Stop Playing Tennis!

Are You Playing Tennis or Football? The Difference Between a Real Project Manager and a Paper Pusher

There was a project engineer who described his job as playing tennis. He said it like it was clever. The idea was that his job was to receive a problem and hit it back into someone else’s court as fast as possible. If they dropped it, that was their fault, not his. Jason Schroeder told him directly that the behavior was disgusting. Not because conflict is fun, but because someone needed to say it. That mindset is one of the most damaging forces on a construction project, and it is far more common than the industry acknowledges. People who should be leading are protecting themselves. People who should be running with the ball are hitting it back across the net and calling that productivity. It is not. It is avoidance dressed up as coordination.

The Problem That Has a Name

The problem has a name and it shows up in a specific behavior pattern. The person carrying it will receive an email with a problem, forward it to someone else immediately, and consider their part done. They will attend a meeting, open their laptop, respond to emails for five different projects, close the laptop, and leave without engaging with the room. They will jump from project to project, project to project, never staying long enough on any one thing to actually diagnose, lead, or solve. They describe everything as fine. They use the phrase “the ball’s in your court” with a detachment that signals they are relieved it is no longer in theirs. They are playing tennis in a sport that requires football.

The Failure Pattern

The failure pattern is specific and it compounds. A project without a real project manager leading it does not fail all at once. It drifts. Cost control slips because nobody is tracking the details closely enough to catch the drift early. The owner’s trust erodes because nobody is owning the relationship and following through on commitments. The project team loses morale because nobody is coaching, developing, or recognizing them. The superintendent starts filling the vacuum, taking on coordination and planning responsibilities that belong to the PM, which pulls them away from the field execution they are supposed to own. The schedule slips. The margins shrink. The customer is disappointed. And the person who was supposed to be leading the project points at the RFI log and the submittal tracker and says they did their job.

The Role Was Never Just Administration

Here is the distinction that this episode draws clearly. The project engineer role is fundamentally about support and organization. Submittals, RFI logs, change order logs, drawing distribution, meeting agendas, testing and inspection tracking: all of that is necessary, skilled, important work. But it is support work. It is the infrastructure that enables the project to be managed. It is not management itself.

The project manager role is fundamentally about leadership and accountability. A real project manager manages, coaches, trains, and mentors the project team. They have 100% detailed, hands-on knowledge of the project scope, not a general familiarity with it but actual depth. They own and are accountable for cost control, billings, collections, change management, cash flow, and the monthly financial status of the project. They are the primary relationship and negotiation contact with the owner and the architect. They challenge and support self-perform work and know what the production details and costs actually are. They are accountable for project completion and for the customer’s satisfaction with the outcome. They coordinate and manage the execution of all planning and scheduling from start to finish.

The word that appears over and over in that description is accountable. Not organized. Not coordinated. Accountable. A project manager who is playing tennis is avoiding accountability. They are making sure that if anything goes wrong, it is traceable to someone else’s court. A real project manager grabs the ball and runs with it, and they do not let go.

What the Research on Productivity Confirms

The research from Scrum methodology, which Felipe Engineer Manriquez’s training brought to Jason’s attention, confirms what field experience already suggests. Productivity drops when a project manager switches context constantly, jumping from task to task and project to project without staying with any one thing long enough to actually lead it. The damage is not linear: as the number of projects a PM is managing increases, productivity decreases exponentially. A PM managing one project is dramatically more effective than one managing three, and the third project does not receive a third of that PM’s attention. It receives the scraps left after the other two have consumed everything else.

Dedicated teams with dedicated leaders outperform split teams with divided leaders consistently and significantly. This is not a personality preference. It is a production fact. A project manager who commits to one project at a time, stays on site long enough to actually see what is happening, builds genuine knowledge of the scope and the financials, and takes ownership of the outcome will outperform the tennis player in every measurable category. The only thing the tennis player is good at is protecting themselves from blame. On the scoreboard that matters, which is project completion, financial performance, and customer satisfaction, the football player wins every time.

The Specific Behaviors That Reveal Which Game Someone Is Playing

Before the next project debrief or performance conversation, run through these honestly:

• When a problem arrives, does the PM dig into the root cause or forward it to someone else and move on?
• When the PM is on site, are they engaged with the project team, the superintendent, the owner, and the work itself, or are they at a table with a laptop responding to emails?
• Does the PM know the project scope at a level of detail that allows them to have a real conversation with the superintendent about production, sequence, and logistics?
• Are the financials, the billings, the cash flow, and the change management owned by the PM, or is that work being carried by someone else while the PM coordinates calendars?
• When something goes wrong, does the PM step toward the problem or find a reason it belongs to someone else?
• Is there a pattern of saying “it should be fine” without verifying that it is?

Tennis players will answer most of those in ways that reveal the gap. Football players will not have to think about it.

What Running to Your Work Actually Looks Like

Running to your work means staying with the problem until it is resolved, not until it is delegated. It means arriving on site with questions about the actual state of the project, not just the administrative status. It means knowing whether the project is making money or losing it this week, not waiting for the monthly report. It means calling the owner proactively when something is not going well, not waiting for them to call you. It means sitting with the superintendent and working through the scheduling problem together, not forwarding the question to the scheduler. It means taking a punch list item from identification all the way through resolution rather than logging it and moving on.

It means being the person the team runs toward when something goes wrong, not the person who makes sure they are out of the office when the call comes in. That is football. That is what the role actually requires.

Built for Leaders Who Want to Build Something

The construction industry has too many project engineers calling themselves project managers and too few actual project managers developing the next generation of ones. The difference matters to every person on the project team, because a real project manager creates clarity, stability, and momentum. They remove the obstacles that are in the field team’s way. They protect the project’s financial health so there is something to celebrate at the end. They build the owner’s confidence so that the next project comes back to the same team. They develop the project engineers under them into the project managers of the future. All of that requires being in the game, not managing from the sideline.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

Pick Up the Ball and Run

The invitation in this episode is not complicated but it is direct. Stop playing tennis. Stop forwarding problems to other people’s courts and calling it coordination. Stop switching between projects without ever digging deep enough into any one of them to actually lead it. Stop saying “it should be fine” as a substitute for knowing whether it is. Pick up the ball. Run with it. Stay with it. Lead the project as if the outcome is your personal responsibility, because it is. As Jason puts it: you get no points for just organizing information. The points come from driving the ball down the field, spiking it in the end zone, and doing a little dance with the team that got it there together.

On we go.

FAQ

What is the difference between a project engineer and a project manager in construction?

A project engineer’s role is fundamentally about support and organization: processing submittals, managing RFI logs, distributing drawings, preparing agendas, tracking change orders and inspections. It is skilled and necessary work. A project manager’s role is fundamentally about leadership and accountability: managing and developing the project team, owning the project financials from billings to collections to cash flow, serving as the primary relationship and negotiation contact with the owner and architect, and being accountable for project completion and customer satisfaction. The distinction is not about seniority. It is about whether someone is organizing information or leading a project. A project manager who is only doing what a project engineer does is not yet functioning in the PM role.

What does “playing tennis” look like on a construction project?

Tennis behavior in construction is the pattern of receiving a problem and redirecting it to someone else as quickly as possible. It looks like forwarding emails rather than resolving the issues within them. It looks like attending meetings without engaging, opening a laptop and responding to other emails instead of participating in the conversation at hand. It looks like jumping from project to project without developing deep knowledge of any of them. It looks like using phrases like “the ball’s in your court” or “it should be fine” to create distance from accountability. The defining characteristic is that the person is always making sure the problem is officially someone else’s problem before moving on.

Why does context switching hurt project manager productivity so significantly?

Because leadership requires sustained attention and deep knowledge. A project manager who is split across multiple projects is never fully present on any of them. They do not have the depth of knowledge needed to make good decisions quickly. They cannot build the kind of relationship with the owner or the project team that produces trust and effective collaboration. Research from Scrum methodology confirms that productivity decreases exponentially, not proportionally, as the number of simultaneous projects increases. A PM managing three projects does not deliver a third of their best on each one. They deliver a fraction of their best on all three, and the projects feel it.

What should a project manager be doing when they visit a job site?

They should be engaging with the project, not the laptop. That means walking the site with the superintendent and having real conversations about production, sequence, logistics, and what is coming up. It means meeting with trade partners and the owner’s representative to address open issues directly. It means reviewing the schedule and the financials in enough detail to know whether the project is tracking to plan or drifting from it. It means coaching and developing the project engineers and assistant superintendents who report to them. A project manager who arrives at a site, opens their laptop at a table, responds to emails from other projects, and leaves has not visited the project. They have physically been in the vicinity of it, which is not the same thing.

How does running to your work rather than away from it change project outcomes?

It changes them at every level. The owner’s relationship is stronger because the PM is proactively communicating rather than responding defensively when things go wrong. The project team performs better because they have genuine leadership, coaching, and development rather than administrative coordination. The financials are healthier because cost control, billing, and change management are owned and tracked closely rather than reviewed occasionally. The schedule is more reliable because the PM has enough knowledge of the scope and the sequence to have a real conversation with the superintendent about what is realistic and what needs to be adjusted. Problems get resolved faster because the PM stays with them until they are solved rather than transferring them to the next person. All of that comes from the same decision: to run toward the work rather than away from it.