What managing really means — Gestation

If managing means carrying — as the Latin root gestio reveals — then the truest figure of the manager is neither the pilot nor the controller. It is the pregnant woman.

She does not pilot her child. She carries it within her. She nourishes it with her own substance. She endures the chemical, physical, and psychic transformations that this gestation imposes on her body and her life. Her entire organism adapts to welcome this life growing inside her. She shields this child from the shocks of the world as long as it is too fragile to withstand them.

And when it is ready — not before, not according to an external schedule, but when it is ready — she accompanies its arrival into the world.

The project manager according to Kâ carries in the same way. He carries an intuition, a seed. He nourishes it, protects it, endures the transformations it demands of him, until the moment it is strong enough to appear in reality — alive, tangible, autonomous.

Most contemporary projects fail. Not because they are poorly piloted. Because nobody is carrying them.