People, Planet, Profits & Projects

The theme this week is up.

Our 21-September-2014 post on EarthPM is called "Up, Up, and Away" .  Today also, hundreds of  thousands of people were filling UP New York City to draw attention to climate change.  And finally (and the reason for today's post at P@W) is something way, WAY up in the sky - the MAVEN spacecraft, which, as this post is being written, is supposed to supposed to fire its six main engines, slowing down enough so it can be captured by the gravity of the red planet and go into orbit.

You can (and should) read about the MAVEN project here and here.  You can even follow a live stream of the mission at that second link from NASA.  The bottom line (I know, I know, we said "up" and we're referring you to a bottom line...sorry) for MAVEN is that its misison is to understand the history of the climate on Mars.  Why?  Because the climate of Mars changed radically sometime in the last billion years and understanding that change will help us understand climate change here on Earth as well.

Besides the obvious project management connection inherent in any space mission, we also want to point out that in this particular case there is another key theme: pointing to facts.  When thee is a disagreement between project stakeholders, it's often the project manager that's called upon to referee.  This NASA mission is one that will help provide more science to the discussion about climate change, by providing impartial, factual data about what happened on an entirely different planet as a basis for comparison with what is happening now on our planet.

We applaud NASA for doing what we need to do as project managers - bringing clarity and new, impartial information to bear for a better project outcome.

We wish NASA - and MAVEN - the best of luck with their mission, and we hope that you as project managers embrace your responsibility to be that arbitrator of fairness and fact - and to do it when called upon but also when your 'expert judgment' says, "it's time to step UP".

When we stsarted out many years ago pointing to the intersection of green and project management, we didn't notice too much in the popular PM journals on the topic.  Sure, from time to time there would be a story about a wind-farm project, or a story that lightly touched on broader definitions of project success, but we rarely found coverage of sustainability as an 'integrated idea'.

And that still holds pretty true.

But we are beginning to see an uptick in a more holistic view of project success, more of a buy-in into project managers (or at least program and portfolio managers) as "benefits realizers", with the inherent patience and metrics to measure project success not only on delivery of a project product, but on the longer-term benefits of continued econommic success for that product, fewer ecological impacts from the steady state of that product, and the broader social impact of that product (in operation).

Case in point: this month's PMNetwork magazine, which, as you can see in the picture - and perhaps coincidentally - has a cover that features the color green.  But beyond the cover, deep inside the issue (without it being dubbed any sort of special 'sustainability' or 'green' issue) are many articles and features on renewable energy projects, on aligning sponsors more closely with project managers, even on the "long haul" 'sustainabile' careers of old crow project managers like your authors here at this blog.

It's a thread through the issue and it's increasingly a thread through issue after issue of PMNetwork, and we applaud the work of PMI to continue to weave that thread into the fabric of project managers.

Some other examples: the Finalists for the 2014 Project of the Year includes the Energy Systems Integration Facility being built by the US Department of Energy.  There's a feature on the creation of an artificial oyster reef in Matagorda Bay, Texas, to revive an ecosystem lost with the eventual erosion of the Half Moon Reef.  It's a project that involves collaboration between government and the Nature Conservancy.  The story on the emergence of Tanzania as a leading African economy features stories on the challenges it faces with energy.  Speaking of energy, Chile is also featured as a country with a promising set of renewable energy projects.  There's a sidebar describing renewables projects in that country.  And to top it off, there is a feature on REDD (not LEED, but REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degredation) projects for which the USAID and the World Bank has funded US$6.27 billion, and "that's a far cry from what the UN says is needed to combat climate change". 

All in all, it's reassuring to see the thread of sustainability - or at least a focus on sustainability-oriented projects - become more prolific.

It's now time for the next step: raise the level of coverage to include how projects - ANY kind of project - can have a connection to the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) objectives of the parent organization.  Show how a software project, a bridge, the launch of a new coffeemaker - ANY project - can benefit from long-term, holistic thinking.  

We're impressed with the change.  But we're still not satisfied. I suppose we could say that our passion for a true intersection of PM and Sustainability is...sustainable.

If you live in the New England area of the United States, you probably know about DeMoulas supermarkets.  Mostly branded, "Market Basket", these 71 stores dominate the area, often pushing aside large national (really international) chains, such as Stop & Shop and Hannaford.

Recently, however, the stores have been all but shut down by a labor and leadership dispute that is about the way in which the company is run and who should be at the helm. 

Why do we bring up a supermarket in a blog about project management and sustainability?

We actually never intended to do this until we ran into an editorial by former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who served under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Now, before you read the editorial, we want you to be aware that we are aware that this is not a political blog, and we usually try to stay away from pure politics and economics.  And this editorial does drift into the philosophical and political area in the way it discusses capitalism and labor.  But at its heart, the editorial makes a beautiful point quite beautifully, whether you agree with Reich on anything else.

We think the editorial is important because:

• it talks about a focus on a wide set of stakeholders (like Project Managers do)
• it honors the intersection of business and sustainability (like we assert Project Managers should)
• it takes, in general, a more long-term, holistic view of success (which we think all of us can use)

We place the editorial below, with the highlighting our own, so you can draw your own conclusions.

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In recent weeks, the managers, employees, and customers of a New England chain of supermarkets called “Market Basket” have joined together to oppose the board of director’s decision earlier in the year to oust the chain’s popular chief executive, Arthur T. Demoulas.

Their demonstrations and boycotts have emptied most of the chain’s seventy stores.

What was so special about Arthur T., as he’s known? Mainly, his business model. He kept prices lower than his competitors, paid his employees more, and gave them and his managers more authority.

Late last year he offered customers an additional 4 percent discount, arguing they could use the money more than the shareholders.

In other words, Arthur T. viewed the company as a joint enterprise from which everyone should benefit, not just shareholders. Which is why the board fired him.

It’s far from clear who will win this battle. But, interestingly, we’re beginning to see the Arthur T. business model pop up all over the place.

Patagonia, a large apparel manufacturer based in Ventura, California, has organized itself as a “B-corporation.” That’s a for-profit company whose articles of incorporation require it to take into account the interests of workers, the community, and the environment, as well as shareholders.

The performance of B-corporations according to this measure is regularly reviewed and certified by a nonprofit entity called B Lab.

To date, over 500 companies in sixty industries have been certified as B-corporations, including the household products firm “Seventh Generation.”

In addition, 27 states have passed laws allowing companies to incorporate as “benefit corporations.” This gives directors legal protection to consider the interests of all stakeholders rather than just the shareholders who elected them.

We may be witnessing the beginning of a return to a form of capitalism that was taken for granted in America sixty years ago.

Then, most CEOs assumed they were responsible for all their stakeholders.

“The job of management,” proclaimed Frank Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, in 1951, “is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly interested groups … stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large.”

Johnson & Johnson publicly stated that its “first responsibility” was to patients, doctors, and nurses, and not to investors.

What changed? In the 1980s, corporate raiders began mounting unfriendly takeovers of companies that could deliver higher returns to their shareholders – if they abandoned their other stakeholders.

The raiders figured profits would be higher if the companies fought unions, cut workers’ pay or fired them, automated as many jobs as possible or moved jobs abroad, shuttered factories, abandoned their communities, and squeezed their customers.  

Although the law didn’t require companies to maximize shareholder value, shareholders had the legal right to replace directors. The raiders pushed them to vote out directors who wouldn’t make these changes and vote in directors who would (or else sell their shares to the raiders, who’d do the dirty work).

Since then, shareholder capitalism has replaced stakeholder capitalism. Corporate raiders have morphed into private equity managers, and unfriendly takeovers are rare. But it’s now assumed corporations exist only to maximize shareholder returns.

Are we better off? Some argue shareholder capitalism has proven more efficient. It has moved economic resources to where they’re most productive, and thereby enabled the economy to grow faster.

By this view, stakeholder capitalism locked up resources in unproductive ways. CEOs were too complacent. Companies were too fat. They employed workers they didn’t need, and paid them too much. They were too tied to their communities.

But maybe, in retrospect, shareholder capitalism wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Look at the flat or declining wages of most Americans, their growing economic insecurity, and the abandoned communities that litter the nation.

Then look at the record corporate profits, CEO pay that’s soared into the stratosphere, and Wall Street’s financial casino (along with its near meltdown in 2008 that imposed collateral damage on most Americans).

You might conclude we went a bit overboard with shareholder capitalism. 

The directors of “Market Basket” are now considering selling the company. Arthur T. has made a bid, but other bidders have offered more.

Reportedly, some prospective bidders think they can squeeze more profits out of the company than Arthur T. did. 

But Arthur T. may have known something about how to run a business that made it successful in a larger sense.

Only some of us are corporate shareholders, and shareholders have won big in America over the last three decades.

But we’re all stakeholders in the American economy, and many stakeholders have done miserably. 

Maybe a bit more stakeholder capitalism is in order.

The editorial was retreived from Robert Reich's own web page - here.

When looking at the intersection of project management and sustainabilty, we at EarthPM are often intrigued by the places where we find sustainability in action.

This post is about a combination of several aspects we've recently blogged about:

• long-term thinking
• sustainability integration into the business plan
• sustainability as a strategic advantage
• open data and sharing of proprietary data for the greater good

And... where on earth do we go to for this post?

Mars.

Yes, Mars.  But not the planet, the company, Mars, Inc.

The website they've put together to describe their efforts in sustainability even has a title like our blog here at Projects@Work - "People, Planet, Performance".  So we can tell they've got it right!

What caught our eye was this article from Triple Pundit.  In it, they describe Mars'  2040 target to eliminate all fossil fuel energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from its direct operations.   You can read about that in their press release here, and you can go to the Mars site directly and read about it here, in a section called "sustainable in a generation".  For your convenience we summarize some of the background philosophy here:

"Why does Mars care about climate change? Why have we committed to making our operations Sustainable in a Generation? Why do we invest in scientific research to improve agricultural crops?

The answer lies in our objective to create a mutuality of benefits by doing business in ways that are good for Mars, good for people and good for the planet. To ensure focus and effectiveness, we root our business decisions in scientific understanding. We strive to understand and quantify our impacts using accepted, publicly available data where possible, and to develop science-based strategies in response. Our targets are based on what is needed to solve the problem, rather than relying solely on what we can achieve in the immediate future.

One of the key scientific inputs we have used in this process is the concept of Planetary Boundaries¹, a highly-respected analysis based on a review of existing research which identifies nine environmental impacts and the point at which each one will cause catastrophic harm to human wellbeing."

This is great, but what got us even more curious was the element of sharing data - going with more "open data" (as we blogged about on EarthPM's blog recently, in relation to Aneesh Chopra's book, Innovative State).

That aspect of Mars' work can be summarized in a project-oriented effort called The Cocoa Genome Project.

This is "a five-year program launched in 2008 by Mars, IBM and the US Department of Agriculture to sequence, assemble and annotate the cocoa genome. In 2010, a preliminary version of the cocoa genome was publicly released in order to allow scientists to apply this knowledge as soon as possible to benefit growers. The genome findings were made available to all—including competitors—through the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA) and the Cacao Genome Database. PIPRA is a non-profit initiative that provides developing countries with access to agricultural technologies".

Has this reaped any benefits?

According to Mars:

"Breeders are already using this knowledge to identify traits of disease resistance, enhanced yield, efficiency in water and nutrient use, as well as climate change adaptability among the world’s cacao trees. Ultimately, this will result in healthier, stronger and more productive cacao cultivars which will improve farmers’ yields and income. As well as supporting breeders on the ground, the Cocoa Genome Project has also enabled Mars to develop genomics capabilities in collaboration with a diverse set of partners—work that will help to modernize cocoa production and improve the flexibility of the supply chain."

So the investment is paying off.

These two elements shown in Mars' business plans - long-term thinking and open data - are exemplary. 

So have a handful of M&Ms and applaud Mars' efforts.

Are these principles being integrated in your organization?

We highly recommend that you watch this TED video first.  It would be a good thing to do.

Or, you could skip it, read this, and then go back and watch it.

But you should at LEAST spend the few minutes it takes to watch it.

In it, the speaker, Simon Anholt, describes the rationale, history, and makeup of the Good Country Index.  As he says, it's not about good, better, and best, but good, gooder, and goodest - meaning good as in "the opposite of selfish".  He's put together a set of measurements which assess companies and yield a ranking from top to bottom of the world's "goodest" countries.

In and of itself this is insteresting to project managers.  Why?  In our book, Green Project Management, we say that a project run with green (read that now as sustainable) intent is the right thing to do but it also helps the projet team do things right.  It means - as Simon Aholt says (although in relation to countries) that the success of the project actually goes UP if there is more focus on collaboration, more of an outward than inward view, more of an unselfish (think multiple-stakeholder rather than project-team) execution of the project.

But beyond that connection, Anholt's TED talk points to a website called goodcountry.org which has this Good Country Index we mentioned above.  And what is a major component of the weighted table (one of our favorite PM tools) that makes up this mega-database of counrty goodness?

It's a section called Planet and Climate.  Here is a deep link directly to that section.

In it, Anholt's team analyzes:

• Biocapacity Reserve
• Hazardous waste exports
• Organic water pollutants
• CO2 Emissions
• Other GHG emissions

These elements make up part of the score of a country's goodness.

And if they apply to countries, and countries get their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) via a portfolio of programs and projects, then clearly, the same applies to us as project managers.  That's the origin of the very name of this blog!  Have a look at the scores in this area, and then kick up a level and look at the other elements.  It's interesting information, presented in a visually pleasing and intuitive way. 

Don't worry, we know what you're thinking.  You're probaly wondering which country was number one, right?  Which one won the World Cup of goodness, beating the good and gooder countries to be the very goodest...right?  Well, we're going to let you tell US since you watched the video.  Or, you can march right back up to the top of this post and watch the video to find out.

If you do, watch it from a project perspective.  Subsitute projects for 'countries'.  Maybe you, just like that mystery country, can be the goodest project team around.

Goodest wishes!