Beyond Agile
Reinventing Project Management
SERIES ARTICLE
By Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez
Madrid, Spain
For decades, we’ve treated projects like a side hustle.
In the traditional corporate worldview, operations were the “real work.” They were the engine of profit, optimized for efficiency, repeatability, and scale. Projects? They were viewed as temporary interruptions—necessary evils used to fix a broken process or launch a product before everyone could get back to business as usual.
But as I explore in my new Harvard Business Review book, Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age, that mental model is dead. It belongs to a world that no longer exists.
That mental model is dead. It belongs to a world that no longer exists.
We have entered the Project Economy.
Today, almost every meaningful shift an organization undertakes—digitalization, AI adoption, sustainability, regulatory adaptation, post-merger integration—happens through projects. It’s not episodic anymore; it’s continuous.
Projects have quietly overtaken operations as the primary engine of human progress and business value.
The problem? Most of our organizations are still designed for the 20th century.
We are trying to run a hyper-fast, project-driven world on an operations-driven operating system. We are prioritizing stability when we should be prioritizing speed and adaptation.
The Shift We Didn’t Ask For (But Got Anyway)
The pandemic didn’t create the project-driven organization; it just stripped away the denial.
Think back to those early months of disruption.
When global supply chains broke, and entire workforces went remote overnight, nobody waited for the annual planning cycle.
There was no time for the polite fiction of hierarchical decision-making.
The strategy had to be executed in real-time. Digital platforms were launched in weeks, not years. New services were prototyped, tested, and scaled at speeds that would have been considered impossible just months prior.
How did this happen? It happened because, for a brief window, we stopped obsessing over titles and started organizing around work.
Silos collapsed into cross-functional teams. Decisions moved to where the information was, not where the corner office was.
Almost everyone—from the C-suite to the front line—acted as a project leader, whether they called it that or not.
Then the crisis eased, and the gravitational pull of the “old normal” returned. Many organizations tried to snap back to their rigid hierarchies. But you can’t unsee reality. We learned that we can move fast when we have to. The question now is: Why is it so hard to do it when we want to?
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Editor’s note: This series of articles is by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, the author of Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age (HBR Press, Jan 2026) and The HBR Project Management Handbook (HBR 2021). One of the world’s most popular authors and speakers on the topic of the Project Economy and the Future of Project Management, he is Founder of Projects & Co. , a PMI Fellow & Former Chairman and Thinkers50 Award Winner. Learn more in his author profile at the end of this article.
How to cite this work: Nieto-Rodriguez, A. (2026). The Project-Driven Organization: Beyond Agile; Reimagining Project Management for a New Era, series article 2, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue I, January. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/pmwj160-Jan2026-Nieto-Rodriguez-beyond-agile-reinvention-series-2.pdf
About the Author
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez
Madrid, Spain
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, PMI Fellow, is one of the world’s leading experts in Project Management and Strategy Implementation. He is the author of the “Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook ” (HBR 2021) and is the most published author on project management matters in Harvard Business Review. His upcoming book, Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age, will be published by Harvard Business Review Press in early 2026.
Antonio has brought Project Management to the center of executive leadership, positioning it as a critical capability for transformation in the next decade. He is the creator of influential concepts such as the Project Economy®, the Hierarchy of Purpose®, and the Project‑Driven Organization™, which argue that projects have become the operating system of modern organizations—and the language of future careers.
His global impact on management and leadership has been recognized by Thinkers50, where he is the only project management thinker included twice in a row in the ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Thinkers50 Ideas Into Practice Award and a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches community.
He was the global Chairman of the Project Management Institute in 2016 and has been recognized as a Fellow of PMI for his contribution to the project management profession. He led the creation of the Brightline Initiative, founded Projects & Co, and co-founded the Strategy Implementation Institute.
His work focuses on advising senior leaders on how to prioritize and implement strategic initiatives and lead transformational change.
Antonio is also the author of “Lead Successful Projects” (Penguin, 2019), “The Project Revolution” (LID, 2019). and “The Focused Organization” (Taylor & Francis, 2014) and has contributed to seven other books. A pioneer and leading authority in teaching and coaching senior executives the art and science of strategy execution and project management. Currently visiting professor at Duke CE, Instituto de Empresa, Solvay, Vlerick, Ecole des Ponts, and Skolkovo.
He is a much-in-demand speaker at events worldwide. Antonio has presented at more than 800 conferences around the world, regularly evaluated as the best speaker. European Business Summit, Strategy Leaders Forum, Gartner Summit, TEDx, and EU Cohesion Policy Conference; are some of the events he has delivered inspirational keynotes.
He is former Sustainability Program Director and Head of Global Program Management Office at GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines. Previously he also served as Head of Project Portfolio Management at BNP Paribas Fortis and Head of Post-Merger Integration at Fortis Bank, leading the acquisition of ABN AMBRO, the largest in financial service history. He also worked for ten years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, becoming the global lead practitioner for project and change management.
Born in Madrid, Spain, and educated in Germany, Mexico, Italy, and the United States, Antonio is fluent in five languages. He is an Economist, has an MBA from London Business School and Insead’s IDP. You can follow Antonio through his LinkedIn Newsletter – Lead Projects Successfully. For more information, visit his website at www.antonionietorodriguez.com. He can be reached via email: antonio.nieto.rodriguez@gmail.com
