Managing projects is easy, managing people is difficult.

And that’s not because projects always succeed or achieve what they were supposed to achieve, but because they are made of tasks, timelines, deadlines, deliverables, priorities. All things that, one way or the other, even in the most difficult circumstances, are defined and controllable.

People are not.

People have no limit and they cannot be controlled. They have values, feelings, triggers. They establish relationships and break them. They are motivated and demotivated. They need to talk and to be listened to. They want to progress, take on new challenges, and they panic in the face of change.

We know how people are, because we are people too. And that’s what scares us and makes managing people so difficult.

Exactly the reason why, in a situation of crisis or uncertainty, most management resorts to assigning more tasks, asking for more visibility, setting stricter deadlines, and cracking down on inefficiencies.

Because managing projects is easy, while managing people is difficult.