: planning, tracking, and correcting. Most PMs spend 90% of their time on tracking—updating schedules, logging RFIs, documenting changes. They spend maybe 5% on planning and 5% on correcting.

That ratio should be inverted.

Planning means looking ahead 2-4 weeks and identifying what will go wrong before it does. It means knowing that the electrical rough-in in three weeks requires updated shop drawings that haven't been submitted yet. It means seeing that labor availability in February conflicts with three project schedules, not just yours.

Tracking is necessary but insufficient. Yes, update the schedule. Yes, log the RFIs. But if that's where the work ends, you're just documenting failure in real-time.

Correcting means making decisions and changing course. Not escalating everything to you. Not waiting for problems to resolve themselves. Not hoping the superintendent figures it out.

Most PMs are conflict-averse. They'll track a problem religiously but won't make the hard call to tell a client we're pushing their date, or tell a trade partner they're not performing, or tell you we underbid the job and need to change how we're approaching it.

So problems get tracked beautifully... right up until they explode.

Why This Persists

You hired someone who's responsive and detail-oriented. Those are good qualities. But they're coordinator qualities, not manager qualities.

A coordinator reacts well. A manager anticipates.

A coordinator updates stakeholders. A manager makes decisions.

A coordinator is liked by everyone. A manager occasionally pisses people off because they're protecting the outcome, not the relationship.

You probably promoted your best coordinator into a PM role. They were great at keeping things organized, so you assumed they'd be great at managing projects. But those are different skill sets. And without training them—actually training them, not just throwing them into the role—you've set them up to do coordination work at a management salary.

The second reason this persists: you haven't defined what project management actually means in your company.

If you asked your PM right now, "What's your job?" they'd probably say something like: "Keep projects on schedule, manage client expectations, coordinate with trades, handle submittals."

None of that is wrong. But none of it is sufficient.

Here's what the job should be: "Deliver projects on time and on budget by identifying risks early, making decisions quickly, and ensuring lessons get captured."

Notice the difference? One is a list of activities. The other is an outcome with accountability.

The Human Friction

If you push your PM to manage instead of coordinate, they'll resist. Not because they're lazy. Because you're asking them to do something uncomfortable.

You're asking them to have hard conversations with clients about delays.

You're asking them to tell a superintendent their plan won't work.

You're asking them to come to you with bad news early, before they've figured out how to fix it.

You're asking them to make judgment calls that might be wrong.

Coordination is safe. Management is risky. And most people would rather be busy and safe than effective and exposed.

You'll also resist. Because real project management means your PM will bring you problems you didn't know existed. They'll flag risks that feel premature. They'll tell you we can't hit a date you already promised. They'll challenge estimates you approved.

You hired someone to reduce your stress, not create new problems. But that's exactly what good project management looks like in the early stages—surfacing issues you'd rather not deal with.

What Changes

First, define the job clearly. Not the activities—the outcomes.

"Your job is to deliver projects on time and on budget. Here's how you'll be measured: Did the project finish within 5% of the scheduled duration? Did it finish within 5% of the estimated cost? If not, did you flag the variance at least two weeks before it became critical?"

That's it. The rest is up to them to figure out.

Second, create a weekly project review rhythm. Not a status update meeting. A forward-looking session.

"What's at risk in the next two weeks? What decisions need to be made? What's blocking progress? What did we learn this week that applies to other projects?"

Thirty minutes per project, max. If they can't articulate risks, they're not managing—they're reacting.

Third, stop rewarding responsiveness over effectiveness. If your PM is answering every call immediately, they're not thinking ahead. If they're always available, they're not doing deep work. Protect their time so they can actually manage.

Fourth, build a lessons-learned system. After every project, require a 1-page summary: What went well? What went wrong? What changes for next time? File it. Reference it. Make it part of estimating and planning. If the same mistakes repeat, that's a management failure, not bad luck.

Bring This to Your Leadership Meeting

The Question: "If we lost our PM tomorrow, what decisions would stop getting made—not what tasks would pile up, but what actual decisions?"

If the answer is "not many" or "mostly scheduling stuff," you don't have a project manager. You have a coordinator.

The Prompt: "Let's review the last three projects that finished late or over budget. In each case, when did we first have a signal something was wrong? And what did we do about it?"

This exposes whether your PM is surfacing problems early or documenting them late.

The Action: Within seven days, the PM will identify the single biggest risk on each active project and present a mitigation plan. Not "material delays" or "weather"—something specific and actionable.

If they can't do this exercise, you've confirmed they're coordinating, not managing. And now you know what to fix.

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You don't need a bigger team. You need clarity about what project management actually is. And you need the courage to hold people—including yourself—accountable to that standard.

Management isn't about being busy. It's about delivering outcomes. Everything else is just activity.