--- title: Reinvention Isn’t a Leap. It’s a Discipline. description: Project Management Institute, Enterprise agility, Organizational coherence, Agile leadership, Decision-making at scale, Decentralized decision-making, Shared enterprise outcomes, Cross-functional collaboration, Strategy execution, Strategy translation, Strategic alignment, Decision rights, Empowered teams, Customer-centric decision-making, Distributed leadership, Continuous innovation, Innovation in established companies, Organizational transformation, Leadership accountability, Moving authority closer to customers, How companies move faster without losing coherence, How CEOs empower teams, Making innovation part of the core business, Building alignment across functions, Decision-making without the CEO canonical: https://time.com/branded-content/project-management-institute/reinvention-isnt-a-leap-its-a-discipline/ article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-10-09T08:15:43.624Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-07T21:58:11.912Z article:section: Paid Content og:title: Reinvention Isn’t a Leap. It’s a Discipline. og:description: Project Management Institute, Enterprise agility, Organizational coherence, Agile leadership, Decision-making at scale, Decentralized decision-making, Shared enterprise outcomes, Cross-functional collaboration, Strategy execution, Strategy translation, Strategic alignment, Decision rights, Empowered teams, Customer-centric decision-making, Distributed leadership, Continuous innovation, Innovation in established companies, Organizational transformation, Leadership accountability, Moving authority closer to customers, How companies move faster without losing coherence, How CEOs empower teams, Making innovation part of the core business, Building alignment across functions, Decision-making without the CEO og:url: https://time.com/branded-content/project-management-institute/reinvention-isnt-a-leap-its-a-discipline/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt16f734ceb2b60c75/6ac5405e747d8611e07b98d9/20260910_PMI_207_(1).jpg?branch=production&width=8192&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 8192 og:image:height: 4608 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Reinvention Isn’t a Leap. It’s a Discipline. twitter:description: Project Management Institute, Enterprise agility, Organizational coherence, Agile leadership, Decision-making at scale, Decentralized decision-making, Shared enterprise outcomes, Cross-functional collaboration, Strategy execution, Strategy translation, Strategic alignment, Decision rights, Empowered teams, Customer-centric decision-making, Distributed leadership, Continuous innovation, Innovation in established companies, Organizational transformation, Leadership accountability, Moving authority closer to customers, How companies move faster without losing coherence, How CEOs empower teams, Making innovation part of the core business, Building alignment across functions, Decision-making without the CEO twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt16f734ceb2b60c75/6ac5405e747d8611e07b98d9/20260910_PMI_207_(1).jpg?branch=production&width=8192&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Reinvention Isn’t a Leap. It’s a Discipline. > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=59a556d0-3618-4c6c-be40-570dc2845295&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=59a556d0-3618-4c6c-be40-570dc2845295&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Reinvention Isn't a Leap. It's a Discipline. [Watch (HLS stream): Reinvention Isn't a Leap. It's a Discipline.](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RwEsxHQ6.m3u8) (1:28)  _Published 2026-10-07. Project Management Institute, Enterprise agility, Organizational coherence, Agile leadership, Decision-making at scale, Decentralized decision-making, Shared enterprise outcomes, Cross-functional collaboration, Strategy execution, Strategy translation, Strategic alignment, Decision rights, Empowered teams, Customer-centric decision-making, Distributed leadership, Continuous innovation, Innovation in established companies, Organizational transformation, Leadership accountability, Moving authority closer to customers, How companies move faster without losing coherence, How CEOs empower teams, Making innovation part of the core business, Building alignment across functions, Decision-making without the CEO_  #### _At an executive salon dinner in Tokyo convened by Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Global Peter Drucker Forum featuring TIME, leaders explored how the most resilient companies earn their people’s trust to keep changing._ _By Project Management Institute_ Reinvention usually arrives as a leap: the spinoff, the overnight restructuring, the bold bet announced from a stage. However, reinventions that last take more than a defining moment. They look more like the story that set the tone at the dinner in Tokyo. This story took nearly a decade. Shigeru (Hassan) Nakajima, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Transportation and Construction Engineering Ltd., was describing building a thermal power plant in Kuwait. The project began in the late 1980s. The Gulf War terminated the contract. A 1995 earthquake in Japan disrupted many of its subcontractors. The 2003 Iraq war halted it again. Then came payment delays, labor strikes, fraud and embezzlement. The project took twice as long as scheduled to finish, but the finished product was exactly as it was designed to be. That is not agility as speed. It is agility as endurance. Every executive can redesign an org chart inside a quarter, but they cannot redesign their people’s trust in the same way. The gap between what a leader can redraw and what a leader has to earn became the question the room kept returning to: what does it take to keep reinventing without breaking? The [Manifesto for Enterprise Agility](https://www.pmi.org/learning/agile/manifesto-for-enterprise-agility), released this year by PMI and Agile Alliance, names continuous reinvention as one of its four values, set against “structural inertia and preservation of the status quo.” But what does that cost? ### **The right to keep changing has to be earned** Jeffrey Watts, Partner at EY Japan, has spent four years rebuilding how the firm serves Japanese companies operating outside Japan. He is careful about where the authority came from. “We had to earn the right to do this,” he said. “We did not have the right to do this. We had to show result.” Every proposal had to rest on a concrete value case before committing to anything. Partners were accustomed to committing to one-year plans. Watts instead asked them to consider the unconstrained potential three years out, then determine the investment needed to pursue it. After teams demonstrated results, the model expanded first in the U.S., then across the U.K., Europe, India and China, before being adapted for the rest of Asia. Together, the longer planning horizon, value-based investment and market-by-market scaling reflect what the Manifesto calls “shared enterprise outcomes over functional optimization.” It means prioritizing long-term, cross-enterprise goals over short-term departmental wins. Organizations that describe themselves as highly agile do deliver better: [PMI research](https://www.pmi.org/learning/thought-leadership/a-new-era-for-enterprise-agility) finds high-agility organizations post a 76 percent project performance rate, compared with 67 percent for low-agility ones. Watts was candid about what the alignment cost: roughly 600 meetings in Japan before the model could spread, then another 1,000 globally. Reinvention moves at the speed of trust, not the idea. ### **Reinvention happens in inches** Watts had to earn authority. Dongyun Kang, President & CEO of AUMOVIO Korea Ltd., was handed it outright, and staged the change anyway. If any story should have been a leap, it was his. AUMOVIO Korea Ltd. is a spinoff of Continental's automotive unit, rebranded barely a year ago. A clean slate. AUMOVIO Korea Ltd. cut roughly three management layers, taking the distance from CEO to frontline from eleven levels to seven or eight. The logic was proximity, not headcount: in an industry absorbing EVs, tariffs and a semiconductor crunch, decisions made three time zones from the customer arrive late. “You have to let go of the control,” Kang said. He is also clear about what a spinoff removes. Inside a conglomerate, a weak result could disappear. Now it shows. “The water is out,” he said. “The fishes are going to die or survive.” AUMOVIO Korea Ltd.’s approach to AI followed the same discipline. Rather than chase a mandate, AUMOVIO Korea Ltd. picked narrow ground, preventive maintenance and defect detection in manufacturing, chosen so results would be visible without putting jobs at risk. “Based on that small success story, you can expand further into the organization,” Kang said. ### **The real infrastructure of continuous change is transparency** Delayering only changes where a decision can be made. It does not settle whether the people now holding that authority believe it is theirs. Kang watched employees treat a bad outcome as headquarters‘ problem rather than their own. The org chart changed. The belief did not. His answer was not another restructuring. “I think it's about the honesty, consistency and transparency,” he said. “Team members want to work for a leader they trust.” This breakdown is quite common: leaders brief their direct reports and assume the message survives two more levels down, but this is where change fatigue does its damage. The Manifesto makes human centricity amidst change a core value, where “leading with empathy and trust outweigh leading change by process only.” Both Kang and Watts spent heavily on communication and shared understanding before expecting the organization to move.  ### **Purpose is what survives the disruption** So what holds a project together when the plan has to be rewritten again and again? “What I care most about as CEO is keeping our purpose clear and felt by everyone,” said Nakajima, “because what we do really supports people's everyday lives.” “Felt by everyone” is the operative phrase. Nakajima rolled out a slogan – this work supports society. He bought advertising space in national newspapers across Japan to run it publicly and reinforced it internally with regular check-ins and frontline listening. Not an announcement. A repetition. That is the Manifesto's first value: clear purpose realized through adaptive plans. “Guiding with purpose and adjusting along the way outweighs over-planning and the illusion of control.” In Kuwait, the plan was rewritten repeatedly. The purpose was not. ### **Repetition is what turns change into culture** The side conversations circled the same idea: how continuous improvement can become part of the DNA of an organization. A century-old Japanese manufacturer weathered a century of repeated regional crises by fixing problems inside the business rather than exiting or selling. Disciplines like kaizen, where continuous improvement is achieved through small, daily and manageable changes, can make reinvention so routine that it turns invisible. From the outside, this continuous, incremental reinvention can look like resistance to change. But trust-building repeated often enough stops looking like reinvention and starts looking like culture. When it’s part of the culture, reinvention is less like a leap and more like a discipline. It is proven in small increments and sustained by people who still trust the person asking them to change again. The enterprises built for change are not the fastest. They are the ones that have practiced changing often enough, and honestly enough, that the next disruption is just the next rep.  [Learn More](https://www.pmi.org/learning/agile/manifesto-for-enterprise-agility?utm%5Fjob%5Fnumber=268&utm%5Fregion%5Fname=na&utm%5Fcampaign%5Fchannel=b2c&utm%5Ffunnel%5Fstage=awareness&utm%5Fmarketing%5Fchannel=paid%5Fmedia&utm%5Fmarketing%5Fsubchannel=third%5Fparty%5Fmedia&utm%5Fstart%5Fdate=09142026&utm%5Fend%5Fdate=09202026&utm%5Fsource=web&utm%5Fcustom%5Ffield%5Fone=time%5Fmanifesto%5Fenterprise%5Fagility&utm%5Fcustom%5Ffield%5Ftwo=none&utm%5Fcustom%5Ffield%5Fthree=none&utm%5Fcustom%5Ffield%5Ffour=none&utm%5Fcustom%5Ffield%5Ffive=none) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/project-management-institute/reinvention-isnt-a-leap-its-a-discipline/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/project-management-institute/reinvention-isnt-a-leap-its-a-discipline/"},"headline":"Reinvention Isn’t a Leap. 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