Change and Projects: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is a leading expert in project management and strategy implementation, recognized by Thinkers50 with the prestigious award “Ideas into Practice.” He is the creator of concepts like The Project Economy and the Project Manifesto. He is author of Lead Successful Projects (2019, Penguin) The Project Revolution (2019, LID) and The Focused Organization (2012 Gower). He has been teaching project management for more than a decade to senior executives at Duke CE, Skolkovo, Solvay Business School, and Vlerick. Antonio has held executive PMO positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers, BNP Paribas, and GlaxoSmithKline. Former Chairman of the Project Management Institute, he is the co-founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute and the global movement Brightline.

  Change Management   Strategy  

Not long ago, I found myself in a meeting where two teams—one leading a transformation project, the other handling the change management—were debating who should “own the adoption plan.”

Each had good intentions, sharp minds, and detailed slide decks. But what struck me most was that they were treating adoption as a handoff. As something that happened after delivery. It felt like watching a relay race where the baton was dropped mid-sprint—and everyone blamed the handover.

This wasn’t a one-off. I’ve seen it play out in industry after industry, country after country. Project teams focused on outputs. Change teams focused on people. But rarely working as one.

In theory, this separation made sense. In practice, it’s costing us outcomes, value, and trust.

We’ve spent the past few decades treating project delivery and change management as parallel disciplines—cousins who rarely talk, but always show up at the same family events. We now know that’s not enough. In today’s environment, change and projects aren’t just related—they are two sides of the same coin. And it’s time we start leading them as one.

Why have we treated them separately?
Historically, organizations often treated project management and change management as parallel but distinct disciplines:

• On one side: …

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