People, Planet, Profits & Projects

I approach this three part (!!!) post from the PMI® viewpoint about risk.

Risk, as you likely know, can be described as negative risk, the risk we usually think of, called threat, and positive risk, called opportunity.  When I started this story it was very depressing – because I thought of it only as a threat.  But a deeper dive (excuse the pun) led me to the conclusion that there was both threat and opportunity here.  In fact, I’ll treat this as a three-part series.  Part 1 will focus on risk identification, Part 2 on threat and opportunity analysis, and Part 3 on risk response – and the initiation of a huge project that will capture your imagination and tickle your project management fancy.

So – all that said, let’s start with Part 1: Risk Identification.  What’s the risk, and why was it so depressing at first? 

Here’s a challenge for you, dear reader.  Consciously note and identify the number of plastic items you touch over the next 24 hours.  In fact, let’s make this a bit interactive.  I request that you respond to this post with that count of touches and items.  Log it on a piece of note paper, remembering that the pen you use is also likely made of plastic.  Plastic is everywhere.  You’re reading this post while touching a plastic bezel of a device or with your hands resting on a plastic keyboard and/or mouse, and looking at a plastic monitor, perhaps snacking on pretzels in a plastic bag (watch those crumbs!).  So the risk I’m talking about is indeed – plastic.

Many of you have heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  For those not familiar with the situation, first of all, the word “patch” makes it sound way too small.  It’s actually (currently) twice the size of Texas.  And – ask anyone in Texas, Texas is BIG.  Below is an image from a recent article in New Scientist magazine:

This is not just about litter – the plastic affects a much larger food chain – including us.  And it’s not just this patch, where the plastic happens to concentrate.  Remember your project management training – a risk is not a risk unless it has an effect on project objectives.  In this case, for sake of argument, the “project” is continuing good quality of life on this planet.  From the below, you can see that this definitely qualifies as a risk.  Research suggests that not one square mile of surface ocean anywhere on earth is free of plastic pollution.  Here is one small sample regarding fish, from research on the effect of plastics on sea life:

“Fish in the North Pacific ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each year, which can cause intestinal injury and death and transfers plastic up the food chain to bigger fish and marine mammals. A recent study found that a quarter of fish at markets in California contained plastic in their guts, mostly in the form of plastic microfibers.”

Where’s the plastic coming from?  In other words, what’s the cause – the source of this risk?

In a very recent NPR story, Jenna Jambeck (website: https://jambeck.engr.uga.edu/ ) describes well the sources of plastic.  A graphic below helps explain it as well. 

Professor Jambeck has collaborated on a technical article recently published in Science magazine which details this:

Science magazine article - Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768.full

From the abstract:

By linking worldwide data on solid waste, population density, and economic status, we estimated the mass of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean. We calculate that 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste was generated in 192 coastal countries in 2010, with 4.8 to 12.7 million MT entering the ocean. Population size and the quality of waste management systems largely determine which countries contribute the greatest mass of uncaptured waste available to become plastic marine debris. Without waste management infrastructure improvements, the cumulative quantity of plastic waste available to enter the ocean from land is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025.  The plastic garbage patch may even be much bigger than we thought, according to this recent article.  And, oh, by the way, this is not the only mass of debris.  Each of Earth’s gyres (click on the link and/or see below) also contain vast amounts of plastic.

So, the problem is huge, and it’s growing, but we have identified the threat and we have a much better handle on its size.  In Part 2 of this three-part post, I’ll talk more about the risk analysis and move towards a risk response.

But before you leave...  remember my challenge to you.  Track the plastic items that you touch over the next 24 hours (or whatever period you can bear doing this) and respond to this post with your numbers and if you're willing, a table showing the number and the items.

Photo courtesy of Pensthorpe National park - http://www.pensthorpe.com/animal/barnacle-goose/

Today’s tongue-twister (say that title five times fast!) is brought to you by Branta leucopsis.  This is a species of bird commonly known as the barnacle goose (see photo).  And although this will be about geese and migration and climate, it will have a project management angle. 
Let’s start by decomposing the title of the blog post. See what I did there?  Right away, a key PM term! 

• Flapping: in this case, flapping is referring to flying, and in particular, migratory flying
• Fowl: the general name for geese, ducks, chickens, and balls hit out of bounds in baseball, or an illegal play in basketball, if you allow for misspelled versions of the word…
• Phenological: having to do with phenomena such as migrations related to the effects of climate.
• Phasing: here we refer to getting ‘out of phase’ in terms of migration – that is, leaving, or arriving, at the wrong time so that the migration does not fulfill its objective, which is usually to arrive so that mating and offspring have high probabilities of success.
• Fatalities: unfortunately, due to changes in climate, the survival rates of offspring have been dropping, as you will see in this post and in the referenced articles.

This post was triggered by the hours-old article on NPR’s Science pages, Migrating Arctic Geese Are Confused, Exhausted By Rising Temperatures.  Yes, somehow, not only did this catch my eye, but it caught my attention as a project manager.  Why?  A big point of this article relates to a fixed starting time for a task.  As PMs, we know all about task dependencies, and the danger – or at least the constraining effect – of fixed dates on our schedule.

In this case, the schedule is about survival of a species, and the task is the migration to the north for Branta Leucopsis, so as to maximize arrival at nesting grounds during a “food peak”.

According to the article as well as other scientific research recently published, such as this article from Current Biology, there are now earlier springs in the Arctic.  This means the geese should be changing their departure time to arrive properly during the “food peak” to benefit their goslings.  From the articles:

Historically, the geese have arrived just after the snow melts and lay their eggs right away. That gives plants time to start growing so that the goslings can benefit from what is known as a "food peak."

These days, the weather in parts of the journey north is warmer than it used to be and the birds seem to realize that they're running late. They start to speed up — a lot.

A journey that usually takes the barnacle geese a month now takes about a week, the researchers found. It's a marathon: "They fly nearly nonstop from the wintering areas to their breeding grounds," Bart Nolet (a researcher from the University of Amsterdam) says.

Even though they make up time on the way (crashing the schedule!), the exhausted geese can't lay eggs right away because they need time to forage and recover — some 10 more days. 

That means the goslings are no longer able to enjoy that tasty and nutritious "food peak," as Nolet put it. Instead, "when the eggs hatch, the food is already deteriorating in quality, and what we found (in this research project) is that goslings survive less well in such an early year than they do normally."

This is where that ‘fixed start date’ comes in.  The trigger for this their departure – the dependency, if you will, is not temperature, but light and length of days, says the research.  The distance between their North Sea residence and the breeding grounds in the Arctic, after all, is more than 3000 miles (see figure below).  The geese, unlike project managers, with excellent information systems with the latest compiled data, information, and knowledge, don’t have any idea of the weather 3000 miles away, they only have the current and very local information on which to make their decisions.

And here’s the thing – it’s not just geese.  In fact, geese, due to their ‘flocking’ behavior may actually have an advantage in that they may be a bit more flexible, following any ‘leaders’ who leave earlier.  Other birds – shore birds, may not have this flexibility and may be even more prone to climactic changes that could be very debilitating to survival.

Generally, climate change is likely to create this kind of mismatch for animals that migrate long distances. It's harder for them to adjust, Nolet says, when they spend part of the year in a totally different climate

This is another example of how changes to the climate remind us of the need to aim at reductions in the causes and to be more aware of the effects and the surprising relationship of climate change to projects, project management, and project management wisdom.
I invite you to watch this 5-minute video about the migration, and in the video you get to see the Branta leucopsis close up.
 

Many project managers are left-brain thinkers.  We’re analytical.  We’re get-r-done type folk.  Give me the facts, man, and I’ll deliver your project, we say.  Or, if we’re the one presenting the facts, we expect that they’ll deliver action by our project team contributors.

The science of the human brain, however, indicates that as humans, we take many ‘mental shortcuts’.   Our decisions are not always rational.

A recent article in Scientific American has one of the most interesting titles of an article – at least in that esteemed journal: “The Science of Anti-Science Thinking”.   The subtitle also caught my attention: “Convincing people who doubt the validity of climate change and evolution to change their beliefs requires overcoming a set of ingrained cognitive biases”.

The article starts with a porpoise.  Porpoises live in the ocean.  They look like a fish.  Until fairly recently, most people thought they were a fish.  But scientific evidence proved that they are a mammal, and that is now a fact.

When science – or at least technological advancement based on science – yields the automobile, the laser, the smartphone, or a cure for a disease, the advance is welcomed.  But when science tells us something that disturbs the prevailing thought or challenges a societal norm, or, in projects, “that’s not the way we do things around here” – watch out.  The human mind can slip quickly into mental shortcuts and biases.

In the article, which I highly recommend reading, there are some excellent examples and compelling evidence.  But let me focus on the hurdles to accepting facts, since that (accepting facts) is what we need for good project management.

Shortcuts:

The brain is an organ.  Organs use lots of energy and as a living thing, we try to reduce the energy we use – that’s instinct.  On top of this, these days, we’re presented with an overload of information to process.  So we take mental shortcuts – heuristics – rules of thumb – to cut down our processing time.  One example in the article is the “Authority Heuristic”.  In an experiment by psychiatrist Charles Hofling, nurses in a hospital received a phone call from a person identifying himself as a doctor, and directing the on-duty nurse to give their patient a double dose of a drug called Astroten to a patient, even though the label on the bottle boldly limited the dosage, and even though the hospital had a policy requiring handwritten prescriptions for such changes.  95% of the nurses obeyed the unknown “doctor” without raising any questions.  See this link for more detail: https://www.simplypsychology.org/hofling-obedience.html.  Other research in this area comes from Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, summarized well in the video below.  It’s just a few minutes.  Have a look.

These nurses, I think you’d agree, were using “System 1” thinking.

Confirmation Bias:

Even if you have the time to go to System 2 (slower, more disciplined) thinking, there is the chance that we won’t process information impartially.  We will “mix in” our beliefs and give higher priority to the patterns we have seen more often and the ways in which we’ve always thought.

Social Goals:

Now let’s assume you have surpassed the hurdles of shortcuts (System 1 thinking) and confirmation bias, there is still something else that may prevent scientific fact from getting through.  And that is “social pressure”.  Group consensus is a strong thing.  You’ve probably even seen it in your projects.  “Everyone knows that Vendor XYZ is the best in the business”, says the ‘common wisdom’.  Do the facts bear it out?  If you don't think social pressure can make a difference, take a journey back in time and watch this old video from an American TV show called Candid Camera.  It's about something called "The Asch Paradigm".  You'll get a kick out of it.

All three of these hurdles get in the way of conveying real, factual information. 

I bring this up for two reasons – first, to help readers understand why they may be pushing back on research showing that climate change is real and caused by humans, but even if you want to bypass that element, I also bring it up because as project managers need to work based on facts, and that as a PM you will often find yourself in the role of the conveyor of facts and faced with an audience or a functional manager who is taking mental shortcuts or is suffering from confirmation bias.  At a minimum, you need to be aware of how information flows into, around, and back out of the human brain to accomplish your project objectives.

So: think fast, think slow, and consider the facts – including the facts about your own thinking!

Stakeholder Management is an increasingly important topic in project management.  In the 5^th Edition PMBOK® Guide, it was given its own Knowledge Area, born mostly from the Communications Knowledge Area.  After PMI’s Role Delineation Studies, Stakeholder Management got even more priority and attention.

When a new project is launched, we carefully identify stakeholders – broadly and deeply.  We could think of releasing new regulations meant to reduce the impact on the environment - as projects, and for that, we also think about stakeholder management. 

In this post, I’ll discuss some new regulations meant to reduce the impact of shipping on the environment.  In this, obviously, shipping companies are stakeholders.  And so is human health and the environment.  Although the shipping industry accounts for only 2% of global carbon emissions, the emissions that the shipping industry does contribute is very dangerous because it uses ‘heavy’ fuel oil.  Remember: CO₂ is not the only culprit to cause climate change and otherwise damage our environment.  The shipping industry also produces 13% of the world’s sulphur emissions – which are responsible for air pollution and acid rain -  and 15% of nitrogen oxides, according to a June 23, 2018 article in The Economist.

The International Maritme Organization (IMO) of the UN, has recently issued regulations that force shippers to install equipment by the year 2024 to clean dirty ballast water.  Seems like a good idea, but it’s not cheap.  This will cost the shipping industry about $50B.  Also recently, the IMO has cut the allowed carbon emissions 50% from 2008 levels.  Sulphur regulations may be the toughest – the new rules from the IMO cut allowable sulphur content from 3.5% to 0.5% by 2020.  Switching to low-sulphur fuels could cost the industry US$60B. 

If you think the reductions are expensive, they are.  However, without them, according to a recent study by the government of Finland shows that without these cuts there could be 570,000 deaths from air pollution worldwide after 2020.  If one values human life, the price does not seem so high after all.

A recent study by Nature magazine (see table below) also shows hundreds of thousands of saved lives and reduced occurrences (3.6% drop) of childhood asthma if the low-sulphur fuels are used.  The article has almost 100 scientific and academic references.

 You can watch a brief video about the impact of the shipping industry here:

From the shipping industry’s perspective, there are two ways to look at it.  The first is to give up the ship (so to speak).  Junichiro Ikeda, the head of Mitsui OSK Lines, is quoted in this Economist article as saying, “we’re all going to go bust”.  The other way to look at its to realize that you are indeed part of a problem and seek to be leaders in solving that problem.  Shipowners will have to switch to the lower-polluting fuels, will have to invest in projects to add scrubbers to their ships, and need to consider switching their power systems altogether to liquefied natural gas (LNG) or other alternatives.

For project managers, all of these initiatives, mandated (or at least triggered by) the regulations from the IMO, are an opportunity.  Scads of projects will be launched to retrofit older ships.  And many ships will be retired and scrapped, meaning that new, more environmentally-friendly ships will also be launched.  Perhaps you will be shipping off to one of these projects yourself one day soon!

Most of you know the city of Xi’an for the famous terracotta warriors.  In fact, this necropolis project is featured in the introductory chapter of our book, Bridging the PM Competency Gap, as a way to indicate how skills and capabilities used to be passed down from generation to generation and now we simply do not have the time for that version of apprenticeship training. 

But this post is not about the warriors.  Well, in a way it is about Xi’an warriors, but a different kind of warrior – one battling pollutants, not foreign invaders. 

As background, let’s learn a little more about Xi’an – from this article in China’s Global Times:

Northwest China's Shaanxi Province has one of the most polluted provincial capitals in the country, China's environment watchdog says, as it singled out Xi'an for "severe" air quality issues.

The sixth inspection group of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) has sent feedback to the Shaanxi government, saying that conditions in central Shaanxi have become severe, and the ecosystem in the province's Qinling Mountains is "severely damaged," China Youth Daily reported Wednesday.

According to the inspection group, the heavy chemical industry has played a significant role in central Shaanxi for historical reasons, and in recent years the region has expanded its problem with huge amounts of highly contaminated projects.

The inspection group indicated that Xi'an has now become one of the most-polluted provincial capitals in China.

Indeed, here’s a post that compares the smog levels in Xi’an to other cities in China.

https://www.quora.com/How-bad-is-air-pollution-in-Xian-compared-to-other-Chinese-cities

So what’s a warrior to do about it?

Well, this is a project management blog – so of course, the answer is: launch a project!  Indeed the project was featured in the June edition of PM Network in an article called “Soak It In”.

One “warrior”, chemist Cao Junji, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, quoted in Nature magazine, has built a tower in Xi’an, as described in Nature magazine as referenced in the PM Network feature.

A 60-metre-high chimney stands among a sea of high-rise buildings in one of China’s most polluted cities. But instead of adding to Xian’s smog, this chimney is helping to clear the air. The outdoor air-purifying system, powered by the Sun, filters out noxious particles and billows clean air into the skies. Chinese scientists who designed the prototype say that the system could significantly cut pollution in urban areas in China and elsewhere.

The technology has excited and intrigued researchers — especially in China, where air pollution is a daily challenge. Early results, which are yet to be published, are promising, says the project's leader Cao Junji, a chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Key Laboratory of Aerosol Chemistry and Physics in Xian in central China.

In the PM Network article, the project parameters are impressive:

• Funding $2M
• Capacity: 353 million cubic feet of air processed each day
• Results: 15% reduction of the most harmful particles during heavy pollution days

Here's a photo of the tower:

Since this was only a proof-of-concept project, the next steps envisioned include more – and larger – towers, including one that will be 1,640 feet high.  It’s going to take more than one warrior-tower to fight this battle.

The small article in PM Network intrigued me enough to do some research.  You can, as well with this scientific review of the project – visit the article in Nature here.

Other attempts to “soak up” pollutants have been glamorous but not as successful.  Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde build a tower with the idea of “turning China’s smog into diamonds” with mixed results.  See below for a photo of the artist and his tower.

The website of the artist claims success, but an article in The Shanghiist says,

(The tower’s planners promises that it will) suck up 75% of the dangerous particles in the nearby air, and then spit back out clean air into the surrounding space. The captured smog particles would then be turned into diamonds, which would be sold as rings, cubes or cufflinks to fund the creation of more towers.

And that all sounds really awesome! Unfortunately, it sucks. Like really sucks. But not in a good way.

…the tower does manage to filter air particles, it doesn’t do it particularly well, or for a very large area. Despite claims that it could purify 30,000 cubic meters of air an hour, the machine has failed to create a non-toxic air bubble around even itself. Experts estimated that every hour the amount of harmful particulates that the machine captures doesn’t even add up to a single spoonful of salt, and have renamed it the “Smog Warning Tower.”

So on this version of vacuuming carbon and making that into diamonds, “your mileage may vary”.

And let’s get back to our ‘stone army’ - It also turns out that these two reasons for Xi’an’s fame (pollution and the terracotta army) are related.  In this article from Smithsonian magazine, it turns out that the army is deteriorating, in part due to exposure to the polluted atmosphere.  It says,

In an analysis of air pollutants affecting the soldiers, the researchers found notable concentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone. The levels the researchers recorded exceeded those typically reported each year by the museum.

For further reading:

Critical review – will it work?

https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/xian-unveils-smog-fighting-tower-work/

Clean Air Alliance of China

http://en.cleanairchina.org/channel/type/75-364-1.html?menuId=588

Blogger’s Note: The title of the post, while catchy, is actually a bit inaccurate as the idea is to remove a multitude of pollutants, not just carbon or CO₂.  Still – I couldn’t resist.