After Pierre Le Manh: What Comes Next for the Profession?

I think that is an important extension.
Explicit decision rights solve only part of the problem.

An organization can have authority and accountability that appear coherent at each individual decision point and still produce systemically incoherent decisions.
One decision can change the constraints, dependencies, information or options available to another, often across functions and organizational boundaries rather than simply across hierarchical levels.

So I would distinguish connection from coherence. It is not enough for decisions to be connected through reporting lines, workflows or escalation paths.
The organization also needs mechanisms that make interdependencies and consequences visible, allow conflicts to be resolved, and enable decisions to be reconsidered when their context materially changes.

Perhaps that is the deeper governance challenge: not only deciding who has legitimate authority to make each decision, but designing a system capable of maintaining or restoring coherence among interdependent decisions as their consequences propagate through the organization.

That also affects how accountability should be attributed.
When interdependent decisions materially shape the conditions under which someone must act, we need to distinguish accountability for the decisions they legitimately control from accountability for consequences produced by the wider decision system.

Thank you for asking. PMI published the official announcement on its Press & Media page on September 21, 2026:

“Pierre Le Manh to Step Down as PMI President and CEO.”

https://www.pmi.org/about/press-media/2026/pierre-le-manh-to-step-down-as-pmi-president-and-ceo

The announcement confirms that Pierre Le Manh will step down effective September 30, 2026, and that Johannes Heinlein, currently Chief Growth Officer, has been appointed Interim President & CEO effective the same date.

You are also correct that PMI's website still lists Pierre as President & CEO.

That is consistent with the fact that the transition does not take effect until September 30, although some other PMI content also appears not yet to have been updated.

One thing that strikes me in all this is the notice period. PMI announced Pierre Le Manh's departure on September 21, with an effective date of September 30, barely more than a week of public notice for the CEO of the organization that literally sets the global standard for project management and stakeholder communication. Compare that to the two-month notice many of us are expected to give in far less visible roles, and it's hard not to find the contrast a bit jarring.

I understand the mechanics of executive transitions (a fast-moving external offer, board timing, legal considerations) and none of that is unusual in itself. But for an institution whose entire brand is built on planning, governance, and orderly transitions, I think PMI owes its members more transparency about why this was handled on such a compressed timeline, and what that means for continuity during the interim period.

Thank you, Luis. I think the distinction between connection and coherence is particularly important.
A system can maintain strong connections between decisions while still losing coherence if those connections do not make the changing constraints, dependencies, information, and consequences sufficiently visible to the people making subsequent decisions.
That also changes how I would look at accountability.
The question is not only whether responsibility was formally assigned, but whether the decision architecture gave the responsible actor the necessary visibility, authority, information, and ability to intervene as the conditions surrounding the decision changed.
Otherwise, accountability can remain formally intact while becoming increasingly detached from the conditions that shape the outcome.
This suggests another useful diagnostic question:
When an interdependent decision produces an unexpected consequence, can the organization trace how the relevant decisions, constraints, information, and authorities interacted — and can it still intervene or reconsider before the consequence propagates further?
For me, that may be where connection becomes governance: when the system can not only connect decisions, but make their interdependencies visible enough to preserve or restore coherence as the context changes.

Thank you, Antonio.
I think your diagnostic question gets very close to the heart of the problem.
I would perhaps preserve one further distinction.
Making interdependencies visible and traceable is essential, but it does not necessarily ensure that their consequences are integrated into a coherent whole.

That may leave us with an additional question: when authority, knowledge and decisions are distributed, what organizational capability preserves or restores system-level integration and coherence?

And perhaps a further question follows: is that integrative capability part of governance itself, distinct from it, or something that emerges from the interaction of multiple organizational mechanisms?

Thank you, Stelian

That introduces a different dimension from the three I raised, and one worth exploring.

I would be interested to understand what you see as the most significant changes under Pierre Le Manh in addressing the perception of PMI as an “American training organisation.”

What would you expect the next CEO to preserve or develop further for that work to continue?

Thank you, Luis.
I think that distinction is critical.
Making interdependencies visible creates traceability, but traceability alone does not guarantee coherence. An organization can know how its parts are connected and still lose the connection between purpose, authority, decisions, execution, and feedback.
Your question about the capability that preserves or restores system-level integration is therefore, in my view, the more fundamental one.
I am increasingly inclined to see that capability not as a single governance mechanism, but as a systemic capacity: the ability to continuously reconnect distributed authority, knowledge, decisions, and consequences to a coherent organizational purpose.
That also makes the distinction you raise particularly interesting. If that capacity is embedded entirely within governance, governance would need to be understood not only as control or decision rights, but also as a mechanism for maintaining organizational coherence over time.
If it is distinct, then we may be looking at an organizational capability that operates across governance, processes, knowledge, and execution rather than belonging exclusively to any one of them.
The third possibility may be the most interesting: that integration is neither a discrete mechanism nor merely a governance function, but an emergent property of how those mechanisms interact.
That leaves me with a related diagnostic question:
When an organization begins to lose system-level coherence, what is the earliest observable signal that the integration capability is failing — before the failure becomes visible as a performance, compliance, or execution problem?
I think that question may take us closer to identifying the actual point where organizational fragmentation begins.