What Would It Actually Take to Become a Project-Driven Organization?
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez has been making a compelling case that projects are the future of how organizations execute strategy. His recent Harvard Business Review article — “10 Questions About Project-Driven Organizations, Answered” — is the most direct articulation yet of what he calls the project-driven organization: a model where projects aren’t occasional efforts layered on top of operations, but the primary mechanism through which strategy gets executed and value gets created.
It’s a fascinating framework. And the more I sat with it, the more one question kept surfacing:
What does it actually take to get there?
The Structural Argument
Nieto-Rodriguez’s central premise is hard to argue with. In a business environment defined by constant volatility, the organizations that win aren’t necessarily the ones with the best strategies — they’re the ones with the best capacity to execute on them. And execution, increasingly, happens through projects and initiatives rather than through steady-state operations.
The project-driven model is his answer to that reality. Rather than treating transformation as something that happens alongside the business, it proposes making project delivery a core organizational competency — built into structure, governance, and culture.
That’s a significant shift from how most organizations currently operate.
The Gap Between the Model and the Reality
Here’s where I find myself wanting to push back — or at least add some texture.
The project-driven organization makes tremendous sense as a destination. What the framework doesn’t fully reckon with is how difficult the journey is for organizations that are simultaneously trying to run their current business.
The operators responsible for driving transformation are typically the same people responsible for serving customers today. Strategic initiatives compete directly with day-to-day delivery for the same finite pool of time, attention, and resources. And when those two things collide — as they inevitably do — it’s rarely the customer commitment that gets deprioritized.
This isn’t a failure of will or vision. It’s a structural reality that any honest conversation about project-driven organizations has to address.
Where AI Changes the Calculus
This is where I find myself genuinely optimistic about something Nieto-Rodriguez doesn’t explore deeply in this piece: the role of generative AI in making the transition more achievable.
The dual burden of running the business while transforming it is fundamentally a capacity problem. And AI has real potential to address capacity in ways that weren’t available even a few years ago — compressing routine work, accelerating information synthesis, reducing the administrative overhead that consumes so much of an operator’s bandwidth.
If the project-driven organization requires carving out dedicated capacity for transformation work, AI may be one of the most practical tools available for creating that space — not by replacing people, but by multiplying what they can accomplish in the time they have.
Worth Your Time
Nieto-Rodriguez’s article is a worthwhile read for anyone thinking seriously about organizational design, program management, or how strategy actually gets executed in practice. It raises important questions even where it leaves some of them open.
I’d be curious whether others see the capacity tension the same way — or whether you’ve found models that address it effectively.
What’s your experience with the gap between strategic ambition and operational capacity? I’d love to hear how others are navigating it. -MD