Delivering Enterprise Value at the Speed of AI

AI accelerates work, but without connected context, speed only widens the gap between strategy and execution. Join PMI’s former Global Chairman Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez and Atlassian to explore how leading organizations adapt at speed and govern portfolios dynamically.

AI is accelerating execution. But without connected business context, speed doesn't close the strategy-execution gap. It widens it.

HBR Author & PMI's former Global Chairman Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez joins Sapphire Reels, Head of Strategy Collection GTM PMM at Atlassian, to explore how modern leaders are rewiring the way strategy connects to work. Antonio brings the Project Economy lens: why traditional operating models were built for steady-state maintenance, not dynamic transformation, and why running more projects faster creates waste at scale. Sapphire brings the platform lens: how connected context, living strategy data, and dynamic portfolio governance give leaders the visibility to actually act on what AI surfaces.

Together they cover how to move from rigid annual planning to continuous outcome-based funding, why Mean Time to Pivot is replacing on-time/on-budget as the real agility metric, and what the operating model of 2026 actually requires.

What you'll learn:

  1. The AI Speed Paradox: Why disconnected operating models fail under high execution speed, and how connected context prevents strategy drift.
  2. The Accountability Gap: Why strategic clarity at the top rarely survives the handoff to execution, and how to close the gap without replacing everything your organization already runs on
  3. Dynamic Portfolio Management: How to move from rigid annual budgeting to continuous, outcome-based funding across people, AI agents, and compute.
  4. The New Agility Standard: Why Mean Time to Pivot (MTTP) is replacing on-time/on-budget, and what it takes to actually close decision latency.

 

Speakers

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez

HBR Author, Former Chairman of the Project Management Institute (PMI)

Described by Harvard Business Review's Adi Ignatius as "the father of modern project management," Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is the most influential thinker of the 21st century in elevating project management to the executive level. With 35 contributions in HBR — more than any other author on the subject — and two appearances on the Thinkers50 ranking of the world's most influential management thinkers, he has reshaped how a generation of leaders deliver change. He is the author of Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age (HBR Press, 2026) and The HBR Project Management Handbook (HBR Press, 2021), a Fellow and former Chairman of the Project Management Institute (PMI), and Vice President of the Association for Project Management (APM). Through Projects & Co, he has advised more than 100 organizations on accelerating transformation and building lasting internal capability, and has trained over 10,000 leaders worldwide. He has delivered more than 800 keynotes and teaches at leading business schools.

Sapphire Reels

Head of GTM Product Marketing, Strategy Collection, Atlassian

Sapphire is a Senior Product Marketing Leader who heads up go-to-market strategy for Strategy Collection: Atlassian's strategic portfolio management solution. She brings over a decade of enterprise B2B SaaS experience to the intersection of product, positioning, and buyer strategy. Before Atlassian, she spent seven years at Pluralsight building the integrated & solutions marketing function from the ground up. Sapphire is known for translating complex product stories into messaging that actually moves buyers: from CIOs and CTOs to Chiefs of Staff. When she's not stress-testing positioning with skeptical stakeholders, she's thinking about why so many good strategies die somewhere between the boardroom and the backlog. She's based in Seattle.