Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age

by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez

Rewire your organization—and your leadership—for a world driven by projects.

It's time to stop treating projects as side work. In the age of constant transformation, projects are the primary way organizations create value and accelerate innovation. In this new paradigm—the project economy—traditional agile approaches are no longer enough. The next evolution is the project-driven organization, where projects sit at the center of how companies are structured, led, and rewarded.

Powered by Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age explores this bold new model. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, the worldwide expert on project-based work, reveals the leadership styles and organizational structures necessary to drive success today. You'll learn

Develop your organization's transformation muscles to remain resilient, adaptive, and relevantSponsor projects actively and prioritize them ruthlessly to ensure resources are directed to high-value initiativesDecentralize decision-making to empower people to break through the bottlenecks that slow down transformationEngage your project teams and workforce more deeply to accelerate value creationBuild AI into projects to enable quicker decisions and proactive planning and to lower risk

Filled with practical strategies and detailed case studies, this book is a new manifesto for CEOs, transformation drivers, and project leaders. Embrace the project-driven organization, become a project-driven leader, and turn your company into a highly engaged growth engine, powered by projects.

Genres: Leadership, Management

362 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 20, 2026

About the author

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is the head of Transversal Portfolio Management and in charge of the entire portfolio and project management practices at BNP Paribas Fortis. In addition to being member of the board of the London Business School Alumni in Belgium, he has been recently elected as member of the Board of Directors of the Project Management Institute, which is the largest association in project management with more than 800.000 members across 185 countries.

Prior of this, Mr. Nieto-Rodriguez was the head of post-merger integration at Fortis Bank, leading what was the largest takeover in the financial service history: the acquisition of ABN AMRO. Before that, he worked for 10 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a senior manager, becoming the global lead practitioner for project and change management.

The author of the book The Focused Organization (www.thefocusedorganization.com), Mr. Nieto-Rodriguez has been featured in several magazines, including PM Network®, Strategy Business Review and The Economist. He is also the author of the white paper Boosting Business Performance through Programme and Project Management, which was written after he conducted one of the first global project management maturity surveys. He is the founder of the largest LinkedIn group around strategy execution (StrateXecution) with more than 4.100 members worldwide.

Mr. Nieto-Rodriguez is a professor of project management and strategy execution for MBA students at several business schools, and is a regular keynote speaker at large international events where he speaks on the strategic value of project management; he is often voted as ‘best speaker’. Mr. Nieto-Rodriguez undertook undergraduate studies in Germany, Mexico, Italy and the United States and has a university degree in economics from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. He has an MBA from London Business School and is fluent in Spanish, English, French, Dutch, Italian and German. As a hobby, Mr. Nieto-Rodriguez teaches business students and convinces senior leaders about the value of project management, positioning project management as a key management concept for executing organizations strategies.

Reviews

[Alfonso Bucero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book from Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez. This book is very well written with powerful testimonios from worldwide Executives. I believe that Project sponsorship is one of the Missing Link in Project-Driven Organizations. Many organizations proudly declare they are becoming project-driven. They reorganize around initiatives, they launch transformation programs, They invest in PMOs and methodologies. And yet — results often fall short.

Why?

Because being powered by projects is not only about managing projects well. It is about **leading them at the executive level. And Antonio explain it clearly in his book. In *Powered by Projects*, Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez makes a compelling argument:
Projects are no longer side activities. They are the "vehicle through which strategy is executed". Strategy is no longer implemented through operations alone. It is delivered through:

* Transformation programs
* Digital initiatives
* Cultural change efforts
* Innovation portfolios

Antonio tell us "Projects have become the engine of business value creation", and I fully agree about it. But engines require drivers.

One of my affirmations is: Most Projects Fail at the Sponsorship Level.
> Projects rarely fail because of technical weaknesses.
> They fail because of insufficient executive sponsorship.

A project manager can coordinate. A sponsor must champion. The Executive Shift: From Approval to Ownership. If projects are the new way strategy happens, then sponsorship must evolve from:

❌ Budget approval
❌ Periodic review
❌ Passive oversight

To:

- Visible leadership
- Strategic alignment guardian
- Political protector
- Decision accelerator
- Cultural role model

In project-driven organizations, sponsorship is not ceremonial. It is strategic leadership in action.

## The Strategic Triangle

When we combine the thinking of *Powered by Projects* and *Project Sponsorship*, a powerful triangle emerges:

1. **Strategy defines direction**
2. **Projects deliver change**
3. **Sponsors ensure alignment and protection**

Remove sponsorship — and alignment collapses. Remove executive engagement — and resistance grows. Remove visible commitment — and prioritization weakens. Projects do not exist in isolation. They operate within organizational politics, competing priorities, and cultural dynamics. Only sponsors have the authority to navigate that terrain.

Effective sponsors:

* Clarify the “why” behind the initiative
* Communicate strategic importance repeatedly
* Protect the project from organizational noise
* Make timely decisions
* Remove barriers
* Hold stakeholders accountable
* Stay engaged until benefits are realized

They understand that sponsorship is not about control — it is about **commitment**.

## A Question for Executives

If your organization claims to be project-driven, ask yourself:

* Are sponsors trained for their role?
* Is sponsorship performance evaluated?
* Do executives see sponsorship as a leadership responsibility or an administrative task?

Because here is the reality:

I believe that you cannot be powered by projects without being powered by sponsors. Projects execute strategy. Sponsors make strategy real. And when sponsorship is strong, transformation stops being an aspiration — and becomes a result.

Antonio's book is a MUST for every Executive.

Alfonso Bucero, PhD, PMP, PMI-RMP, PfMP
Senior PM Consultant

[Steve Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have selected this book as Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 1/18, as it stands heads above other recently published books on this topic.