If you look at the history of the United States we generally need an enemy to move forward.  We've had some forced upon us.  Pearl Harbor gave us a clear enemy.  We responded to that threat by coming together as a country in a way we've seldom seem.  We were forced to face an enemy in Hitler, eventually.  Later we found an enemy in the "evils" of communism and Russia and the whole cold war concept of MAD "Mutually Assured Destruction".  Now, most of these enemies were tangible, real and generally due to some direct action against our country or an ally.  But the bottom line is, we really need an enemy to come together as a nation.

One of these skills you can learn over time, the other you cannot. I love to read project management methodology books, blogs and process flow charts. People are extremely creative in making project management the most complicated process on the planet. CMM for PM, Agile Project Management, PRINCE II, and you can even buy software that will allow you to create your very own methodology for PM. Maybe PMs feel under appreciated and unloved. They want people to recognize their special skills, bag of tricks, templates, flowcharts, power points, MS Project plans, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, a good PM is a valuable asset for any project. We also need to be organized and understand some basic processes that must occur in any project for it to be successful. We are, however, sometimes a strange bunch and tend to try and make things overly complicated.