Housekeeping item: We are moving our blog to this section of our website.  We will maintain the archives on the old site for now and keep writing here.

When I read the 2025 Pulse of the Profession report, a single word came to mind: finally.

Finally, the Project Management Institute has said out loud what some of us have been arguing for years — that project success isn’t defined by whether it’s on time or on budget. It’s about value — value that’s worth the effort and the expense, value that lasts beyond delivery, value that aligns with the larger system we operate in.

PMI didn’t just redefine success. It reframed accountability. Their Maximizing Project Success report introduced the M.O.R.E. framework — Manage perceptions, Own success, Relentlessly reassess, Expand perspective — and Pulse 2025 builds directly on that. It positions business acumen and sustainability not as soft skills but as strategic differentiators. That shift is long overdue.

According to PMI’s global data, projects that integrate sustainability and social impact goals are 2.6 times more likely to succeed. That’s not an opinion — that’s the strongest statistical predictor of success in the entire dataset. Yet, only 23% of projects today are aligned to those goals. That means three out of four projects are leaving value on the table and calling it progress.

The same report shows that sustainability-aligned projects achieve 55% customer satisfaction, compared to 33% for others. If that doesn’t convince executives that sustainability is a performance strategy, not a philanthropic gesture, I don’t know what will.

The M.O.R.E. Mindset — and What It Means

Here’s what resonated most: PMI’s M.O.R.E. framework is not about bureaucracy; it’s about behavior.

Manage perceptions — Because perception is part of value. If stakeholders don’t see the value, it doesn’t exist.
Own success — Because “we did what was asked” isn’t good enough. We own outcomes, not just deliverables.
Relentlessly reassess — Because no plan survives contact with the real world. Static project plans in a dynamic system are a form of denial.
Expand perspective — Because every project sits in a web of social, environmental, and economic impacts, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not.

This framework gives language to what sustainability practitioners have long known: projects are business activities with social and ecological consequences.

The Business Acumen Wake-Up Call

The Pulse 2025 report also revealed that only 18% of project professionals demonstrate high business acumen — yet those who do outperform across every major metric. They meet business goals more often (83% vs. 78%), adhere better to budget (73% vs. 68%), and experience fewer failures (8% vs. 11%).

That gap is massive — and revealing. It shows that too many project managers are still optimizing for outputs instead of outcomes. They know the mechanics of delivery, but not the dynamics of value. Business acumen isn’t about knowing how to read a P&L; it’s about understanding why your project exists in the first place and what would make it matter.

As someone who’s spent three decades working across 55 countries and helping organizations integrate sustainability into project delivery, this hit close to home. The lack of business acumen isn’t a skills gap — it’s a systems gap. We’ve trained generations of project managers to control variance instead of create value.

Measure What Matters

One of PMI’s most interesting findings is that high-acumen professionals measure more of what matters. They track an average of 9.1 success factors per project compared to 6.3 for others. Beyond the traditional “Iron Triangle,” they include alignment to strategy, customer satisfaction, stakeholder trust, and even ESG indicators.

That’s exactly the evolution the profession needs. The days of “on time and on budget” as proof of success are over. A project that meets every metric and still erodes trust, damages ecosystems, or drains employee morale is not a success — it’s a liability with a nice PowerPoint deck.

This is where sustainability and business acumen intersect. Sustainability provides the why; business acumen provides the how. Together, they move us from compliance to contribution.

My Takeaway

If you strip it all down, the 2025 Pulse of the Profession is really a mirror — and what it reflects isn’t flattering. We have the tools. We have the frameworks. We have the data proving that sustainability drives success. What we lack is nerve.

The project economy doesn’t suffer from ignorance; it suffers from inertia. We know what works — but we keep managing projects as though the world around them doesn’t matter. That’s the blind spot.

M.O.R.E. gives us a roadmap out of it. It challenges every project professional to manage perceptions honestly, to own outcomes beyond delivery, to reassess constantly, and to expand perspective from the project to the planet.

Because if we continue to measure motion instead of meaning, we’ll keep mistaking busy for effective — and efficiency for success.

We don’t need more projects.
We need better ones.
Ones that regenerate more than they consume.
Ones that leave the world — and the organizations behind them — stronger than before.

That’s what I learned from the 2025 Pulse of the Profession. I encourage you to check it out.

- Joel

About the author: 

Dr. Joel Carboni is the founder of GPM and the architect of the P5 Standard™ and PRiSM™method used by governments, global firms, and universities across 145+ countries to deliver climate-aligned, regenerative outcomes. A member of the Global Reporting Initiative working group for the new Pollution Standard, he has helped shape the world’s sustainability playbook—from early contributions to the Paris Agreement and the SDGs to advisory work that aligns projects with science-based targets and emerging regulations.

Widely regarded as the leading voice in sustainable project delivery, Joel’s work bridges boardrooms, policy, and practice: consulting with financial institutions and regulators, teaching as a visiting professor at SKEMA Business School, and writing as a Forbes contributor. When organizations need a standard-setter, they use his frameworks; when they need a path to net-positive and beyond, they call him.