Should I hire a project manager, or can better workflow / software / accountability solve it?

Work is slipping, and you're the one holding it together. Deadlines move, things fall between people, and you keep being the one who notices. The obvious fix is to hire someone whose whole job is to keep it all on track. A project manager.

That might be exactly right. But before you write the job description, it's worth asking a quieter question: what actually needs managing?

Because "work is slipping" is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Underneath it there's usually something more specific going on, and the something decides the fix.

Maybe ownership is unclear, so tasks sit in the gap where everyone assumes someone else has it. Maybe handovers are weak, and work loses momentum every time it changes hands. Maybe there are hidden dependencies nobody mapped, so one late piece quietly stalls three others. Maybe there are too many decision points, and everything routes back through you. Maybe visibility is the problem, and the work isn't slipping so much as you can't see where it stands. Maybe a few people are simply overloaded. Maybe the work keeps changing shape after it starts, so the plan is out of date by Tuesday.

Each of those points to a different answer.

Unclear priorities or a founder bottleneck might be solved by changing how decisions get made, not by adding a person. Poor visibility might be a software problem, the kind a shared board or tracker fixes faster than a hire. Weak accountability might need a reset of who owns what, made explicit, rather than a manager layered on top. Work that constantly mutates might be a role-redesign problem, where the issue is that one person is holding three jobs at once.

And sometimes, once you actually name the problem, the answer really is a project manager. Unclear ownership, weak handovers, hidden dependencies, too many decision points, work that won't hold its shape - those aren't reasons to avoid hiring. They may be exactly what a good PM is for.

The point isn't PM or no PM. It's that the same surface complaint can have five different causes, and a hire only fixes some of them. Bring on a coordinator to solve a priorities problem and the priorities are still unclear, now with one more salary attached.

So before you decide, define the actual coordination problem. Watch where work stalls for a couple of weeks and write down what's really happening at the point of failure. Is it ownership, handovers, dependencies, decisions, visibility, capacity, or scope?

⚡ A project manager may or may not be the answer. First, identify what needs managing.

The clearer you are about the problem, the more likely the fix is the right one - whether that's a person, a process, a tool, or just deciding who owns what.

🚀 What to do next

If this feels familiar, start here:

👉 Run the Second Look Decision Diagnostic to see what’s missing before you decide
👉See related business decision

👉 📖 Read more on Second Look blog

You can continue with making the decision afterwwards.