People, Planet, Profits & Projects

Our little company is called EarthPM.  It's named that way so that it's clear that we are about the intersection of project management and sustainability, but also with the intended double-meaning that we are here for the project managers of our rock - the third rock from the sun - Earth.

So why the heck are you looking at a Mars bar? 

Well, we wanted to familiarize you - or perhaps refamiliarize you - with the concept from our book called "A Rainbow of Green".  The idea (although you need to read the book to fully understand) is that projects which are focused directly on sustainability - that is, those whose project product is a reduced impact on the environment or an improvement in CSR metrics, for example, are on the "green by definition" end of the spectrum, and that new Release 8.3.4.3.6b of your company's accounting software would be on the other end of this spectrum.

At a meeting of our local sustainability professionals tonight, the meeting, which took place at local non-profit consulting firm FSG, was kicked off by Special Projects Coordinator Mary Light, who gave us an example of one of their projects - one which involved the Mars Company.

To quote from FSG's web page:

"70% of the world’s cocoa supply originates in West Africa with Côte d’Ivoire as the world’s largest producer. Cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire is grown by more than 700,000 small holders who farm, on average, approximately 3 hectares each. Production volumes and quality have been constantly declining over the last decades due to a multitude of economic, social, and environmental challenges. The underlying problems include: fluctuating weather patterns, low incomes, weak rural infrastructure, lack of improved planting material, aging farms, loss of biodiversity leading to exposure to pests and diseases, deforestation, and declining soil fertility. Without urgent action to address these challenges, the cocoa sector faces the risk of collapse."

That is the challenge.  To address it, the project put in place is described this way:

"The analysis revealed a high potential for shared value creation — Investing in a comprehensive sustainability program in Côte d’Ivoire will help ensure the long-term success of Mars’ chocolate business and at the same time improve economic, environmental, and social conditions in cocoa-growing communities. The goals of the “Vision for Change” program in Côte d’Ivoire thus address all three levels of sustainability including:

1. Economic: Improve Farmer Incomes. Helping farmers to make their farms more productive and to increase the quality of their crops will improve their income and allow them to better cover their family’s needs and reinvest into their farms.
2. Environmental: Improve Environmental Management. Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) will increase soil fertility, and more productive farms should reduce expansion of cocoa farming into protected forest areas.
3. Social: Invigorate Rural Communities. Empowering local communities will lead to improved living standards in cocoa-growing communities.

Mars understood early on that the challenges within the Ivorian cocoa sector are too complex to be tackled by Mars alone. The “Vision for Change” initiative for Côte d’Ivoire outlines a multi-stakeholder Collective Impact approach, combining pre-competitive public goods investments with supply-chain investments. Mars has proactively engaged with other interested stakeholders and sector investors including the Ivorian government, national institutions, the World Bank, bilateral donors, commercial suppliers, certifiers, and NGOs. FSG has facilitated a partnership between Mars and the Ivorian government, national agricultural institutions, and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). In March 2010, Mars and the government of Côte d’Ivoire signed an MOU as the basis for future collaboration.

Most recently, FSG has been assisting with the implementation planning of the “Vision for Change” program including developing action plans, orchestrating and facilitating meetings and communication among existing and potential partners, and providing continued strategic advice to Mars as the catalyst of this Collective Impact initiative."

This is about as far to the "Green By Definition" side of the spectrum as you can be, and still be on Earth.  And in fact, maybe it's not so coincidental that it's the Mars company that's doing it.  But we jest - the idea is that more and more of these proejcts need to be launched, and even better, managed by project managers with an improved sense of, and understanding of sustainability issues.

We encourage you to read more about the efforts of Mars, by following this choclatey link....

And, of course, we encourage you to read more about this in our book and by following us on Twitter and EarthPM's own blog.  Thanks!

...but perhaps not for long.

At least...not without the help of many water-related projects and project managers with sustainability awareness in their arsenal of talents.  Read on - you will find that as a project manager, you may be a strategic asset!

According to a U.S. State Department document released on World Water Day last year, the need for fresh water will exceed the supply by 40 percent by the year 2030.

The document contains this interesting graphic, so if you learn nothing else from this post, here is one takeway with the latest facts:

From this, we see that only 2.5% of the world's water is fresh water.  And in turn, that is used for all of the items shown on the right part of the chart - agricultural, industrial, residential.

All of this points to shortages that concern us not only from an (important) ecological and business perspective but even as a security issue for the US.

Quoting from the document:

We assess that during the next 10 years,

"Water problems will contribute to instability in states important to US national security interests. Water shortages, poor water quality, and floods by themselves are unlikely to result in state failure. However, water problems—when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions—contribute to social disruptions that can result in state failure."

In other words, it can bring down whole governments.

Back to the U.S. State department report.  As a project manager, ever felt "strategic"?  Well, perhaps you should.  Here's a gem for you:

"we assess that states will also use their inherent ability to construct and support major water projects to obtain regional influence or preserve their water interests.". 

Where does that 'inherent ability to construct and support major water projects" come from?  Well of course, partially from the natural resouces of the state, but also, from....YOU.  You - as a PM - are part of the states' ability to support the projects.  So congratulations on your newfound strategic value!

Read more here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/03/22/world-water-day-a-forceful-reminder-that-the-u-s-is-running-out-of-fresh-water/

People always ask us, "do I need to be an expert in a field to manage projects in that practice area?".   Our answer is, of course, 'it depends'.  But if pushed, the answer is no.  No, one doesn't need to be an expert.  But what one needs is something critical and that is conversancy.  One needs to be able to talk intelligently and to know how to find out more and to find the expertise, even if it isn't directly part of your own capability.  I suppose we could say that one doesn't need to be an expert, but one needs to be able to apply expert knowledge.

To that end, we'd like to help you take advantage of some recent research which will provide you with increased conversancy on the topic of clean energy, improving your knowledge not only of the technical aspects of this area but an advantage in terms of knowing where the PM jobs are - and will be - as the green economy grows.

After all, Green Project Management, as we've written about in our book, is about the altruism of doing the right thing.... about PMs being the change agents and the ones who can help apply sustainability prinicples on their jobs... but it's also about the other green.  The money, the opportunity, the growth, it provides for your PM career.  And there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing the right thing for yourself, your career, your discipline of PM.

"Clean Energy Trends 2013" was just released by CleanEdge.  You can download the entire document here.

The 5 trends they identify in this brand-new report are:

• Smart Devices and Big Data Empower Customers, Open New Chapter in Energy Efficiency
• Distributed Solar Financing Comes of Age
• Under the EV Radar, MicrohybridT echnology Saves Big on Fuel Consumption
• In the U.S. and Overseas, Geothermal Picks up Steam
• Perfectly Natural: Biomimicry Makes its Mark on CleanTech

Here are some highlights from the report that shows a project manager how to "follow the money" in terms of clean energy project management opportunities:

• "Biofuels (global production and wholesale pricing of ethanol and biodiesel) reached $95.2 billion in 2012, up from $83.0 billion the previous year, and are projected to grow to $177.7 billion by 2022. From 2011 to 2012, global biofuels production expanded from 27.9 billion gallons to 31.4 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel. Market size growth over the next decade is expected to be driven by added production, but also by modest price increases.
   
• Wind power (new installation capital costs) is projected to grow from $73.8 billion in 2012, up from $71.5 billion the previous year, to $124.7 billion in 2022. Global wind capacity expanded by 44.7 gigawatts in 2012, a record year led by more than 13 GW added in both China and the U.S., and an additional 12.4 GW of new capacity in Europe.
   
• Solar photovoltaics (including modules, system components, and installation) decreased from a record $91.6 billion in 2011 to $79.7 billion in 2012 as continued growth in annual capacity additions was not enough to offset falling PV prices. While total market revenues fell 19 percent – the first PV market contraction in Clean Energy Trends’ 12-year history – global installations expanded to a record of 30.9 GW in 2012, up from 29.6 GW the prior year. Germany remained the top market, adding 7.6 GW in 2012, followed by strong growth in China, Italy, and the U.S., which each added more than 3 GW. By 2022, solar PV revenues are expected to grow to $123.6 billion.

Together, we project these three sectors will continue to grow over the next decade, nearly doubling from $248.7 billion in 2012 to $426.1 billion in 2022."

Here's a graphic from the report for those visual thinkers out there:

So if you're interested in building your conversancy in the area of clean energy, have a look at the report.

Do yourself a 'career favor'.

As Pope Benedict XVI retires and the conclave meets at the Vatican, it's interesting to us to reflect on his leadership with respect to the environment - and the environmental projecs that he launched. 

Benedict, according to this article in the National Geographic online magazine, "approved a plan to cover the Vatican's Paul VI hall with solar panels, enough to power the lighting, heating, and cooling of a portion of the entire country (which covers, of course, a mere one-fifth of a square mile). He authorized the Vatican's bank to purchase carbon credits by funding a Hungarian forest that would make the Catholic city-state the only country fully carbon neutral. And several years later, he unveiled a new hybrid Popemobile that would be partially electric."

But these are (quite literally) surface-level changes.  If you will, in project management terms, these are 'operations' changes.  What's much deeper, and much more in line with our (I guess you could call it) preaching, is at the mission/vision/values level.

Remember, an enterprise is established, per the Stanford Execution Framework which we adopt to describe it, so that at the top level is "Ideation" which includes mission, vision, and values, in the center is "Strategy:, at the bottom is "Operations" (the steady state) and connecting strategy to operations is an entity with which you'll be familiar: projects, programs, and portofolios.

So we - as project managers of any denomination - care a great deal about the strategy, mission, vision, and values 'above' us.

And what Benedict, and Pope John Paul VI before him did in this area is not insignficant.

Again, according to the article, which we recommend to you, "As Benedict begins his retirement today, the better way to judge Benedict's influence might not be in how many solar panels he had installed at the Vatican or how many gallons of gasoline he saved with the Popemobile, but in how he harnessed the influence of his global church to act on the sort of change he advocated. Many national dioceses around the world now include "environmental stewardship" on their list of advocacy topics. In the U.S., bishops have created curricula for discussing sustainability in school and pushed local officials on issues like clean air."

An additional article on this topic from the UK's Telegraph can be found here.

Also, if this posting intrigues you, the book which we used to illustrate the post can be found here.

In an opinion piece from today's Boston Globe, Richard Murray and Daniel Schrag write about rising sea levels in "The Coming Storm".

We know that the climate change mantra can sound like doom gloom.  I mean, that title...."The Coming Storm".  Cue the Rimsky-Korsakov music.  Indeed, and to the authors' credit, there is hardly a way to avoid sounding gloomy when the data seems to point to all kinds of problems we'll face together as 'the third rock from the sun' comes to terms with significant impacts from a clearly changing environment.

The article, however, despite its grey photo and dreary title, actually speaks of ways in which 'new thinnking', and 'chances of success' - can come into play.  These are optimistic concepts for sure.

Focusing on the community of Billingsgate Isalnd, a typical New England coastal settlement 100 years ago - which is now gone, the article does move into thoughtful ways, all of which will require projects and project managers, to react positiely to the changes we face.

Let me stop here and acknowledge that some of you are thinking, maybe even saying out loud, or even yelling, "these are all just natural occurances...this is normal shifting of tides and normal erosion...who says humans have anything to do with this...".  Okay.  We know.  However, the very fact that this article is publshised, and the very fact that a google search on the word sustainability yields nearly 100 million results, this should tell you that it doesn't matter.  Regardless of the origin, the science, and the politics, the fact of the matter is that there is an increased consciousness about climate change and that this increased consiousness will create projects and change the way we think about projects.  That is an indisputable fact.  We need to at least deal with that. Can we agree?  Thanks.

Now back to the post...

Here's a sample of the article's 'hidden optimism':

The best chance of success in minimizing the effects of sea level rise and increasing storm frequency and intensity will collectively involve industry, government, and individual citizens making challenging decisions that are likely to deviate from historical practices and assumptions. If such measures are not taken, then what happened to Billingsgate will not be an isolated story.

One strategy, complementary to constructing expensive sea walls, is to invest in resilience. This means acknowledging that flooding will occur, but making sure that after the storm recedes, our buildings can be pumped dry, and that we can recover with only minimal damage. This will require new building codes and some significant costs, although not the massive public investment required for large infrastructure.

Another option is a coordinated plan for managed retreat. After the Blizzard of ’78, nearly 10 homes on Peggotty Beach were purchased through a federal program and the land turned over to the Town of Scituate to be kept as open space. Such programs, teamed with enhancing environmental regulations to preserve open space and marshland buffers, can play a role toward managing the growing vulnerability of coastal communities. Insurance companies can also contribute to the solution, as many current policies encourage people to live in harm’s way.

Our point at EarthPM - our blog and our book -is that we need to be ready to tackle new projects like the ones to be triggered by climate change.  We can focus on making our own projects more sustainable even if they don't seem to have a pure focus on - say - renewable energy.  We can get ourselves more well-informed about climate change and the reactions government and industry are having to it (we'll blog more about this shortly).  We don't have to hang our heads or panic.  Urgent action - sure.  Panic and depression....not for us.  We're project managers!