“I name you: Project Manager”
As if it were an indiscriminate knight naming, “false” project managers are being designated in many organizations.
The thing goes like this: a manager needs a member of the team to start doing “another kind of task”, different from the ones he used to do until now and that implies a kind of leadership… what would be like “carrying your own weight”.
The manager wants to motivate the employee, make him feel important without raising a cent of his salary (obviously)…what do we do? Easy: meet him and tell him in a very formal tone of voice that he is going to lead a very important matter, that he is going to be the leader of that project, the project manager, the director of the project,…(every organization uses a different word)
Should this represent a problem? In theory no, if with the naming they would be really giving real project manager functions (something that in most cases doesn’t happen), if the project manager naming was given together with the training of what it means and not, as I’ve seen in many occasions, just a mere motivational tool.
Disrupting the profession
The problem it represents is that the “project manager” profession is being distorted with these kinds of practices. So the next time you see in somebody’s business card or in somebody’s e-mail signature the project manager qualification, ask yourselves if it is an earned qualification or a motivational one.
If this goes on like this, the PMP certification will become the great filter to recognize the authenticity of this profession. Profession that is trendy nowadays and, therefore, under the risk of being perverted…