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Date
I am sharing my reaction to this article from the Cape Cod Times which paints a not-so-pretty picture of the future of the ecology (and economy) of Cape Cod. The article, “Cape Official: A Sense of Urgency” is particularly interesting to PMs because of the sub headline “Commission Plan Maps Out How To Take Action On Climate Change”. A plan to take action? An initiative to accomplish a valuable deliverable that is urgent and bound by a schedule? Sounds like project management to me!
The trigger for this story and the ‘sense of urgency’ in the article’s title is the current and expected effect (or impact) of climate change. Although the changes in temperature are in line with the (fairly scary) prediction of the climate scientists, the impacts of climate change are proving to be larger and more far-reaching than the predictions.
The Cape Cod Commission this week released its action report. But before we get to that, let’s talk about these impacts. The head of the commission, Kristy Senatori, says, “Our economy is based on the environment. Making sure we get ahead of this climate crisis is extremely important”. I thought this a good chance to take a slight tangent and bring up the Eisenhower Matrix which plots importance and urgency. It’s actually a good tool for project managers to use for sorting out their issues. Here’s an excellent article on the Eisenhower Matrix and below an image from it.
Image from https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/eisenhower-matrix
The concept is pretty simple: the items that are urgent and important (in the upper-left corner here) are the ones you need to work on now – or they will create BIGGER, more dangerous problems in the future – like picking up a sick kid from school – or not dealing with the contributors to climate change NOW.
As to the Cape Cod Commission report, I found it to be very well-prepared and hopefully actionable. I’ve decided to break this into two parts because there are several good PM lessons from this initiative.
For now, I’d like to point you to this work, giving you a chance to have a look at it before Part 2 of this post is published (in about a week), and tease out the rationale for the title of this post.
Below is an image from the Commission’s website that shows how the plan is decomposed into phases. The topic and action plan are summarized on their site here and here.
I also summarize the purpose statement of the Action Plan below:
PURPOSE STATEMENT
To identify, study and monitor the causes and consequences of climate change on Cape Cod as a basis to guide and develop science-based policies, strategies and actions that governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals can pursue to:
- improve the region’s resilience to climate hazards; and
- mitigate climate change on Cape Cod through reducing net regional greenhouse gas emissions in support of the framework and targets established by the Commonwealth.
The full, 129-page Technical Report can be downloaded here, and a 14-page Executive Report can be found here.
And now, finally, an explainer of the title. For those of you familiar with the very popular US comedy show “Seinfeld”, I don’t have to tell you much about the recurring “No Soup For You” theme in that show. For those who aren’t familiar with it, you can find all of the details here. The bottom line is that the characters in the show had to be very careful in this restaurant because of the delicate sensitivities of the chef, or to no longer have access to his delicious soup. In our case – we have to be very careful in our delicate Cape Cod environment, or lose (for example) those tasty Cape Cod cranberries – and the industry and jobs that they support - as you will see in Part 2.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: August 08, 2021 12:24 PM |
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