By Stewart Clegg, Torgeir Skyttermoen, and Anne Live Vaagaasar – the authors of Project Management – Creating Sustainable Value.
This is the 4th of an article series of 4 articles (each can be read individually):
1: Beyond the Basics: What Project Management Needs Today 1/4
2: Beyond Waste: What Project Management can do Today (2/4)
3: Beyond Rock Stars: Trust and Psychological Safety in Project Management 3/4
4: Beyond Control: How Project Leadership Maturity Creates Meaningful Impact 4/4
Project Leadership Maturity: Why maturity, adaptability, and leadership make the difference
Some projects tick every box — on time, on budget, and well-executed — yet still fail to make a difference.
Others spark change, shift mindsets, and reshape how value is delivered. What makes the difference?
In innovation projects focused on sustainability, success is not about control. It is about direction, collaboration, and leadership. Drawing on a real-life innovation initiative developed within a major Norwegian industrial group aiming to reduce plastic waste, this article explores how project leadership maturity and engaged leadership create the conditions for meaningful and lasting outcomes.
Building the Conditions: Organizational Maturity and Autonomy
One sustainability initiative, a refill-based service model referred to as Refill (Påfyll), is featured in our book Project Management: Creating Sustainable Value. It began with a clear sustainability challenge: reducing plastic packaging in everyday consumer products. But it quickly evolved into a broader innovation project that aimed to change consumption patterns, create new value propositions, and move toward a circular business model.
At the core of this project’s progress was more than a skilled team. It was a sign of organizational project maturity, the ability to structure innovation in ways that promote learning, agility, and meaningful outcomes. Not maturity in the sense of process templates or audits, but a deeper readiness to act wisely, flexibly, and strategically.
A critical early decision was to give the project its own space, an autonomous unit shielded from operational constraints but connected to the company’s sustainability ambitions. This move gave the project the freedom to experiment, reflect, and evolve over time. It was not about managing uncertainty away, but about making room for it.
Autonomy like this does not mean isolation. It reflects an organization’s ability to distinguish between delivery-focused initiatives and those that require exploration, openness, and iteration. This distinction is a hallmark of maturity, knowing when to loosen the reins and when to hold the line.
Collaboration played a role, but it was the project leader’s ability to set direction, establish trust, and frame a learning journey that made that collaboration productive. The team engaged partners selectively and purposefully to fill specific gaps and challenge thinking, not to delegate ownership. Internally, the project leader helped protect the team’s focus while anchoring the project’s value in the wider strategic context.
In organizations with true project maturity, progress is not defined solely by milestones. It is also seen in how teams adapt, learn, and move forward with insight and intention. The Refill project did not perfect a solution before launch. Instead, it ran small-scale tests, welcomed feedback, and let learning shape direction. The team did not just deliver a service, they built a capability.
In short, project maturity is not about more process, but about better judgment. It is most visible when leaders are given, and take, the responsibility to lead in ways that support exploration, not just execution.
Experimentation, Agile Practice, and Adaptive Methods
In innovation projects driven by sustainability goals, certainty is rarely an option. Success comes not from following a set path, but from navigating uncertainty with skill, responsiveness, and purpose. That is why experimentation and adaptability are not peripheral practices. They are central to getting things right.
In Refill (Påfyll), experimentation was not a phase. It was the method. The team worked through prototyping, iteration, and ongoing testing, often with users directly involved. The project did not aim to predict the perfect solution. It aimed to find it through learning, and that learning was led.
It was the project leader who made this way of working possible. They shaped a working culture where insight mattered more than assumption and where methods were chosen for their usefulness, not their label. Agile principles were present but never rigidly applied. Instead, methods were mixed, adapted, and reconfigured to suit the needs of each phase.
This is where the project leader’s maturity was most visible: in the ability to sense what the moment called for and to lead the team through uncertainty without losing direction. It demanded a flexible mindset, the confidence to deviate from set plans, and the judgment to balance structure with openness. Equally important was the ability to read the wider context, understanding business strategy, sustainability ambitions, and users’ everyday needs. These capabilities allowed the project leader to lead not through control but through alignment, responsiveness, and shared understanding.
This leadership was evident in practical choices: how user feedback was gathered and acted upon, how decisions were timed and framed, and how the team was encouraged to engage critically, not just execute. Every cycle of experimentation became an opportunity to clarify purpose, and every adjustment was a sign of progress, not failure.
What made this possible was not a set of best practices, but a mindset led from the front: that progress is built, not controlled; that value emerges, not just arrives; and that experimentation, when led with skill, becomes a core capability, not a risk to manage but a strength to build on.
Collaboration That Drives Change: Users, Partners, and Shared Purpose
Complex innovation projects, especially those aimed at sustainability, cannot be solved in isolation. But successful collaboration rarely happens on its own. It requires deliberate effort, and often, it is the project leader who makes it work.
In Refill (Påfyll), involving users early and throughout the process proved essential. The team invited feedback not only on product functionality but on meaning, relevance, and barriers to adoption. These insights were not filtered through reports; they were brought into the room. The project leader ensured that the team listened, understood, and responded.
The project also benefited from selected partnerships, including a digital partner and a strategic advisor. What made those partnerships work was the leadership capacity to frame collaboration as shared problem-solving, not outsourced work. The project leader helped align expectations, clarify responsibilities, and maintain momentum across organizational boundaries without losing control of direction or coherence.
This kind of leadership goes beyond stakeholder management. It requires sensitivity to timing, tone, and translation, knowing when to widen the circle and when to protect focus, when to invite dialogue, and when to push decisions. It means guiding others without dominating them and anchoring every conversation in the project’s purpose.
Crucially, collaboration was not treated as an accessory. It was understood as a source of insight, legitimacy, and resilience. Its effectiveness depended on a leader who was present, engaged, and trusted, both inside the team and at its interfaces with others.
Done well, as in Refill, collaboration becomes more than coordination. It becomes part of how the project creates value and builds meaning for users, for the organization, and for society.
Takeaways and Closing: Leadership That Enables Learning and Lasting Impact
So, what makes a project succeed, not just in technical terms, but in ways that truly matter?
The answer, as the Refill (Påfyll) initiative illustrates, lies in a combination of engaged leadership, organizational project maturity, and a willingness to learn through experimentation and collaboration. Success was not guaranteed by methods or metrics. It was enabled by people, especially by a project leader who understood the challenge, stayed present in the process, and helped the team navigate complexity with purpose.
Four takeaways for professionals working with innovation and sustainability:
• Success is contextual and constructed. It does not arrive fully formed; it emerges through learning, adjustment, and shared understanding. Leaders help define what matters, not just what is delivered.
• Project maturity is dynamic, not procedural. It is about having the judgment to choose the right approach for the task and the courage to let exploration take precedence when needed.
• Experimentation is essential. Especially in sustainability-driven innovation, experimentation is not a risk; it is the method. Leaders must make room for failure, learning, and iteration.
• Leadership is about direction, not control. The most effective project leaders do not provide certainty. They create clarity, engagement, and momentum.
This article builds on insights from our book Project Management: Creating Sustainable Value, where we explore what it means to lead projects that truly matter for people, organizations, and the world we live in.
The lesson from Refill is not about applying the right model. It is about how leadership, maturity, and learning come together not just as concepts but as capabilities in action.
