Be Proud!
From the People, Planet, Profits & Projects Blog
by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Richard Maltzman
Dave Shirley
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Date
Have a look at this stock price chart. Noting where the price is today and the general trend you can observe over the past 3 years or so, it looks like a pretty enviable position to be in. Right?
Well, if that’s true, why would an officer of the company be quoted recently as saying, “we’re not proud of where we are right now”?
The answer, as well as an exceedingly well-done parody video, can be found here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/01/28/379395819/coffee-horror-parody-pokes-at-environmental-absurdity-of-k-cups
This is a story from NPR’s “The Salt”. As mentioned above, It contains a horror-film parody video that you really must see (mild obscenities and violence). Really. You should go to the link and play the video – it’s worth it.
As for the text part of the article, here’s a key extract:
Concerns about the K-Cup's environmental impact have been brewing for several years. "It's a warranted criticism," says Monique Oxender, chief sustainability officer for Keurig Green Mountain. She says the company has been exploring recyclable alternatives since Green Mountain acquired Keurig in 2006.
"We're not proud of where we are right now, and we're committed to fixing it," she tells The Salt.
Several competing coffee pod makers offer recyclable options. Nespresso, for example, makes its pods out of aluminum. But K-Cups are made from No. 7 composite plastic, which isn't recyclable in most areas.
The company says its newer coffee pod systems are made from recyclable plastic: the Vue, K-Carafe (which holds multiple coffee servings in one pod), and the Bolt (designed for workplaces). But those models are just 5 percent of the beverage packs Keurig Green Mountain produces; the rest are K-Cups.
So why not simply adopt those new materials in the far more ubiquitous K-Cups? The sticking point is backward compatibility — there are already millions of Keurig brewing machines out there, Oxender explains. "It has to work on all models," she says.
So – the reason for the lack of pride, despite the economic success, is that there exists something called a triple bottom line. And there exists something called long-term, or life-cycle thinking, and things like Life Cycle Assessments. A project manager needs to be aware of these things. We may have to be the one to raise the flag and look at the company’s mission, vision, and values and ask the question – despite the potential economic success of this product, what does it do when it’s in use? By the way, here is Keurig’s value statement about sustainability:
“At Keurig Green Mountain, Inc., we are passionate about our business and look for ways to be more sustainable in everything that we do.”
That’s laudable. But has this value been applied in decision-making when launching projects, programs, and portfolios? One could certainly question it – and it appears that in stating “we’re not proud”, the company itself is questioning whether they’ve acted in line with their values, and whether or not they have considered the triple bottom line.
We took a shot at compiling the information available to show just how many K-Cups® have been placed into landfills, using the measurement of K-Cups, placed end-to-end around the world. Turns out, the number of circles they can make around the earth is quite impressive.
Now, do us a favor. Contrast this with the stock price chart. The attributes are both going up, but one is in line with the company’s goals (to make money) and the other is at odds with their values (be sustainable, responsible, etc.). We’re not advocating abandoning the desire to make money. Quite the opposite – as project managers, we crave economically successful projects – they provide great financial opportunities for us. But we also know that the objectives of a project must be aligned with the program, portfolio, and enterprise in which they belong.
That’s why we push so hard for project managers to accept their role as change managers and the ones who might step up early on (here, when we had only a couple of rings around the planet) and ask some very, very tough questions: “Do we really want people making nasty videos about our company? Do we want to be the ones responsible for billions and billions of non-recyclable plastics going into landfills and doing who-knows-what to water supplies as the chemicals leech out? Do we want our officers have to say to interviewers that “we’re not proud of where we are right now”?
We know some of the project managers out there are shaking their heads, saying that this is out –of-their control, not in scope, and so on. We feel you. We know. We don’t think that’s enough of an excuse to NOT be a change agent, but we do have empathy for that attitude. This is why we have raised the level of our focus up to the Portfolio level. Our new book will focus on the Portfolio and Enterprise level. We think you’ll find several cases like this one of interest.
In the meantime, watch out for giant coffee pod monsters!
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: February 05, 2015 10:59 PM |
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