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
"Sustainability rising”, I really like that phrase. It happens to be one of the headings in the new McKinsey Global Survey Results[i]. To me, it means more than just an increase in interest in sustainability. It is more universal than that. To go back to our 2010 publication, “We know, firsthand, then, that business is beginning to appreciate the value of green (sustainability). That’s of course in harmony with an increasing “green wave” of awareness among the general population.[ii]” That increase in interest is really the green wave rolling to the shore of business.
We’ve talked about the McKinsey surveys before. But to give you some brief background, we’ve been reporting on the McKinsey report since 2010. It is primarily an on-line survey sent to business executives to gauge the temperature of sustainability efforts within their respective companies; strategic alignment, priority, and importance of sustainability for example. According to McKinsey, the most recent survey was available to executives from February 11, 2014 to February 21, 2014 and 3,344 executives responded. So it is very current information. The executives were from a variety of “regions (of the world), industries, company sizes, functional specialists, and tenures.”
The survey is a wealth of knowledge about what is going on in the mind of the corporate world with regard to sustainability. The purpose of this post is to explore one particular area of the survey results, alignment of sustainability with overall business goals, visions and values. The following is a chart from this public report.
(Note 3 states that the question asked between 2010 and 2012 was “align with business goals” and was expanded in 2014 to include mission or values.)
As you can see, there has been about a 45% increase (from 30% to 43%) in alignment as a reason that companies are addressing sustainability. For those of you who follow this blog site and EarthPM.com know how much emphasis we are placing on integrating sustainability (rather than bolting it on as a separate entity) into project management. We are also advocating that the integration begin at the “top of the chain”, the portfolio level. For us, the portfolio level within an organization is the best place to fully integrate sustainability thinking into the culture. The organization's portfolio of projects sets the stage for the direction (vision/mission/values) of an organization because the profolio drives prgrams and projects. It is the top level. Integration into the culture at that top level of the organization will ensure (hopefully) that the thinking will follow down to programs and projects, the trifecta of project management.
What we have seen over the years since we began researching our first book, through publication and up to date, is that there is a definite movement to integrate sustainability into the organizations core thinking (mission/vision/values). We all know that the more your key stakeholders are engaged in the process, the more likely the project will succeed. As project managers, we think about incorporating sustainability into the corporate culture as our project. This recent survey is very encouraging for our project’s success. While alignment is the most compelling reason there are several other reasons for companies to address sustainability according to this survey. I’ll explore those in a later blog posting.
[i] http://www.mckinsey.com/insights
[ii] Maltzman, R. and Shirley, D., Green Project Management, 2010, CRC Press, NYC.
Posted
by
Dave Shirley
on: July 29, 2014 09:28 AM |
Permalink
