People, Planet, Profits & Projects

Let me start with an amazing “makes-you-go-hmmm” thought.  It takes 13 tons of water to make your mobile phone.

Glug.  Glug.  Glug.

Let that soak in for few seconds.  Then read on.

My first engineering assignment was in an organization which focused on repair of telecom equipment.  This equipment was designed and manufactured by one of the top (if not the top) designers and manufacturers of equipment at that time.  One of my assignments was to do a “road show”, traveling to the locations which did the equipment design and explain to them (all PhDs and most of whom had at least two or three patents to their names) how the end result of their design – the product – lived its life “in the wild” and also what defects or other reasons resulted in their return for repair.

I think this may be one of the reasons that I believe strongly in – if possible – repairing something rather than disposing of it and ‘just buying a new one’.

Yet, our culture, increasingly, has become a throw-away culture.  Smartphones are tossed, laptops are only expected to last a year or two, and people by clothing to wear –maybe – once or twice, and then those also get tossed.

I came across an excellent episode from the “Costing the Earth” podcast from BBC 4 to which you should lend an ear.  In fact, bookmark the podcast, not just this episode.

The feature in this 20-ish minute podcast is about “Restart Parties” – which is a real thing, increasingly popular in the UK and several other countries, and it’s not only right in line with that first engineering assignment of mine but also represents a project that is literally reducing carbon emissions and other waste by thousands of tons.  They are also collecting data points from consumer who face failed products and getting that information back to the manufacturers – the organizers actually also used the phrase “how the product does in the wild”.

Some statistics: in the UK alone, 800 pounds of electric/electronic products are brought into households per year and a similar amount is disposed of.  If that sounds like a lot, sit down, because according to Earth911.org, the figure for electronics disposed of annually by the US consumer is 9.4 million tons.

In smartphones from the US alone, this represents $60 million in gold.  Literally.

In fact, if you decided that gold mining was your thing, you would be 40 to 800 times more productive mining in discarded circuit boards than in gold ore.  If you’ll excuse the pun, I think we should treasure that fact!

But back to our podcast.  People are doing something about this which I found fascinating and it’s also considered a project.  It’s called The Restart Project, and you can read about this idea here.

Even better, have a look at this video from the Restart Project:

What do you see here?  It’s about consciousness of the impact of waste, but there’s more than that – there’s a social aspect and even a sense of freedom from the thruway syndrome, which somehow emphasizes hope rather than just a cycle of discarding.

A lot of what you’ll find in this podcast and the other resources linked in this post has to do with the thought that goes into the design of a product – or for that matter, even a service – about what the long-term impact is of the product.  We, as project managers, often have a say in decisions that could change these long-term effects, something like what we used to preach on our road shows of days gone by: make the products repairable.  Make them long-lasting, durable, reliable.  In general, we should be speaking truth to power when it comes to designed-in obsolescence.   We should be seeking designs in which the hardware platform can innovatively use software to make the product compatible with the changing outside world.  As an example, I just replaced my cable modem on the recommendation of my service provider.  Suddenly my wireless router began to act up and provide unreliable service.  The recommendation from the service provider?  “Get a new router”.  Even the manufacturer of the router (no big surprise here) said, “just get the latest-model router”.  Friends and family said, “get a new router, it’ll be more likely to work with the new modem.  No – not me.  Remember?  I said I had this background in repair engineering?  So, I did 10 minutes of research, found that I could download a revised set of firmware for the router, did so, and voila!  The old, about-to-meet-its-maker router, which is actually not all that old, is working fine again!

Multiply that sort of transaction hundreds of thousands of times and consider the impact of that 13-ton mobile phone – and we’re talking about a significant environmental impact reduction (in addition to saving a trip to the electronics store and the $50 for the new router in my case)!

So check it out!  See if there are any Restart Parties near you?

You can join the Restart Parties Facebook page here and check it out!

This is a story that links two unlikely people: Arnold Schwartzenegger and Jessica Kirshenblatt-Gooderham.  You have probably heard of the former, based on his roles as The Terminator, Conan the Barbarian, and even Governor of Caifornia.  But If you want to learn about Ms. Kirshenblat-Goodenham, you’ll have to read on.

First, let’s focus on the California connection.

From a recent article in the New York Times:

As President Trump moves to reverse the Obama administration’s policies on climate change, California is emerging as the nation’s de facto negotiator with the world on the environment. The state is pushing back on everything from White House efforts to roll back pollution rules on tailpipes and smokestacks, to plans to withdraw or weaken the United States’ commitments under the Paris climate change accord.

The aggressive posture on the environment has set the stage for a confrontation between the Trump administration and the largest state in the nation. California has 39 million people, making it more populous than Canada and many other countries. And with an annual economic output of $2.4 trillion, the state is an economic powerhouse and has the sixth-largest economy in the world.

California’s efforts cross party lines. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who served as governor from 2003 to 2011, and led the state in developing the most aggressive pollution-control programs in the nation, has emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s biggest Republican critics.

So, with this talk of Governor Schwarzenegger – and reflecting on that famous Saturday Night Live sketch where Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon (and sometimes with ‘their cousin Arnold), we are inspired to 'pump up'.  Aren't we?

So, as a project manager, can you “pump up your career” with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)?  A recent story inspires me to say ‘yes’ and to even provide some tips (thanks to the heroine of this story) for you.  It’s the story of Jessica Kirshenblat-Gooderham.  Kirshenblat-Gooderham.

Jess began her career at General Mills in sales about ten years ago.  At that time, there were few, if any, sustainability projects – at least framed in that way.  Now, she helps direct the General Mills Canada Sustainability Team.  Think about it.  This is about a portfolio of green projects, tied to General Mills’ corporate commitments to sustainability, which you can find here:

One thing to note here.  Projects which are ‘green by nature’ like efforts to reclaim energy from oat husks (one great example from General Mills’ Cheerios™ products) are easy to connect to sustainability.  The challenge for project managers in projects which are more ‘workaday’ is to connect the sustainability elements – usually related to benefits realization, and often involving CSR goals that go beyond pure economics.  The way to justify CSR considerations in these projects is to connect them to the company’s statements about CSR.   This is what we call “the golden thread”.  You can test this out yourself by referring to and oldie-but-goodie post which includes a  “the three-click challenge” – the post is called “Golden Threads and Ruby Slippers”.

So let’s get back to Jess Kirshenblat-Goodenham.  In the article from “BMeaningful” – an excellent website, by the way -  she provides three tips for those interested in pumping up the CSR element of their career.

• Define where you fit in: I developed a relationship and line of informal reporting to the right person for my team’s development. For me, this started with our Director of CSR, and we branded our team as an extension of this division. This was critical in a large organization as navigating approvals, budget, and initiatives required Senior Leadership approval. This merged into a mentorship relationship with someone that believed in empowering employees who are engaged and enabling us with the platform we needed to move our initiatives forward!
• Build Your Mission: You want people to understand your goals, direction and how the team fits in to the broader organization values. Our Mission is to build a daily culture of sustainability among employees that reflects values & commitments we’ve made with our corporate business practices & partners globally. We are committed to thinking globally and activating locally and strive to provide changes in the workplace that enable employee choice toward sustainable living and contributions.
•  Be a People’s Champion: If you want to influence employees, champion their causes, make it easy, make it fun, and value their impact, no matter the size. Throughout the year, we work on key initiatives as a smaller team, however, every year, we inspire employees to volunteer and be part something big during a full office “Takeover” during the month of April. Participation could be as a volunteer or participant in any of our workshops, lunch and learns, challenges, contests or volunteer work.  This annual Earth Month campaign and its evolving themes have anchored our team’s voice gave me the ability to champion new causes every year for our employees and be a point person for questions, ideas, and opportunities to be a part of the change.

So – be like Hans and Franz – it may be time for you to pump up your career using CSR!

I was planning to end the series which included The Promise of the Waxworm and Terror Under the Tundra, after those two posts. However, the statistics revealed that the posts received so much attention that I felt compelled to write a capstone third entry, and in that way, to make this a trilogy.  Somehow (perhaps it's the influence of Star Wars) a trilogy seems...better.  It’s poetic (well, that’s a stretch, really) to note that this post comes back to the Waxworm, with both the snake and the worm having a similar body shape.  See – I told you it was a stretch!

This entry discusses a project (this is a project management blog, after all) called The American Security Project (ASP).  There’s the reference to the asp.  There’s another connection, too.  There’s a sense that we are –as a country – falling into a sense of complacency with respect to the threat of climate change.  It’s a bit like falling asleep ad dreaming that ‘everything is okay’ – and it’s fine to go back to carbon-centric, non-renewable fuels and relax regulations…relax…everything.  And that reminded me of the asp as well:

From Wikipedia: According to Plutarch (quoted by Ussher), Cleopatra tested various deadly poisons on condemned persons and concluded that the bite of the asp (from aspis—Egyptian cobra, not European asp) was the least terrible way to die; the venom brought sleepiness and heaviness without spasms of pain.

So my point here is that we need to avoid the sleepiness and wake up to the reality of climate change even if it is not affecting us directly, right now.  Let’s shift now to the ASP of the acronym mentioned above.

Here’s the opening statement from the ASP homepage.  In and of itself it is worth a read:

Climate change alone will not cause wars, but it serves as an “Accelerant of Instability” or a “Threat Multiplier” that makes already existing threats worse. The threat of global warming for security will manifest through a range of effects: resource scarcity, extreme weather, food scarcity, water insecurity, and sea level rise will all threaten societies around the world. Too many governments are not prepared for these threats, either because they do not have the resources or because they have not planned ahead. How societies and governments respond to the increase in instability will determine whether climate change will lead to war.

As a project manager, you should recognize this as the background of risk identification in your projects.  Remember the concept of a risk trigger?  A risk trigger is something that makes you think that a threat is about to happen or perhaps is already happening, but you may not yet have seen it in practice.  An example of a risk trigger for a forest ranger would obviously be smoke.  “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”, right?  However, a less-obvious but just as important risk trigger is “Ten consecutive days without rain”, because even though there’s no smoke, this would increase the likelihood of a forest fire above average.  For more on the definition of a risk trigger, see this link.  The ten consecutive dry days are an “accelerant of instability” with respect to fire.  Similarly, climate change is an “accelerant of instability” or a “threat multiplier” for a whole series of threats to the US (and really any) government.

ASP is directed by a board that is nonpartisan and is made up of retired brigadier generals, well-known news commentators, retired vice Admirals, former secretaries of the Department of Defense… a very impressive group – so this is not a radical or partisan organization.  It is worth your time to look through the Board membership, on this link.

As an example of the “threat multiplier”, let’s look at one major issue: the refugee crises around the world.  ASP has written a report, which you can download here, called Perspective: Preventing the World’s  Next Refugee Crisis.  Here’s a summary:

In an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, four countries: Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen are all on the verge of famine at the same time. A catastrophe of this magnitude would perpetuate mass migrations of people as well as create environments for terrorist groups to prosper.  This report details the unique factors that have driven each of these four countries to their current levels of instability while also discussing their common challenges. This report examines the high levels of conflict that exist in all four countries, with close attention to how the security ramifications of climate change have contributed to these conflicts.  Most importantly, this report concludes with a discussion on how the world can avoid new, destabilizing disasters similar to the Syrian refugee crisis. 

• 20 million lives are at risk of famine in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. The situation in each country has been escalated by severe weather and dryness linked to climate change.
• Although not the sole factor for the instability, climate change has accelerated the systemic threats that exist in each country to make each case more aggravated.
• Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen already have a heightened vulnerability to climate change because of their reliance on subsistence agriculture and food imports. When extreme weather linked to climate change collides with other systemic threats in this susceptible environment it contributes to chaos and conflict.
• Challenges that exist in all four countries such as impotent governments, rapid population growth, and local terrorist initiatives are amplified by severe droughts which are exacerbated by climate change.
• Failure to address this crisis will result in the deaths of thousands, create refugee crises similar to the one currently emanating from the Syrian civil war, and provide militant terrorist organizations with fertile grounds for recruiting new members.
• The United States and the international community need to take swift action to mitigate this disaster as this situation has substantial destabilizing potential. At this stage, the U.S. should provide robust support to international organizations such as the UN in order to prevent certain catastrophe.

The report is full of research, supported by references to (for example) the latest NASA imagery.  Here’s an example, regarding the “threat accelerator” of drought in Yemen.

I’m aware that some of you may look at all of this with a cynical view, perhaps doubting climate change or perhaps disagreeing with the worldview of this group.

Forget all that for a moment.

If nothing else, take a project management lesson from the perspective.  Take a look at the words in the bullets above.  They should sound familiar, because they are (naturally) written in the narrative of the PMBOK® Guide: words like “avoid”, “mitigate”, “threats” are prevalent not only in this teaser but in the document itself.  The concept of a risk trigger is fundamental to our practice as project managers and one you need to allow your projects to succeed and to provide lasting benefits realization.

I of course hope you share the concern, the understanding of the facts, and the view of this report, but even if not, I think we can all stand to learn more about risk, risk triggers, and risk response and avoid the ‘sleepiness and heaviness’ that can befall us if we suffer the “bite of the asp”.

In my previous post (The Promise of the Waxworm) I discussed some of the ideas of secondary risk, applied lightly to concepts of sustainability and focused more on the definition of secondary and residual risk.  Consider this post a sequel.  In this post, I’d like to tie the concept a little more tightly to climate change to illustrate a rather extreme form of secondary risk which almost sounds like residual risk (leftover risk) because of the lengths of time involved.  However – it is indeed secondary risk – particularly secondary threat, perhaps a big one, as you’ll see.

You may want to be seated for this, it’s a bit alarming.  Are you seated?  Okay.  Proceed.

Let’s start with a quote from the BBC Earth article from which most of the inspiration for this blog post arrived.

“scientists have discovered intact 1918 Spanish flu virus in corpses buried in mass graves in Alaska's tundra. Smallpox and the bubonic plague are also likely buried in Siberia.”

And unfortunately, it is not just ‘scientists discovering’, or laboratories or rats.  It is about real people, suffering illness or even death from such problems.  As an example from the article:

"In August 2016, in a remote corner of Siberian tundra called the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic Circle, a 12-year-old boy died and at least twenty people were hospitalised after being infected by anthrax.

The theory is that, over 75 years ago, a reindeer infected with anthrax died and its frozen carcass became trapped under a layer of frozen soil, known as permafrost. There it stayed until a heatwave in the summer of 2016, when the permafrost thawed.

This exposed the reindeer corpse and released infectious anthrax into nearby water and soil, and then into the food supply. More than 2,000 reindeer grazing nearby became infected, which then led to the small number of human cases."

So, yes.  This is about the fact that global warming (whatever the cause) and other activities are bringing back some ‘golden oldies’ and ‘one-hit wonders’ that we really, really didn’t want to hear ever again.

As a reminder, secondary risk is a new risk (usually a threat – and in this case, definitely a threat) caused by a risk treatment or risk response.   In this case, the new risk is actually not caused by a risk response, it is caused by global warming.  And here’s a little-known fact: global warming is occurring at a much faster rate and with more extreme effect in Arctic regions than anywhere else on the planet.

So for those of you who may say “so what?” to the melting ice, and even the sea-level rise, I’m not sure you’d say “so what?” to the rejuvenation of viruses and microbes for which current humans do not have any built-up immunity.

And in the BBC Earth article there are many examples – not just Spanish Flu.  More “oldies but goodies” include:

•     Antrhax
•     Smallpox
•     Pithovirus sibericum (giant virus)
•     Mollivirus sibericum (giant virus - see photo below)

Microbes live a long time when they’re properly frozen.  A really, really long time.  From the article:

Recently, scientists managed to revive an 8-million-year-old bacterium that had been lying dormant in ice, beneath the surface of a glacier in the Beacon and Mullins valleys of Antarctica.

The other thing to consider as a project manager – especially if you are involved in exploration, mining, or energy, is this:

“global warming does not have to directly melt permafrost to pose a threat. Because the Arctic sea ice is melting, the north shore of Siberia has become more easily accessible by sea. As a result, industrial exploitation, including mining for gold and minerals, and drilling for oil and natural gas, is now becoming profitable. At the moment, these regions are deserted and the deep permafrost layers are left alone.  However, these ancient layers could be exposed by the digging involved in mining and drilling operations."
 

Do you have this threat listed in your risk register?  You may want to at least consider it.  Sounds like science fiction but it turns out to be science fact – and that means it's a project management fact.

There's a recent story in the news about waxworms.  Several outlets covered it but I like this coverage from ABC (Australia). 

I love how the story opens:

“Scientist and amateur beekeeper Federica Bertocchini picked parasitic wax worms from the honeycomb of her beehives and left them sitting in a plastic bag.

When she returned to the bag, it was riddled with holes and many of the worms had escaped.

It was that chance discovery that led her to collaborate with scientists at the University of Cambridge in England to unearth the possibility of using worms to munch through the world's plastic problem.”

Why do I like this opening so much? 

---It expresses the idea of a threat becoming an opportunity

---It shows the value of science

---It has a promise to solve a problem for the planet

Let’s take these one by one.

Threats and Opportunities

PMI defines risk as “an uncertain event, which, it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on project objectives”.  In this case, we have a threat, which Bertocchini was treating (or responding to) by removing and bagging the worms.  The risk response had a secondary risk, which in this case was an opportunity.  Usually, a secondary risk is a threat.  For example, if you think of an air bag as a response to the threat of vehicle impact, you would not expect (but must consider) that the air bag could also have a negative result.  That’s what happened with Takata airbags (from a story in Consumer Reports):

“At the heart of the problem is the airbag’s inflator, a metal cartridge loaded with propellant wafers, which in some cases has ignited with explosive force. If the inflator housing ruptures in a crash, metal shards from the airbag can be sprayed throughout the passenger cabin—a potentially disastrous outcome from a supposedly life-saving device”

So: the risk response generates a new risk - in this case clearly a threat.

The Value of Science

We’ve just witnessed The March For Science around the globe.  The need for people to understand what science brings to the table.  I think most project managers know and appreciate the value of science, and would tend not to be ‘deniers’ of the facts that scientists provide, so I won’t dwell on this – but it is worth mentioning.

The Promise of the Waxworm

I know – this sounds like the name of a horrifically drippy romance novel or perhaps a Dan Brown thriller.  But in this case it’s about the breaking down of polyethylene and a chance to solve a problem of concern to all of us.  From the story:

People around the world use about 1 trillion plastic bags each year, the study said, and more than 45 million tonnes of polyethylene plastics are produced annually.  "The caterpillar produces something that breaks the chemical bond, perhaps in its salivary glands or a symbiotic bacteria in its gut," said Cambridge University's Paolo Bombelli said.  "If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable."

As project managers we must be aware of risks in both forms – threat and opportunity – as well as the idea of secondary risk.  And, I would also argue that when it comes to any of these concepts, the focus should be on the long term, your project’s realizations of benefits, not only the specific and direct objectives of the project. 

Next time you launch a project, think about the waxworm!