View Posts By:
Richard Maltzman
Dave Shirley
Recent Posts
Saving the Sahel (Part 1)
You Can't Get They-ah From Hee-yah
Floating an idea into reality: the other side of the AI Project Paradox
The Environment of the Built Environment: an AI Paradox
Is plastic on your mind?
Categories
6th,
6th Edfition,
6th Edition PMBOK,
7th Edition,
7th Edition PMBOK,
8th Edition PMBOK,
8th Edition PMBOK Guide,
Activism,
actuarial,
actuary,
adapt,
addition by subtraction,
Africa,
africa,
agriculture,
airforce,
ajaita,
Alaska,
amazon,
analogous,
analytics,
ancient,
and more power,
antarctica,
anti-science,
apple,
apps,
architecture,
arctic,
arrakis,
Artificial Intelligence,
asch paradigm,
Assistant,
asthma,
astronomy,
automobile,
automotive,
autonomous cars,
b,
bankhar,
Banksy Crypto,
basalt,
baseball,
bats,
batter,
beauty products,
benefit,
benefits,
Benefits Realization,
beyond epica,
biases,
bicycle,
big data,
big dfata,
big dig,
bike,
biodiversity,
biomedicine,
birdhouse,
blockchain,
blood,
blue blood,
blue trees,
bluefin,
bluefin tuna,
book review,
boston,
boston university,
Boyce,
Brazil,
brazil,
Breakdown Structures,
BS,
building,
buildings,
built environment,
built environment,
bumblebee,
cake,
capacitor,
car,
Carbon,
carbon,
carbon capture,
carbon negative,
carbon neutral,
carbon pool,
carbon sequestration,
carbonate,
careers,
CEO,
ChatGPT,
chatGPT,
chatgpt,
chatgpt,
chess,
China,
china,
chopsticks,
citrus,
cli-fi,
climate,
climate change,
climate resilience,
climeworks,
Clumsy,
CO2,
co2,
CO2 Utilization,
coalition,
cobalt,
coffee pods,
cognition,
cognitive,
Collabortion,
colombia,
concrete,
Conflict,
construction 5.0,
cool projects xyloscope,
cooling,
coral,
corn,
cost of good quality,
cost of poor quality,
cost of quality,
crazy,
criticism of project management,
cryptocurrency,
CSR,
csr,
data,
data analytics,
data privacy,
datacenter,
dataset,
death spiral,
Decision Making,
decomposition,
Defense and Climate,
definition of a project,
deforestation,
dependencies,
dependency,
desert,
DIKW,
dikw,
dimopoulos,
disposal,
dna,
DOD,
dogs,
dolphins,
dream,
drilling,
drink,
dune,
dune,
dutch,
early start,
earth,
eatlocal,
eco-tourism,
ecological,
economic,
economics,
EKC,
electric grid,
electricity,
electronics,
elysis,
embodied carbon,
emerging technologies,
empower,
Energy,
energy efficiency,
environmental degradation,
escalate,
escalation,
ESG,
extreme weather,
fallacy,
FARC,
farming,
finance,
fish,
fish brains,
fishing,
fix,
fixing the earth,
flint water,
Flint Water Supply,
flood,
flooding,
Food supply chain,
food waste,
forest,
forest for the trees,
forestation,
forrestgump,
frank herbert,
Fruitcake,
fungus,
fusion,
Galvao,
garage,
gas,
gasoline,
geese,
gender equality,
gender partnerships,
generational differences,
Generative AI,
gladwell,
gold,
Goodness,
google,
Government,
GPT,
great pacific garbage patch,
green,
green building,
green buildings,
green energy,
green iguana,
green project,
green project management,
greening,
guest post,
gyre,
harkonnen,
Harvesting Benefits,
hawasina,
hedgehogs,
heursitics,
historical data,
hlb,
holitsic,
holland,
horseshoe crab,
human-caused climate change,
hydrogen,
hydrology,
ice,
iceland,
ignition,
iguana,
imagery,
impact,
india,
inequality,
information,
initiatives,
injection,
insurance,
intelligence,
interacting risk,
internal combustion engine,
invasive species,
investment,
isomer,
issue escalation,
issues,
ITER,
jobs,
Jupiter,
justification,
kids,
kill point,
knowledge,
koch brothers,
Kuznets,
laboratory,
LAL,
landscape mode,
lapampa,
launch,
LCA,
Leadership,
Leadership,
life cycle analyses,
life cycle analysis,
lifecycle,
Linkedin,
liquid,
lizard,
local,
long term,
long-term,
long-term thinking,
look up,
loud,
maintenance,
maker,
makermovement,
malcolm gladwell,
management,
marathon,
marine biology,
market,
mars,
Martin Luther King,
mean,
megawatt,
MeHg,
melting,
mercury,
metal,
Microgrid,
microplastics,
migration,
military,
millennial,
mindset,
minerals,
mission,
mitigate,
MLK,
mongolia,
museum,
museum of london,
nature,
nematodes,
net gain,
Net Project Success Score,
net zero,
netherlands,
network,
New book,
New Jersey,
New Practitioners,
new york,
NFT,
nitrogen,
noise,
noreaster,
norway,
nova,
NPSS,
NREL,
ocean,
ocean cleanup,
ocean life,
oil rig,
oil rigs,
oklahoma,
oman,
only murders in the building,
opportunity,
overall risk,
oxygen,
packaging,
pareto,
PBS,
permafrost,
persistence,
peru,
Pharmaceutical,
planet,
planet.com,
planning,
plant,
plasma,
plastic,
playground,
pm,
pm education,
pmbok,
pmbok guide,
pmnetwork,
PMXPO-2018,
podcast,
pollutants,
pollution,
poop,
poor,
portfolio,
power,
power skills,
privacy,
privacy concerns,
professors,
program,
Program Management,
project,
project leader,
project leadership,
project management,
project management 3.0,
project on fire,
project progress,
Project Success,
project success,
projecticity,
projectleadership,
projectmanagement,
projects,
psychology,
pulse of the profession,
purple bacteria,
purpose,
quiet,
rainforest,
rationale,
reef,
refugees,
renewable,
renewables,
Repair,
repair,
repeatable process,
repeatable processes,
repurpose,
research,
resource breakdown strucuture,
Resource Management,
reversing climate change,
revisionist history,
rich,
rigs2reefs,
ripe,
risk,
risk avoidance,
Risk Management,
risk mitigation,
risk response,
risk responses,
river,
robots,
rocks,
rules of thumb,
rural,
rural India,
russia,
Sarcasm/Irony,
satellite,
saudi,
schedule,
sci-fi,
Science,
science,
science-fiction,
scientific american,
screaming monkeys,
sea,
sea life,
Sea-Level Rise,
sea-level rise,
seagreens,
seawall,
seawater,
seawater temperature,
seaweed. beat;es. farming,
secondary risk,
selena gomez,
sequestration,
shipping,
skyscraper,
SLR,
smart cities,
smart city,
smelting,
social,
social pressure,
soil,
solar,
solar panels,
solar perovkites,
solar saheli,
sonic,
sponge cities,
SRI,
stage-gate,
stagegate,
stakeholder,
stakeholder management,
steward,
stewardship,
storage,
strategy,
stupid,
success,
suffer,
sulphur,
sunk cost,
supercapacitor,
supply chain,
survey,
Sustainability,
sustainability,
Sustainable Investing,
Sustainable Tourism,
sybiosis,
symbiosis,
system 03,
TBL,
temperature,
terraform,
terraforming,
test,
threat,
threats,
totem,
touchscreen,
tour,
tower,
Trains,
transparency,
transportation,
trash,
tree,
tree species,
trees,
trillion,
triple bottom line,
triple constraint,
truth to power,
UMass,
us army corps of engineers,
USDA,
vacuum,
value,
venus,
vision,
voice,
voltage optimization,
vw scandal,
washing machine,
waste,
wastewater,
water,
we mean business,
whales,
Whirlpool,
wind,
wisdom,
women,
Women in Project Management,
wood wide web,
woonerf,
Work Breakdown Structures (WBS),
world breakdown structure,
worms,
xian,
xylotron,
Yale
Date
A while ago, I blogged about the book “Purpose” by Nikos Mourkogiannis. That book had an image of a tree and focused on the roots of a tree as a way to show that business’ purpose is really what gives it its foundation, its nutrients, its structure, its basis.
Flipping through what turns out to be an excellent journal called Biz Ed, I was surprised to find an article with a similar graphic, and a related title – and a strong connection to project management.
The article is “Rooted in a Sense of Purpose” by Mie Augier and Arjay Miller. In it, the authors focus on the possibilities of building business schools (and the appropriate curricula!) that hae a social conscience. The quote that told me for sure that this article was ‘blog-worthy’ was this one:
Students can help build bridges between sectors.
Isn’t that what we do as PMs? We’re silo busters – making sure that different parts of our business connect properly with each other so that they contribute properly to the project objectives. Since most companies have made strong commitments to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), then if project management students (of any age!) learn how to do their job of connecting sectors, and the sectors themselves are all properly connected to the company’s CSR goals, it only figures that these newly-educated PMs will be able to help root their companies in their purpose. So I would assert the following:
Project Managers can help root their companies in their purpose.
As a seasoned instructor of graduate-level business students, in most cases PM-focused students, I see an eagerness to learn in this integrated fashion. Yes, many of the students are Millennials and Gen-Y’ers so that is part of it, but by the same token, I have many students who are “older” – in their 50s and 60s – and they also seem to crave the idea of understanding how their business’ purpose connects with their own projects and how their businesses respect not only economic but also ecological, ethical, and social goals.
The article features a case study on Public Management at Stanford University. It focuses on their MBA program and their PMP certificate. But wait: it’s not the PMP® of which you are thinking. Rather, it is a Public Management Program, a part of Stanford’s MBA since 1971. The acronym may be “wrong” but the effort is quite “right”. The program teaches the usual business disciplines – economics, management, marketing, financial analysis, and although not mentioned, I’m sure it includes project management. The difference? The courses are revised to include components related to ethics and social responsibility.
This is not hard to do. I have actually started to do this in my own teaching by using project cases based on (for example) the BP Macondo Well (mostly known as the Deepwater Horizon) incident, the Takata air bag problem, and the recent Volkswagen attempt to ‘work around’ EPA regulations on carbon monoxide emission levels. And I must tell you, this becomes one of the more interesting parts of the course and really gets people energized on the issues. We don’t’ always all agree, of course, and in fact sometimes vigorously disagree. But through argument, in the most positive sense of this word, students are learning more about purpose, and importantly more about how their projects (and project management education and knowledge) help – really help – their business form the roots that make the business truly successful.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: June 04, 2017 03:17 PM |
Permalink
