Somewhere along the way, project management became overly procedural

I didn’t come into my career planning to be a project manager. I didn’t study it, train for it, or even really understand what the job was supposed to be. When a recruiter first reached out to me about a project management role at a large digital agency, I remember asking them—more than once—to explain what a project manager actually did. Not in a self-deprecating way. I genuinely didn’t know.

That job ended up giving me the most formal project management education I could have asked for. It was a big agency with established systems, mature processes, and a very clear idea of how project work should move through the organization. I learned how to plan, estimate, budget, resource, and track work at scale. I learned how agencies think about utilization, margin, delivery risk, and velocity. I learned the mechanics of the job quickly, and I liked that part more than I expected.

The work that’s easy isn’t the work that’s hard

What surprised me was how quickly I realized that the mechanical parts of the role were not the hard part. Planning timelines, tracking budgets, chasing timesheets, assigning tasks—those things were relatively straightforward. They were learnable, repeatable, and largely impersonal. They mattered, but they were not where the real difficulty lived.

The real difficulty was people.

That agency was full of talented creatives, smart account managers, and ambitious leaders. It was also deeply hierarchical and quietly dismissive of project management as a discipline. PMs were seen as necessary but not essential, helpful but not strategic. We were often treated as administrative support rather than as people with judgment, context, and perspective on how the work actually came together.

Being responsible without being respected

I experienced that dismissal directly. I dealt with creatives who did not take project management seriously because they had been taught not to. I sat in meetings where scope conversations were treated as nuisances and budget constraints were framed as a lack of imagination rather than a real boundary. I watched project managers be positioned as blockers instead of as partners, even when they were the only ones thinking about feasibility, sustainability, or the long-term health of the team.

At the same time, account managers were encouraged—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—to overcommit. Client happiness was treated as the highest value, even when it came at the expense of the team or the integrity of the work. When those commitments inevitably caused problems, the responsibility for resolving them often landed with the project manager, who had neither made the promise nor been empowered to challenge it in the first place.

Leadership was welcome only after things went wrong

One moment in particular clarified this dynamic for me. I was told by a senior account leader that I should not be included in certain meetings. The concern was not that I lacked the skills or the context. The concern was that I might push back. That I might ask hard questions. That I might do the actual work of a project manager instead of quietly absorbing whatever pressure came out of the room.

What they wanted was not leadership. They wanted containment.

And yet, when client relationships became strained, when conflict escalated, or when someone needed to say the uncomfortable thing out loud, that was when I was invited back in. In those moments, the project manager became useful again—not as a leader shaping decisions early, but as the person who could deliver bad news without destabilizing the relationship. I was trusted to be the heavy, but not trusted to prevent the situation that required one.

The emotional cost of the role

That contradiction took a toll.

I was expected to ensure projects delivered on time and on budget, to keep teams supported and productive, to manage interpersonal tension, and to maintain momentum under constant pressure. At the same time, I was routinely disrespected, sidelined, or second-guessed, particularly when my judgment conflicted with short-term client appeasement. The message was clear: I was accountable for outcomes without being trusted with authority.

Why “process” became a convenient distraction

This is why I react so strongly when project management is framed primarily as process, tools, or templates. That framing conveniently ignores the emotional and cognitive labor that defines the role in practice. It overlooks the constant judgment calls, the need to read people and situations, the responsibility of slowing things down when urgency is masking confusion, and the courage required to push back when something does not make sense.

Human-centered project management did not come to me through a framework or a certification. It came from being placed in impossible situations and realizing that process alone does not protect people or projects. What made the difference was empathy, context, and judgment. It was the ability to name tension early, to translate between competing priorities, and to care about the sustainability of the work even when others were incentivized not to.

What agencies say they value—and what they actually reward

Agencies often say they value project management, but what they frequently mean is that they value someone keeping the wheels from coming off. That is not the same thing as valuing leadership. Valuing project management means trusting PMs to speak early, not just clean up late. It means treating them as partners in decision-making rather than as enforcement mechanisms. It means recognizing that alignment, clarity, and psychological safety are not “nice to haves,” but foundational to good work.

When project management becomes overly procedural, organizations do not become more efficient. They become brittle. They rely on heroics. They burn people out. They mistake delivery for alignment and calm for health.

Why this still matters

The best project managers I know are not defined by their mastery of tools. They are defined by their ability to navigate complexity with care, to balance competing needs without losing sight of the people doing the work, and to hold responsibility with integrity even when the system around them makes that difficult.

If this perspective resonates, it is probably because you have lived some version of it yourself. Many project managers, especially in agencies, are doing leadership work in environments that refuse to name it as such. They are carrying responsibility without power and judgment without recognition.

Somewhere along the way, project management did not just become overly procedural. It became a convenient place to put accountability while avoiding harder conversations about leadership, trust, and respect.

That is the part that still bothers me. And it is why I continue to push back.

TL;DR

I didn’t learn human-centered project management from a framework—I learned it by being held responsible without being respected. Agencies often reduce PMs to process and cleanup work, while relying on them to absorb pressure, manage conflict, and keep everything moving. When project management becomes overly procedural, organizations don’t get healthier or more efficient—they get brittle, burned out, and dependent on heroics. PMs aren’t just managing work. They’re doing leadership, whether the organization wants to admit it or not.

If you’re a PM who wants space to develop this kind of judgment with others who take the role seriously, I explore this work more deeply with members of the PM Squad.