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Date
One of the reasons I've stuck with project management as a career choice for 150 years (well, okay it's a little less than that) is the challenge and fun of working across disciplines. As PMs we have to make the engineers and marketeers play nicely together.
And, as I said above... this can be challenging and... "fun".
So we are indeed "silo busters". This is a metaphor based on the idea of vertical organizations (Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Engineering) as silos (you know, those big tall cylinders you can see on farms to store grain; see above photo) and us as project managers providing the necessary ‘horizontal’ or cross-silo communication and collaboration one needs to have a project succeed.
This same scenario can – and must – take place at the corporate level as well if sustainability is to become part of the fabric of modern business. Thankfully, it is happening. From this week’s ‘edie’ report:
There is a growing awareness of how cross-sector partnerships are providing environmental benefits to business, particularly in the automotive industry, says Toyota's Steve Hope, general manager of environmental affairs and corporate citizenship, told edie that industries are starting to break away from a linear way of thinking and companies leading in sustainability are looking wider than their "own doorstep".
Noticeably, wider industry collaboration is beginning to progress areas of resource efficiency, particularly water and energy, says Hope.
"We've joined the Centre for Industrial Sustainability, headed up by EPSRC. We're involved in various projects but this is where we can discuss these issues with other big companies from different sectors, such as Marks & Spencer's for example.
We’ve seen this ourselves. As a proud contributor to ECOCAR2, we’ve seenoutstanding, sustainability-oriented, creative, productive collaboration between Government, the auto industry, the IT industry, and 15 great North American universities in their effort to take ‘leap-and-bound’ innovation in the development of a hybrid automobile. Learn more about ECOCAR2 here.
We also see collaboration between customers and even competitors in the IT industry under the guidance of GreenTouch, where the goal is to to” deliver the architecture, specifications and roadmap to increase network energy efficiency by a factor of 1000 compared to 2010 levels”. Read more about GreenTouch here.
The point?
The point is that once again, we as project managers are poised to be leaders in the area of breaking silo walls. We, more than any other discipline, have the ‘muscle memory’ of getting people who don’t normally work together well – to play in perfect harmony for our project purposes. We just have to bring our game to the next level and get our leaders, even our industries, to participate in collaborative efforts in which sustainability is brought to the forefront. How do you do that?
Learn more about sustainability, about CSR, and in particular, learn about your own company’s current commitment to these areas. Stay tuned right here at People, Planet, Profits & Projects, where we post regularly on this topic and give examples of how companies are collaborating and gaining a competitive advantage by incorporating sustainability thinking throughout their company – and especially – especially – at the project and program levels.
You can also follow EarthPM’s blog where we’ve recently been talking about CVS/Caremark and their efforts to bring their mission/vision to reality with CSR projects – very interesting and important work.
So – strengthen those silo-busting muscles, work out regularly, get the vertical organizations in your enterprise to work together and….get stuff done! It’s what we do.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: March 06, 2014 10:29 AM |
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