People, Planet, Profits & Projects

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?

"Sustainability rising”, I really like that phrase.  It happens to be one of the headings in the new McKinsey Global Survey Results[i].  To me, it means more than just an increase in interest in sustainability.  It is more universal than that.  To go back to our 2010 publication, “We know, firsthand, then, that business is beginning to appreciate the value of green (sustainability).  That’s of course in harmony with an increasing “green wave” of awareness among the general population.[ii]”  That increase in interest is really the green wave rolling to the shore of business. 

We’ve talked about the McKinsey surveys before.  But to give you some brief background, we’ve been reporting on the McKinsey report since 2010.  It is primarily an on-line survey sent to business executives to gauge the temperature of sustainability efforts within their respective companies; strategic alignment, priority, and importance of sustainability for example.  According to McKinsey, the most recent survey was available to executives from February 11, 2014 to February 21, 2014 and 3,344 executives responded.  So it is very current information.  The executives were from a variety of “regions (of the world), industries, company sizes, functional specialists, and tenures.” 

The survey is a wealth of knowledge about what is going on in the mind of the corporate world with regard to sustainability.  The purpose of this post is to explore one particular area of the survey results, alignment of sustainability with overall business goals, visions and values.  The following is a chart from this public report. 

(Note 3 states that the question asked between 2010 and 2012 was “align with business goals” and was expanded in 2014 to include mission or values.)

As you can see, there has been about a 45% increase (from 30% to 43%) in alignment as a reason that companies are addressing sustainability.  For those of you who follow this blog site and EarthPM.com know how much emphasis we are placing on integrating sustainability (rather than bolting it on as a separate entity) into project management.  We are also advocating that the integration begin at the “top of the chain”, the portfolio level.   For us, the portfolio level within an organization is the best place to fully integrate sustainability thinking into the culture.  The organization's portfolio of projects sets the stage for the direction (vision/mission/values) of an organization because the profolio drives prgrams and projects.  It is the top level.  Integration into the culture at that top level of the organization will ensure (hopefully) that the thinking will follow down to programs and projects, the trifecta of project management. 

What we have seen over the years since we began researching our first book, through publication and up to date, is that there is a definite movement to integrate sustainability into the organizations core thinking (mission/vision/values).  We all know that the more your key stakeholders are engaged in the process, the more likely the project will succeed.  As project managers, we think about incorporating sustainability into the corporate culture as our project.  This recent survey is very encouraging for our project’s success.  While alignment is the most compelling reason there are several other reasons for companies to address sustainability according to this survey.  I’ll explore those in a later blog posting.

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!

Even before The Graduate, and Mr. McGuire’s one word advice to Benjamin, “plastics”, plastics were already becoming a material of choice for so many products.  Like  other “miracle” products, materials and solutions,at times there is little consideration for the long term effects.  In the excitement of the miracle, lost is the question that we, in sustainability, are always asking; “to what degree are you considering the sustainability factors that affects these products (projects) during the entire project lifecycle and beyond” (its greenality).   The problem is that the urgency to evaluate those long term effects (beyond the project life cycle when the product is in use) is overshadowed by the urgency to execute on the idea.   The connection to projects is that projects are where those ideas become reality. 

The urgency became a reality in a recent report from one of our favorite sustainability websites, Green Biz,  www.greenbiz.com, “Plastics cost the environment $75 billion each year” by Danny Bradbury.  The report is about the cost to the environment from consumer goods companies through their use of plastics.  The article is based a report "Valuing plastic". Vauling Plastic is a report from the Plastic Disclosure Project, a joint U.N. Environment Programme with natural capital analysts Trucost.  It is an evaluation of the environmental and social impact of plastics used by businesses.  The interesting piece, to me, is that It also assesses the financial cost to companies were they to be financially responsible for their plastics usage.  In other words, if these companies truly considered the greenality of their products, projects and processes, perhaps an additional $75 billion could be added to the bottom line (profits). 

In effect, the reports shows, the food industry accounted for 23% of the financial cost with the soft drink industry a distant second with 12% of the costs.  Further, environmental considerations include: toxicity of the plastics, fouling land usage, causing the death of some animals (6-pack holders straggling water fowl for instance), etc.  According to Andrew Russell, the director of the Plastic Disclosure Project, "Avoiding plastic entering the environment at all will avoid a lot of them (the issues). Making sure there is a very high percentage of recycled content in the product or packaging, and making sure the plastic is recycled at the end of its life (my emphasis), all have enormous favorable impact." 

So, what can we do, as project managers, to help to alleviate or at least mitigate this problem and, by the way, add to your organization’s bottom line?  We certainly can make recommendations, not only as PMs, but as members of the organization.  One of the major issues we deal with is transparency.  Real transparency comes from communications, and we are communicators.  Making people aware of plastic content of products, recyclability, use of recyclable materials, facilitates transparency.   According to the report, only about ½ of the companies assessed, report any quantitative data on plastics usage.  That is not transparency.

One of the obvious choices is that we should recommend that the plastics we use are recyclable, reusable and that the materials we use in the production have a significant content from recycled material.    Plastics can be costly in natural capital, “the limited stock of Earth’s natural resources that humans depend on for our prosperity, security and well-being — including things such as clean air and water.”  (http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/09/09/who-are-leaders-natural-capital).  To preserve both the natural capital and the organization’s bottom line, one word, plastics.

With the USA's Independence Day celebrations upon us, it seemed appropriate to talk about independence and interdependence.  In both cases, we refer you to the very PMBOK(R) Guide that defines the framework, knowledge areas, and processes of project management.

Let's get ::interdependence:: out of the way first.  As we know, projects are run by organizations to accomplish the mission, vision, and values of the organization.  We only ininitiate a project if it is aligned with the business objectives of the entity that sponsors it.  So there is an inherent interdependency between projects and the programs and portfolios under which they are executed.

This concept can be carried forward to our message* of sustainability by virtue of the need to line up the projects with the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) messaging of the parent organizations.  We'll repeat our ongoing challenge to project managers: check the "About Us" section of your company's external web page and se what your leaders are saying to the world about their commitment to the environment, to employees, to the community, to the shareholders.  Is your project connected to (interdependence!) these statements?

We have seen significant evidence of projects that may line up with one element (usually, of course, economic in nature) but are way, way, WAY off in terms of the other 2 pieces of the bottom line (social and ecological).

So - in the interest of brevity - just know that the PMBOK(R) Guide speaks to this significantly. If you don't believe us, have a look at Figure 1-1 of the Guide on page 5, and this sentence from page 4:

"Although the projects or programs within the portfolio may not necessarily be interdependent or directly related, they are linked to the organization's strategic plan by means of the organization's portfoliio".

So now on to independence!

In this context we want to talk about independence from bias and reliance on facts (as in, "we hold these truths to be self-evident"). 

As the hurricaine season begins to unfold, we were looking at Hurrricaine Arthur on wunderground.com, a website devoted to independent weather reporting.  There we found a great page which provides facts on climate change based strictly on independent science.  Unfortunately, due to the politicizing of this science, even an independent weather page was compelled to put this statement on their page:

"Based on the evidence, more than 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. Climate change is already causing significant impacts to people and ecosystems, and these impacts will grow much more severe in the coming years. We can choose to take economically sensible steps to lessen the damage of climate change, and the cost of inaction is much higher than the cost of action."

Click here for the full Wunderground page on climate change - it's a great resource for facts.

The other piece related to independent climate change facts was found oun this site:

Click here for a report on climate change funded by the Koch brothers which should please even those who are concerned about any fraud in climate change.

So to wrap up:

As project managers, we are - by definition - interdependent on our organization's mission, vision, and values.  We can use this interdependency to our advantage, as an opportunity as a source of authority and power when we want to assure that our projects are properly linked to the goals of the organization.

Also - as project managers, we should seek facts and base our decisions on independent, validated sources of information.  We should remain independent when it comes to negotiating differences amongst our project team members.  Independence is key for us, even as mentioned in the PMBOK(R) Guide in terms of procurement and arbitration.

So declare your own PM independence gather and deal with facts only as facts, whether it's dealing with CSR objectives, climate change, or a simple argument between team members that you are refereeing.

To our American readers, happy July 4th!  And since that is a date on EVERYONE's calendar, we wish EVERYONE a happy July 4th, too!

*The best way to see our message is here at Projects@Work in this blog, at http://earthpm.com, and even better by reading our book, Green Project Management.