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Date
As we research the intersection of project management and sustainability one of the questions we run into is "who's driving?". Don't take this literally, we're not talking about driving a car, but more from the standpoint of stakeholder analysis.
As our observant readers will know, the PMBOK(R) Guide's 5th Edition, recently released, has a brand new Knowledge Area, called Stakeholder Management. PMI has correctly surmised that this is a major piece of what we do as project managers.
As we've always said, an unidentified threat is an untreated threat, and an unidentified stakeholder could mean a whole family of both threats and opporunities that are unidentified.
So we should know our stakeholders. And obviously, one key stakeholder is the customer. There is hardly much bigger of a customer for many companies as global retailer WalMart.
Walmart has made some news over the past few years pushing for sustainability from their suppliers. And more recently, this story from Reuters indicates that WalMart has quite literally become a threat to laggards in the field of sustainability. The threat is this: comply with our environmental rules within 5 years or your projects are off of our shelves. Off. Kaput. Finished.
Here's a key clipping from the article. We suggest you read it all because there is more to the story, especially surrounding WalMart's contribution to the trade deficit between the US and China.
The new requirements, announced in China where Wal-Mart has more than 20,000 suppliers, will compel workshops that churn out much of the world's toys, clothing and electronics to improve on energy efficiency, waste reduction and other markers on the retailer's checklist.
Wal-Mart said the checklist was voluntary. But if suppliers fall short, they could be cut off from the nearly 4,000 Walmart discount stores and more than 600 Sam's Club wholesale warehouses that the company operates in the United States.
The standards set in Wal-Mart's "sustainability index", which has helped to burnish an image tarnished by criticism from labor groups and local communities, have already been embraced by 500 of the world's major consumer product makers.
The retailer said that by the end of 2017, U.S. Walmart and Sam's Club stores will get 70 percent of their goods from global suppliers that use the sustainability index.
Our take - as project managers? Well, you're right to identify this as an operational thing more than a project thing, but consider this. How would a supplier to WalMart start to meet these requirements? With a project. What is the entire roll-out of WalMart's initiative to control its suppliers? A project.
And from our perspective as project managers it helps answer the question we asked up front in this post. Who's driving sustainability in your project? Sometimes it's the EPA. Sometimes it's a group of 'environmentally-minded' employees. It could be the CEO, after having a sort of green epiphany. Or, as in this case, it could be a gigantic big-box store which just happens to be your biggest customer.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: June 21, 2013 10:33 PM |
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