“I’m not a carrier pigeon!!!”
These are words that you don’t expect to hear from a Project Manager.
We laugh about it now, but when exasperated PM Marcus blurted this out after leaving a meeting, it was a cry for help.
CARRIER PIGEON PM SYNDROME
At Stoneseed, we have a unique and privileged insight.
Through our Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) engagements we get to work with organisations of all shapes and sizes, from all sectors. We see them at their best, and, as PMaaS can occasionally be an emergency rescue service, often at their worst too.
More and more, we meet project managers whose main job seems to be delivering messages up, down, here, there and everywhere across the project ecosystem! They share team updates with leadership, relay vendor reminders, escalate client issues, but rarely get to interpret, challenge, or influence any of it. They cannot ask questions, clarify intent, or argue for a different perspective. What a waste!!!
They are voiceless messengers … although seemingly without the protection of the old adage – “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
The result? Projects stall and talent burnout is quick to follow, not from the complexity of projects, but from the suffocating lack of agency and engagement.
HYPOSTRESS
Marcus the PM would eventually be signed off work with something I had never even heard of: hypostress.
Hypostress happens when a person doesn’t have enough stimulation, challenge, or engagement in life. It’s the stress of boredom, of having nothing that pushes you, excites you, or gives you a sense of purpose.
Your brain and emotions work like muscles. With less use, they weaken! As PMs we need a bit of challenge and excitement to stay healthy.
Marcus would joke that while peers suffered burn-out, he’d get bored-out!
Elsewhere, at another PMaaS engagement, the project manager was embedded specifically to “improve communications.” The reality: their days were spent collecting daily reports from teams and dispatching them, unedited and unquestioned, to executives who barely glanced at them. Major risks went unchallenged, because the PM was never asked for an interpretation, only a transmission. Only when a critical deadline was missed did leadership demand answers, by which point problems had grown too large (and too expensive) to fix quickly.
Cases like this, and Marcus’, have revealed a truth that’s as frustrating as it is universal: most project disasters aren’t about technical failure, they’re about failures in communication. Yet too often, organisations unknowingly force their project managers into the role of silent messengers—carrier pigeons, tasked with shuttling information but never trusted to speak up.
ROOT CAUSES: WHY DO ORGANISATIONS CREATE CARRIER PIGEON PMS?
The patterns are familiar:
- Command-and-control cultures where decisions live at the top.
- Fear of transparency that keeps honest dialogue buried.
- Underinvestment in governance, forcing PMs to act as human buffers.
When PMs can’t speak or interpret, risks balloon, silos persist, and communication either floods everyone or starves those who need it most.
BEST PRACTICE
At Marcus’ current organisation, the culture is very much geared towards PMs having a voice and being encouraged to lean into their experience for the benefit of project and business outcomes.
We ‘ve all done Post-Mortems on our IT Projects, the lessons from failure are vital going forward. Marcus’ new team is so eager to learn, they go in search of the learnings before the project even has had a chance to fail!
“It’s learning from failure before the failure happens. Why wait for the mistake to occur to get the lesson? We are encouraged to predict why our project will fail if we continue down this course.”
A protocol has evolved where everyone is encouraged to flag current or potential issues and everyone else gets to vote them up or down (and/or leave a comment) This way, the things most people agree are real risks naturally rise to the top. It’s a lightweight way to surface what actually matters because as Marcus says, “The hive usually knows where the real problems are hiding.”
Of course, the right culture is crucial, as Marcus told me, “If someone speaks up about a risk, and they catch heat for it from the colleague closest to it, as a culture we need to have their back, or they won’t speak up again. What they are highlighting won’t necessarily turn out to be right, but they cared enough to say something. That’s celebrated and encouraged!”
“Nine times out of ten, the issue raised is on the radar of the relevant PM, but occasionally a piece of project gold is unearthed.”
Engagement scores on the annual staff survey are high, and best of all Marcus hasn’t had a day off sick in years.
HOW TO AVOID THE CARRIER PIGEON TRAP
Three key takeaways:
Empowerment: Before engaging a PM, clarify the decision rights, escalation paths, and level of authority for project managers. PMs must be able to do more than pass notes.
Openness: Insist on governance forums where PMs can surface risks, pose questions, and drive issue resolution. Don’t let silence be your default.
Outcome-Focused Approach: Align KPIs and service-level agreements with meaningful project outcomes, not just message throughput. When PMs are measured by impact—not just the speed of their deliveries—the value of insight, challenge, and interpretation is obvious.
And lastly, an obligatory nod to the benefits of Project Management as a Service.
PMaaS: TRANSLATORS, NOT COURIERS
The best PMaaS partnerships can be transformational. We’ve seen what happens when PMs are treated as full project leaders: empowered to ask questions; challenge priorities; and convene cross-functional conversations.
Delivery accelerates, blockages shrink, morale soars.
At one SaaS provider, Stoneseed’s PMaaS project managers succeeded in getting invited into executive standups (not previously the case for inhouse PMs there) and were authorised to challenge the conventional, suggest better ways and trusted to shape delivery.
Our team doesn’t have “company baggage” holding them back! Now in-house PMs there don’t either, nor do they just move messages! They have meaningful roles.
COOOO-NCLUSION: LET YOUR PMs HAVE A VOICE
Projects succeed when information flows, but only when that information is meaningful, contextual, and open to challenge.
When you relegate your PMs to the role of carrier pigeons, your organisation loses not just communication, but understanding, risk management, and ultimately, control over outcomes.
Stoneseed’s PMaaS offers strategic agility and organisational depth, robust governance and operational resilience, but only when PMs can speak, lead, and build.
Call 01623 723910 or get in touch to find out how PMaaS can help your PMs soar as the architects your projects deserve
