People, Planet, Profits & Projects

PMI produces excellent research reports called Pulse of the Profession.  The most recent one is called “Beyond the Project – Sustain Benefits to Optimize Business Value”.  This one – from my perspective – has a split personality.  It is very, very good, and falls very, very short.

Let me explain.

The good:

You really should read through this report because it is 100% on target regarding a view of project management that “thinks through the end” to the steady-state project outcome.  It’s got great examples and is loaded with data about the rationale for including these considerations in project planning.  In fact, it’s so good, it will be covered in an upcoming blog post.  There’s too much good stuff to cover here.

The bad:

Since we’re in the middle of baseball’s World Series, I will use a baseball analogy.  The document is a total swing-and-a-miss when it comes to the triple (get it?) bottom line.  It’s as if they left all the runners on base. In every inning.  Of the last game of the World Series.  Why do I say this?  This was an absolute golden opportunity to talk about all three elements of the triple bottom line (which is made up of economic, social, and ecological benefits).  But search through this document, and although you’ll find many instances of the word “sustain” and variants like sustainability and sustainable, you will find no mention of social or ecological sustainability (Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR).  There is nothing wrong with sustaining economic value.  There is everything right with it.  But when a document like this promotes the strong message of sustainability, why not feature - or at least call into play - the other two elements?  It’s hard to believe that the 1100+ project managers interviewed on the topic of benefits sustainability had nothing to say about project outcomes that relate to planetary or social benefit (which, by the way, come back to benefit the organization economically  -see my post about the payoff of investing in CSR.

And it started out so promisingly.  Here is a quote from the opening article:

“Long-term benefits for all should trump the competitive individual or organization. Better accountability models need to speak to the networks of the new normal, not prop up old, crumbling hierarchies—bastions of command and control. This is as applicable to a single organization as it is to a nation–state.”.

And there’s this:

“Even though benefits are realized on the business/operations side of the organization, benefits sustainment is a shared responsibility that should include the project team.”

So close – accountability… trumping individuals and organizations… the exact traits of CSR.  But it’s not taken any further.  I’m hoping that PMI will consider the reports from MIT/Sloan that we’ve published in creating its next Pulse report. 

In my next post, I will shift to a discussion about the outstanding research and reporting in this document which we can apply to CSR; although they failed to make it into this Pulse report, the report still has significant meaningfulness to those of us who think that project managers can – to keep my baseball metaphor going – hit a triple, not only a single.

Shall we start a Wrigley Field or Fenway Park-like chant?

Let's go PMI, let's go!

In the prior blog post, I asserted the need for project managers to at least consider the part of their project that continues after the toasts.  I used an image of the officials from Flint celebrating their cut-over to the Flint River from the Detroit River as an example of a handover from the PM to “operations”. 

I think that story has some lessons for project managers.  Although the steady-state operation of the Flint water system was out of scope, the project’s interim deliverables should have included the necessary actions (in the first few pages of the standard EPA handbooks and memos on the topic) required when a water source is switched and the water chemistry is different. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-11/documents/occt_req_memo_signed_pg_2015-11-03-155158_508.pdf

There were procedures that could have been put in place - established by the project - that would have made the operation successful.

That is part of project planning. Part of Risk Identification.  So although the EFFECT isn’t noted until people start drinking the water and getting sick, the CAUSE is inside the project and inside the project’s plan.

The article discusses the particular skills (hard and soft) that enable a project manager to focus on project success (as opposed to only project management success) and I found this part interesting as well.

The referenced article (see Part 1) has an excellent table which shows the pieces of competency which, if present, are factors which enhance the element of project success and could help prevent the mindset which allows a project manager to limit their thinking to the ‘present’ the ‘local’ and the ‘small’, which is what I assert is what happens when they think about project management success and not project success – which is ‘global’, ‘long-term’, and ‘large scale’.

Some highlights of these factors of competency:

• problem-solving
• ownership
• thinking from ideation to retirement of the project’s product
• extended time frame
• future-based metrics
• inclusion of a diverse set of stakeholders

These sound easy to achieve, but remember, we are dealing with a project – a time-limited endeavor with a definitive beginning and end, and using limited resources.  Because of this, the article says, we have to deal with challenges such as:

1. Some of the factors that contribute to project success are realized during the project itself, when the project is necessarily infatuated with meeting budget and schedule, as well as scope objectives.Note: one only has to watch the first 20 minutes of the new film Deepwater Horizon to see how this caused project decisions to be made without thinking of the outcome in the steady state.
2. Project success factors (customer satisfaction, commercial success, or in the case of Flint, safety of the water) often occur well after the project ‘completion’, when the project manager is not in control, and this can cause a lack of concern or focus.
3. The factors influencing project success measurements and perceptions can be in opposition to each other – for example, anyone who has written a book or created artwork knows that if you want the piece to be perfect, it will take forever, and will never be published or sold; so at some point, you just need to declare it DONE.

The article goes on to (properly, in my opinion) discuss ways to increase the awareness of project success for project managers, including investigation of changes even to the curricula of project management as taught at the University level.  For that, I would refer you to the article.

The overall takeaway for you?

First of all, consider that difference between project success and project management success.  If you ‘get’ that distinction, that’s at least half the battle.  Next, use examples (I gave you four in Part 1 of this post) to illustrate the difference.  At the moment, you can accomplish this simply by going to watch the film “Deepwater Horizon” in which the project team has made all sorts of decisions to focus on project management success (cost and schedule) in exchange for safety.

Next – you can assess your own organization’s maturity in this area with the instrument called “The Sustainability Wheel” in our book, or investigate the literature on sustainability in PM – it’s a growing field, supported by continued research like the referenced article.

I was reading the most recent Project Management Journal (Volume 47, Number5 – October/November 2016).  Being the Project Management Journal, the articles all have long titles (I think this may be an international regulation!) and the one I am going blog about is no exception: “Lessons for IT Project Manager Efficacy: A Review of the Literature Associated with Project Success”.

Two words in the title caught my attention immediately: Success and Efficacy.  Success is the key word of our latest book, “Driving Project, Program, and Portfolio Success”.  Efficacy, because the definition relates to that success: the ability to produce a desired or intended result.

Both words speak to sustainability.  In particular, the words “Project Success” were used to make a major point in our book – the PM needs to think about not only Project Management Success – focused on the efficiency of the project (scope, cost, and time of the project lifecycle) but also the effectiveness (the ability of the project to provide a lasting, worthwhile result), which is Project Success.

The article is a survey of literature – 59 ‘relevant and influential’ articles on ‘success’ in the PM context, so it has valuable pointers to many respected authors on this topic – I recommend you flip through it to find your own particular takeaways.

My takeaway was their focus on the intersection between Project Success, Project Management Success, and Project Manager Success.  Of course, the ‘sweet spot’ is the intersection of all three.

This article comes so close to covering sustainability – so, so close – but it doesn’t quite get there.  We think that the element of Endurance has to be added to Efficiency and Effectiveness (what they call Efficacy).  Because a “desired result” is not enough.   As a project manager focused on benefits realization, we need to know this and make it part of our DNA.  Examples?  You want examples?

Here are three examples of a desired result without considering endurance

• a diesel car that passes EPA tests for a while but then gets uncovered as having ‘cheat’ software to fool the EPA by turning off the environmental controls when it is on the road.It’s okay at first… but with the test of ‘endurance’ cost the company billions of dollars and resulted in the firing of executives and untold damage to individuals.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-to-pay-up-to-14-7-billion-to-settle-diesel-emissions-claims-1467117548

• a gigantic civil project in the city of Boston, which (among many other problems) uses a light fixture design that doesn’t consider its local environment and starts to fall off into the roadway, causing a $54M rescue project to prevent the light fixture detachments from causing injuries.

http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/04/05/big_dig_tunnels_need_54m_light_replacement_mass_officials_say/

• a coffee maker - from a company with lofty goals about environmentalism – which produces tens of billions of non-recyclable plastic cups in its steady-state use and now has its inventor full of regret.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-pod-environment-problem/386501/

and/or

http://www.businessinsider.com/k-cup-inventor-john-sylvans-regret-2015-3

• a city water board toasts each other (see photo above) with the new water supply they have created choosing to use a different river source for their water, toasting to their own “success” at the handover to operations , but which did not apply even basic rules about what to do when the water chemistry between rivers is different, and yielding an issue of leaded water which has become even a US presidential election campaign issue

http://mashable.com/2016/01/24/flint-water-crisis/#gF1K_NASskq1

I realize that this means a project’s success can’t be measured at handoff to operations, and perhaps for some time - maybe even years into operation, and that’s highly problematic for a project manager.  I know that some will question whether this goes beyond the bounds of (at least traditional views of) project management.  Okay, I admit it.  It does!  But it doesn’t mean that we as PMs cannot learn from the concept of enduring success – or at least the measurement of it and consideration of it, in our risk identification and other project planning.

What do you think?

...they are, why aren't you, Mr./Ms. Project Manager?

Who is "they"?  We're referring to the very people and agencies that are likely funding your organization.

Many executives embrace the conventional wisdom that mainstream investors care little about an organization’s performance on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics. Few companies make it a priority to communicate their sustainability performance to investors, or even develop a robust story about their sustainability performance. Why should they? Investors won’t shift their investments, the thinking goes, based on a company’s ESG performance. However, a growing number of investors are paying attention to ESG performance, as evidence mounts that sustainability-related activities are material to the financial success of a company over time. Investors care more about sustainability issues than many executives believe.

This is the opening paragraph of the latest MIT/Sloan & Boston Consulting Group report, “Investing for a Sustainable Future”.  Keeping in tune with the last two posts, in which the entire principle of project managers thinking ‘too broadly’ and ‘inflating their jobs’ was raised by some critics, it was meaningful to see this report which says that investors and C-level executives (key stakeholders of projects, programs and portfolios – and often the sponsors of the projects on which project managers work) are increasingly focused on sustainability, not only for altruistic reasons but because a concentration on sustainability has shown to yield financial benefit.

Here's a little more about the survey, for validation: The input came from over 3,000 respondents from commercial enterprises. Within this commercial sample, 579 survey respondents self-identified as investors: Most were strategic (39%), institutional (24%), or retail (11%) investors. Few identified themselves as mission-oriented or socially responsible investors – so the choice to ‘invest in ESG’ is not (only) driven by a thread of fiery environmentalism or cause, but rather, success of the enterprises in which these investors put their money.

Where’s the project connection?  Well aside from the key connection already mentioned (can anyone say “stakeholder”?), there are initiatives and projects which are themselves focused on sustainability, and they are yielding financial benefits.  Here are three examples from the report, which illustrate why this has the attention of investors – and in our opinion should have the antennae of project managers and PMOs fully up and tuned in:

• Florida Ice & Farm Company SA, based in Costa Rica, is (an) example. In 2005, the company respondedto Costa Rica’s looming water access crisis by investing in water-saving measures. Within two years, the organization had decreased its use of water in production by an eye-popping 82%. The reduction drove down production costs and helped sustain 20% annual growth between 2010 and 2014.
• Deerfield, Illinois-based healthcare company Baxter International Inc. estimates it earns $3 for every $1 invested in environmental initiatives.
• Johnson & Johnson is achieving a 19% internal rate of return on its CO2 projects.

In all three cases, the benefits were realized with projects – projects that look like they were focused on environmental activism, and may indeed have been - - but the line between taking on an ESG initiative and just “taking on an initiative” is blurring, quickly.  This is why project managers need to be aware of ESG principles, and increasingly positive ESG sponsor-stakeholders.

How does an enterprise move forward to gather in more investors, now that there’s evidence that investors increasingly care about ESG?

According to the article, these are key steps:

<> Build awareness of sustainability challenges and programs — both within the company and among stakeholders, including investors.

<>  Identify and analyze material issues and create alignment within the organization to ensure an integrated response.

<> Invest in and focus on tangible and measurable sustainability outcomes instead of positions on ratings lists.

<> Formulate a strategy once tangible sustainability measures are established.

<> Incorporate the sustainability strategy into the overall corporate strategy, including a clear business case or proof of value.

<> Engage investors, and a broad range of stakeholders, to discuss the company’s sustainability strategy and progress.

Look at that list.  For one thing, aren’t most of the items in the list actually projects in and of themselves?  Yes.  As a project manager, shouldn’t your project seek to align to the strategy and higher-level portfolio/program objectives?  Of course. 

So again, we feel ‘charged up’ by this report, we feel that the comments about job inflation and overstepping our bounds as project managers to be just plain wrong-minded and out-of-step with the way business is changing.  At a minimum we recommend that those who assert that the PM should stay tucked away in isolation from the value chain is not only under-utilizing the talent and capability of the PM, it is actually breaking a ‘golden thread’ all the way from investors to end-customers.  As PMs we need to be conveyors of organizational strategy and objectives, not blockers.  As I final message I suggest you read the recent post by Cornelius Fichtner, “Benefits Realisation for Project Managers”, which coincidentally came out just around the time of our two posts on job inflation.

In the prior blog post, I posed a question, and asked your opinion about whether or not project management - and project managers - should think more broadly about the products of their projects.

The trigger for my question was a negative comment (well, I saw it as a negative comment) about our discipline, stating that PMs should stop 'inflating their roles'.

The feedback here (and on LinkedIn, which had a parallel post) was significant, in volume and thoughtfulness.

Some of you seemed to agree with the 'inflationary' comments, and some took the view that a project manager, indeed, should step up and speak up about the long-term effects (social, environmental, economic) of even design decisions, even product-oriented decisions, even seemingly way-past-the-project-handoff effects that you anticipate as a project leader.

I respect all of these views, and I thank you for them.

And the thing is, this discussion has reminded me why we started doing this work in the first place, and that our work is nowhere near done.  One of the most interesting things about the responses from colleague project managers who seem to think that we have to 'keep in our place', 'keep our nose to the grindstone", and "just think about project deliverables" is that they are not in line with the thinking  of enterprise leadership, and even the investment companies believe. 

See this report:

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/investing-for-a-sustainable-future/

I'll be covering this report in more detail in a future post, but consider this logic:

• Project managers are indeed responsible for delivering projects.
• Projects are meant to be aligned with the mission/vision/values and strategies of the enterprise.
• Enterprise leaders, and their sponsors (investors) are driving sustainable decision-making.
• So... (follow the logic?) project managers should be making project decisions (and even assertions) that are connected to the enterprise strategies.

Look for a follow-up post on this MIT Sloan/BCG report and other supporting findings that continue to energy us to focus on this very important intersection of project management and sustainability.