People, Planet, Profits & Projects

NOTE and FAIR WARNING: this posting is a bit tongue-in-cheek

Here’s a basic project management truism: Risks = Threats + Opportunities

That is, a project’s risks are made up of uncertain events, which, if they were to occur, have a negative OR positive effect on project objectives.  So, for example, if the cost of labor were to suddenly drop in a labor-intensive project – that is indeed a risk.  A positive risk, for sure, and thus, an opportunity – but a risk nonetheless.

Of course, we tend to think of climate change as a threat.

But (and it's a big but) recent key stories about climate change and some positive effects of climate change got me to thinking… I began to wonder.  Hmmm….  Climate change has a positive effect for society over there,  it has some positive effects for (apparently) the environment over here, and... another story over there... well, it made me think about the opportunities provided by climate change.

So here, for your consideration, are several documented stories (including the spawning of a huge project, at the end – we always save the best for last) that speak to the 'bright side' of climate change.

This of course is written with tongue (at least partially) in cheek., a little like Monty Python's "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life".  

But there are some points to note here.  See what takeaways you gather from these sub-stories…

Climate Change Winners and Losers

From The Atlantic

Larger climate shifts have catalyzed the rise and fall of whole societies. The Mayan Empire, for instance, did not disappear “mysteriously”; it likely fell into decline owing to decades of drought that ruined its agricultural base and deprived its cities of drinking water. On the other side of the coin, Europe’s Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from around 1000 to 1400, was essential to the rise of Spain, France, and England: Those clement centuries allowed the expansion of farm production, population, cities, and universities, which in turn set the stage for the Industrial Revolution. Unless greenhouse-effect theory is completely wrong—and science increasingly supports the idea that it is right—21st-century climate change means that sweeping social and economic changes are in the works.  Click here for the whole list of winners and losers.

Zippity-doo-dah Zebrafish

Working with Ian Johnston at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, scientists have found that raising zebrafish at warmer temperatures as embryos actually improves their ability to adjust to both higher and lower temperatures as adults.

The case of the Big-Headed Ant

Pheidole megacephala, also known as the big-headed ant, is one of the top 100 most invasive species on Earth. Hordes of these insects thrive in South America, Australia and Africa, and their voracious populations spread rapidly. As invasive animals, they steal habitat and resources from native species, disrupting regional ecosystems and jeopardizing biodiversity. They have even been known to hunt bird hatchlings.

Researchers have estimated that 18.5 percent of the land on Earth currently supports the big-headed ant. But as temperatures shift in the coming decades, the habitat range of these cold-blooded animals will likely shrink substantially. Some climate models suggest that the ant's range will decrease by one-fifth by the year 2080. How native insects will respond to these changes, however, remains unclear.

Hail Brittania!

A rise in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions could create a boost for the British economy.

Farming, forestry and tourism will all benefit from warmer summers, according to the National Adaptation programme, published by Defra, the environment ministry.

The shipping industry could also stand to profit from the shorter sea routes caused by the melting of the ice caps.

"Shorter shipping routes will reduce transportation costs due to less Arctic ice," the report stated.

Another unexpected positive effect from rising temperatures may lead to improved health across the UK, as pleasant weather encourages them to spend more time outdoors, where exposure to sunshine would boost vitamin D levels. Research suggests that sunlight improves moods as it stimulates the pineal gland in the brain to produce chemicals called tryptamines.  Happy Shiny British people.  Yay!

A real Internet Short Cut

But the project that really grabbed my attention and made me thankful for climate change – one that made me go out and buy two Hummers and just leave them running full time -  is this one, from Scientific American.  (By the way, I have to run out and add gas to the blue one.  Be right back).

Okay.  Added 22 gallons to the blue one; the yellow one only needed 3.  I'm back now. 

Anyway, the Internet fiber-optic short-cut story goes roughly like this:

• Arctic ice is disappearing, rapidly
• This opens the “channel” for a major undersea fiber-optic cable
• This cable will connect Asia and Europe by crossing the Arctic Circle
• This avoids normal (and longer) route which involves crossing the entire Atlantic or Pacific Oceans

It’s quite amazing, actually.  An Anchorage-based telecom company named Quintillion Networks will connect remote communities in Alaska and Canada to the high-speed internet, many for the first time.

Some statistics here:

In March, the Arctic sea ice, at its maximum for the year, was at 5,507 million square miles.  That’s –  wow, well, that’s a lot of ice.  And it blocks the progress of things like pipes and wires and cables.  However it is the lowest ever recorded measurement since satellites started tracking this in 1978.

And so, this lower amount of ice has enabled the cable.  It's lit fire to the wire.  It's broken bones for the phones, given choice to your voice, eased your mp3s,  lowered the miles for the files, allowed us to say "see you later" to the data,  and... OK, I will stop now. 

The cable will be laid in phases. 

Phase 1 is the Anchorage to Nome route, allowing access from mainland Canada and the USA to Japan.

Phase 2 is the Pacific segment, which will connect Nome to Tokyo

Phase 3 will extend the cable from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to London

It’s amazing.  And it’s all thanks to climate change!

Go Climate Change, Go!

Don’t worry, we will be a little less sarcastic in our next post….

Many of you as project managers have had interactions with ISO standards.

You may have been involved in an ISO audit (usually with ISO 9000 Family Standards - we'll come back to that later).

You may have overseen a project to train people on ISO standards.   You simply may have had to take a mandatory class on ISO because, well, because it was MANDATORY.

This blog post is about some of those standards, but most importantly, it brings you the important message that sustainability is now threaded through the most popular standard - the ISO 9000 family.

First, let's look at the "purpose-built" standards.  To do that, rather than spend a lot of time with text here, we've provided embedded videos of just a few minutes each, which tell the story from ISO's perspective.

Below you will find three videos - one on Environmental standards (ISO 14000 family), then IS 26000 (Social Responsibility) and then ISO 50001 (Energy Systems).

Besides these, ISO 21500 is a dedicated ISO Standard ("Guidance on Project Management"), and this document, importantly, contains numerous sustainability connections.  In fact, the very authors of your People, Planet, Profits & Projects blog worked with others on the committees which put this standard together to help assure that indeed it did include these threads.  Now, we're applying that same energy to the PMBOK(R) Guide, 6th Edition to get that same sort of maturity in the PMI Standards.

But what really triggered this post was the fact that ISO 9001:2015 (and the 9000 series) which are all about quality.  Per ISO themselves, this family of standards "ensure that ...products and services consistently meet customer’s requirements, and that quality is consistently improved".  At our core, project managers are quality managers. 

Side note: your blogging team actually presented this concept (project managers as quality managers) way back in 2000 in Mexico City at a Conference Board presentation - and it got a hugely positive response.

In any case, the newest version of ISO 9001 (called ISO 9001:2015) includes references (and requirements) related to sustainability.  Here is ISO's own take on the new standard:

Of course, that element of sustainability and sustainable development is key for us.  But there is more in here of interest to project managers, including the idea of "Risk-based thinking".  We suggest that you take advantage of any organizational resources which help you get updated on the new version of this standard. 

Get smart on the update - it will help you be a more sustainable-thinking PM.  And if you want to learn more about sustainability, poke around in the other standards (especially ISO 14000 and ISO 21500) to see the interlocking starting to take place between PM standards and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) standards.

(Photo: Dudarev Mikhail/Shutterstock)

What is a project?

PMI says that a project is: “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.”

This blog post is going to take “undertaken” to new depths.  I mean, we are talking about seriously under.  Undersea, that is.

Most readers will be familiar with the so-called “Deepwater Horizon” incident, also sometimes called the BP gulf oil spill, which occurred in 2010.  By the way of trivia, the well itself was BP’s Macondo Well – the Deepwater Horizon was the name of the platform, owned by a different company, called TransOcean.  But anyway, that was so long ago.  Surely that is history and we’re done with that news, right?  The Gulf has recovered, tourism is back, and all is ‘well’ (excuse the pun).

Not quite.

A lot goes on below the surface of the ocean – a lot that is not seen.  And as some scientists and restoration project leaders have been saying lately – we have to be careful of the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome here.

To refresh your memory about the incident, I draw from a recent article in the Boston Globe:

“BP’s out-of-control well spat oil for 87 days into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Much of it never reached the surface, kept in the depths both by chemical dispersants sprayed to keep the oil from reaching shorelines and by natural forces.”

In fact 1.84 million US gallons (7,000 m³) of Corexit oil dispersant were distributed over the area to prevent the oil from doing damage to shorelines.  So that oil – and the dispersant itself had nowhere to go but…down.

“Studies estimated up to about 30 percent of the more than 172 million gallons of oil released from the well remained in the gulf and up to about 3,250 square miles of the seafloor was affected — an area nearly the size of Yellowstone National Park.”

The oil reached as far as Tampa Bay and the Florida panhandle according to the Tampa Bay Times:

“Oil continued to be found as far from the Macondo site as the waters off the Florida Panhandle and Tampa Bay, where scientists said the oil and dispersant mixture is embedded in the sand.”

As you may know, in April of this year, a federal judge approved a  $20 billion settlement/payment from BP to cover the spill’s environmental and economic damage. But how much of that money is aimed at restoring the deep ocean?  The answer: less than 1.4%, a paltry $273 million — has been earmarked for restoring the deep ocean over the next 15 years. 

Granted, this still is a number much larger than zero.  What can project leaders do about restoring the ocean floor with this funding?  Well, now we have to dig into the other “U” word from PMI’s definition of the word project – “unique”.

From the Globe article:

‘‘We’re trying to do something that we’ve never done before,’’ said Erik Cordes, a Temple University coral expert who’s studied the corals damaged by the spill and worked on the government’s restoration plans. ‘‘We are in uncharted waters here.’’

“A government restoration plan suggests dumping oyster shell, limestone, and manufactured ‘‘reef balls’’ into the ocean in the hope that coral and fish colonize them.

You can watch a rather bizarre video about a form of these reef balls here.  You’ll have to watch it to find out, but it gives a whole new meaning to the word “undertaking”!

The actual reef balls referred to in the Globe article are described here.

It goes on to say:

The plan also considers transplanting healthy coral to reefs hit by the oil. The plan notes this has never been done in deep waters, just as growing deep-sea coral in laboratories has not been attempted.

As project managers there are several lessons here.

• First and foremost, as we wrote about in our book, Green Project Management, the long-term thinking in risk identification has to be dominant.  The Macondo Well identified a sum total of zero (yes, zero, zilch, zip) safety and environmental risks.  Their Risk Register drop-down box did not even include those risk categories.  BP corporate had provided them but the local project team, motivated by huge incentives to meet operational efficiency Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), did not include them in the Macondo project. We need to assure that this doesn’t stay in PM culture.  We’ve worked to add long-term considerations into the 6th Edition PMBOK® Guide with over 10 formal proposals to focus on long-term thinking in project planning, in particular in the area of risk identification

• Next, we should take some pride in the fact that we can apply good project management techniques to the restoration efforts.  Even if the project itself encountered the blowout valve failure and other poor follow-up project decisions, the series of new ‘rescue’ initiatives (projects) can hopefully make progress to reverse some of the damage from the Gulf oil spill of 2010.

• Finally, we can use these examples to illustrate just how unique and how “under” our undertakings can be as project managers!

What happens when a country has been disconnected from the world community and then is “back in the fold”, especially when that country has a whole slew of new species being discovered yearly?

Is it a threat or an opportunity for the country to introduce ecotourism as an industry?

Will ecotourism bring more money, more awareness, more modernity to this country, or will ecotourism actually damage its delicate ecosystem?

The country is Myanmar (Burma), and these questions were posed by Rachel Nuwer in a recent article in Scientific American entitled Saving Eden.

As project managers we’re used to looking at threats and opportunities for initiatives, and this is no different.  The initiative to introduce ecotourism to Myanmar is an interesting study in risk management, and is particularly intriguing because of the politics and geography involved.  For example, although Myanmar has economic benefits of US$7.3 billion in benefits to the country per year, the financial support for existing national parks is US$26,000 – a mere 0.2% of the country’s budget.

With this backdrop, the initiative faces these risk questions:

• Will tourists make this trek from Europe, Australia, North America, Latin America, Africa?
• Will local community and government leaders choose the potential of ecotourism over the promise of, say, deforesting and area for a huge, quick profit?
• Will these same governments turn down offers to drill for petroleum and/or natural gas to allow conservation areas to exist and to support ecotourism?
• Will the ecotourism efforts themselves, and the surrounding infrastructure to support these initiatives be a threat to the very environment that the initiative is trying to protect?

I’m going to suggest that you read this article, and others referenced at the end of the post.  In fact, I’ll be able to comment on this issue quite personally and directly, as I’m going to become an ecotourist myself (in Alaska).  I plan to post right here in nearly real-time during this visit (coming up in June 2016).

I’ll be considering the questions above (but in the context of Alaska, which is admittedly very different).  I plan to comment on how our tour of the area is benefiting the environment, the local people, and I’ll focus on the ecotourists themselves – their attitudes their opinions – for example, do they even consider themselves ecotourists?  How does the touring company deal with this issue?  What are their commitments?  I’ll be reporting on these things from personal experience – looking forward to it and I hope you will enjoy it (and learn from it) as well.

Ecotourism in India

http://www.sciencelog.net/2015/01/ecotourism-in-india.html

TED case study – Ecotourism in Costa Rica

http://www1.american.edu/ted/costa-rica-tourism.htm

Ecotourism in Fiji

http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5336e/x5336e0b.htm

Other studies and published papers:

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2001/EcoTourismEncouragingConservationorAddingtoExploitation.aspx

http://www.global-briefing.org/2012/10/how-ecotourism-can-link-conservation-and-business/

http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-landscape-architecture/role-of-ecotourism-in-sustainable-development

Busy marketplace in Lagos, Nigeria.  Photo courtesy of The Guardian.

We estimate that this blog post will take you about 3 minutes to read.  Stop reading for just a moment, and pause.  Make a picture in your mind of 240 newborn babies.  That is how many infants will be born in Africa as you read this post.

Well, at least that is the forecast of the situation in 2050, according to a recent UN population study.  (summary here).  Eighty new babies born per minute in Africa alone.

Another way to put this, given the projections: African population growth would fill an empty London five times a year.

Okay, you say – that’s all very interesting, but what does this mean to me, to my organization, to me, to projects, to project management?  What’s this doing in a project management blog? 

Well, we blog about the triple-bottom line.  That means economic, ecological, and social aspects of business and sustainability in general.  The story that triggered this idea for us appeared in the most recent edition of Scientific American, and it came under that journal’s heading of sustainability.  But when we dug deeper (that’s what we do for you here!) it turned up some very project-oriented data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.

As any good PM would do, let’s start with some orientation and some facts and figures:

Here’s a chart that pretty strikingly shows the difference in projected growth among the continents of the world:

So there is your population data, in pretty striking form.  Here are some additional facts and figures:

• As many as 37 percent of young adults in sub-Saharan Africa say they want to move to another country, mostly because of a lack of employment.A mobile, talented, eager, young workforce is a factor when it comes to project resources, wouldn’t you agree?
• One huge change in Africa will be a mushrooming of gigantic cities. The continent’s population is increasingly drawn to the urban centers, with most people arriving from failed farmlands. Metropolitan areas in Africa house nearly half a billion people today; by 2050 they would hold more than 1.3 billion, according to the U.N.'s projections. You can read more about this in this article from the African Development Bank Group.
• As the size of any populace expands, governments must construct infrastructure rapidly, or risk a decline in living standards. This comes to 3.5 million more people per month.We already told you about the 80 additional people per minute. So you can see the dramatic effect on projects and project management – with that level of construction and infrastructure initiatives.

We’ve talked about the facts and the expected results.  Let’s discuss the cause and ways to deal with it from a social perspective. It will lead to even more connections to ‘green by definition’ projects.

What has led to this population increase?  It’s not just more babies.  Ironically some of this comes from very good news, and is the result of projects and initiatives to improve the lot for Africans.  For example, thanks to better practices in agriculture and the ability to move and store food (we’ve blogged about this recently), life expectancy has increased.  “The 12 million Africans born in 1955 could expect to live only until the age of 37. Encouragingly, the 42 million Africans born this year can expect to live to the age of 60.” (see full article in The Guardian by clicking on the link).

So – the health of families has improved.  People are living longer.  One outcome is this burst in population.  It’s apparent that this large population is not sustainable.  What’s the best reaction to this? 

According to Scientific American’s Robert Engleman  the solution comes from empowering women.  What’s the connection?  Is there any evidence to show that it has worked?  And, selfishly, is there any connection to project management?

From the Scientific American article:

“A significant fertility decline can be achieved only if women are empowered educationally, economically, socially and politically. They must also be given easy and affordable access to contraceptives. Following this integrated strategy, Mauritius has lowered its fertility rate from six to 1.5 children; Tunisia's rate dropped from seven to two.  Men also have to relinquish sole control over the decision to have children and refrain from abusing wives or partners who seek birth control. For such efforts to succeed ultimately, government leaders must encourage public and policy conversations about slower population growth.”

There’s much more to that angle – we suggest reading the entire article.  There’s other aspects also, though.  Is there a connection to education of women?

Again, from the article:

“Education spurs young people to seek contraceptives and to plan smaller families as they learn about the world, their bodies and the potential to steer their own destinies. African women with no education have, on average, 5.4 children, according to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Women who have completed primary school have, on average, 4.3 children. A big drop, to 2.7, correlates with completion of secondary school. For those who go on to college, fertility is 2.2.”

Yes, there are examples of projects that assist in family planning, in education, generally with population control and management.  Here are a couple of examples.

http://www.familyplanning2020.org/

Three example USAID projects

Below are some of the references for this post.  We encourage you to read more about this issue and the ways in which it may impact you as a project manager, no matter where you are in the world – and the potential for the impact in the opposite direction – that is, your ability to have an impact on the issue as a project manager.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/jan/11/population-growth-in-africa-grasping-the-scale-of-the-challenge

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34188248

http://www.techinsider.io/africas-population-explosion-will-change-humanity-2015-8

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-population-will-soar-dangerously-unless-women-are-more-empowered/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/birth-control-could-help-the-environment-but-not-quickly/