People, Planet, Profits & Projects

As project managers, we think more “in the moment” than most professionals.  We want our projects to meet objectives.  We want to come in under budget, on time, and we want to get on to the next project.  Pronto.

That thinking may lead, however, to some very poor decision making.  In prior posts here on People, Planet, Profits and Projects, we have discussed how thinking about the outcome and the steady-state operation of the project’s product can not only prevent ecological, social, and economic ‘sustainability’ mistakes, it better connects the project to the organizational strategy, mission, vision and values.  Of course, we have to hope that those values are good values.  That’s not so clear with recent news about emissions control ‘cheating’.

What we’ve seen in the past week or two in the automotive industry illustrates the danger of this sort of short-term-thinking whether you are a project manager or not.

Let’s start with VW.  To bring you up to speed (pun intended), we provide this summary, taken mainly from this excellent story by BBC.

In September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many VW cars being sold in America had a "defeat device" - or software - in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested, changing the performance accordingly to improve results. The German car giant has since admitted cheating emissions tests in the US.

The EPA's findings cover 482,000 cars in the US only, including the VW-manufactured Audi A3, and the VW models Jetta, Beetle, Golf and Passat. But VW has admitted that about 11 million cars worldwide, including eight million in Europe, are fitted with the so-called "defeat device".

The EPA has said that the engines had computer software that could sense test scenarios by monitoring speed, engine operation, air pressure and even the position of the steering wheel.

When the cars were operating under controlled laboratory conditions - which typically involve putting them on a stationary test rig - the device appears to have put the vehicle into a sort of safety mode in which the engine ran below normal power and performance. Once on the road, the engines switched out of this test mode.

The result? The engines emitted nitrogen oxide pollutants up to 40 times above what is allowed in the US.  And it may go beyond dollars and chemicals.  MIT recently did a study which shows that the carbon monoxide released may cause 60 premature deaths.

And the background on Chrysler Fiat?

For this, we provide you with a summary drawn from a recent article from USA Today:

U.S. regulators accused Fiat Chrysler Automobiles of violating emissions standards in more than 100,000 diesel vehicles, spawning concerns that the company could become ensnared in a scandal like the one that engulfed Volkswagen Group.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that Fiat Chrysler illegally installed software on about 104,000 pickups and sport-utility vehicles that spewed harmful pollutants while failing to disclose the technology.

The allegations involve the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee and light-duty Ram 1500 pickup trucks with 3-liter diesel engines.

The EPA said the automaker installed eight different undisclosed software programs on the vehicles, collectively causing them to spew harmful nitrous oxide emissions, which can exacerbate respiratory conditions.

So here’s a question.  Is it only these two companies or is there some kind of endemic problem with the industry?  According to this article from Forbes, the US government thinks it may indeed be wider than these two companies:

Federal investigators have confirmed that they’re pondering the same possibility. If a design defect affects two major manufacturers, why not a third or fourth or fifth? Fiat Chrysler may not be the only company that needs to engage in some strategic soul-searching at this particular moment in time.

Finally, the sheer enormity of the Volkswagen case should directly impact Chrysler and the treatment it can expect as the inquiry goes forward. Even compared to the mega-settlements of recent years, VW’s financial cost is staggering. At $4.3 billion in criminal and civil penalties, with another $15.7 billion to settle car owner suits, it’s one of the most expensive scandals ever.

But it’s not just about penalties. “At its core this case is not merely one large scandal but three,” says Pete Anderson, a former DOJ environmental crimes prosecutor who now leads the White Collar/Compliance group at Beveridge & Diamond. “It involved serious violations of the Clean Air Act, multiple lies and cover-ups, and the fraudulent sale of automobiles. The other aggravating facts that give this case such shock value are the calculated means of the deceptions and the significant financial gains that motivated the crimes.”

So let’s come back to projects and project management.  If this is indeed a ‘culture’ thing, in which it becomes permissible to make decisions which are short-term oriented, as I’m sure you’d agree these decisions were, what can we – we who are known as short-term thinkers – what can we do?

Here are some suggestions:

• Have your ‘antennae up’ for these practices and the culture that leads to it
• Remember that as a project manager you are a change agent – by definition.That means you may have to be the one to speak up, to speak truth to power
• Spend considerable time in your decision making in which you project (the verb!) the timeline out 2 years beyond the decision, thinking of the ramifications along the triple bottom line (ecological, social, and economic).
  • Ecological– consider waste, pollution, energy use
  • Economic – consider not only profit and loss, but damage to the brand, fines and penalties (here in the billions of dollars)
  • Social– safety, health and welfare of human beings and groups of human beings (this software allowed the cars to emit poisons which was particularly dangerous to pregnant women and elderly people)

In short, consider that your project is not making a short jaunt to the market, but rather is in it for the long haul – or there may be a significant price to pay.  And pay, and pay.

Photo credit: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/20/d6/14/20d614184b6e8849eb996dec471de7f2.jpg

As a young man, I remember a sci-fi book called “When Worlds Collide”.  Perhaps instead, I remember the movie, because the book was actually penned in 1933, co-written by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer.  The movie came out in 1951 – a little closer to my own timeframe.  (I'm old but not that old).

This post is indeed about colliding worlds and colliding timeframes...  Long-term timeframes, and short-term timeframes.  As project managers we work mainly in the short-term.  I know, I know, sometimes our projects last (or seem to last) forever.  Some projects, like river diversions, and huge corporate mergers and acquisitions, do indeed take years, even decades.  But still, they are short term, relative to centuries.  Yesterday, the Boston Globe published a very interesting editorial about two very important reports requested by Mayor Marty Walsh and pits those two reports against each other, and refers to them being on a collision course.

The article begins:

“TWO RECENTLY RELEASED City of Boston planning reports are on a direct collision course.  The first one, “Climate Ready Boston,” forecasts an alarming future. The coastlines of mid-19th-century and mid-21st-century Boston will be eerily similar delineations, making Back Bay, South Bay, the Seaport, and other areas that were filled during an era of intensive land-making once again the subjects of major urban reimagination. The second report, “Imagine Boston 2030,” identifies five priority growth areas: Suffolk Downs, Sullivan Square, Beacon Yards, 100 Acres/South Boston Waterfront, and Widett Circle. Astonishingly, four of the five growth areas in “Imagine Boston 2030” are shown to be extremely vulnerable to flooding by “Climate Ready Boston.” How and where we decide to grow will have immeasurable economic and social consequences, so why would we intentionally grow in parts of the city that we know to be extremely vulnerable to flooding?”

The covers of the two reports (with appropriate links, for your convenience) are below:

I read through both reports and didn’t actually see the same dichotomy between them.  Perhaps I’m more naïve, but I thought the “Imagine Boston 2030” did speak to the issues of sea level rise and climate change.  But whether or not these two documents are really at odds is not the focus of this post.   That's not really the collision of which I speak.   For us as project managers, these reports raise an interesting and very important point, and in my mind, the need for a new competency for project managers: thinking long term, and pitting short-term project ‘handover” objectives against the benefits realization of the long term (and in this case, the very long term).  Sure, here we are talking about the future of a city, not a project.  But read between the lines – heck – read the actual lines – and you will see that there are scads of projects being launched in and around Boston to accomplish the near-term and far-ranging goals of these city planners, researchers, engineers, politicians, and architects.  That is actually the collision I see: a collision of worlds.  In one world – our world, the project management world - we maximize project efficiency and don’t think too much (or at least, I would insist, enough) about the project in the steady state.  In the other world – the world of these reports -  we think very deeply about what will happen in the next decades or even centuries.

Let’s bring some of the concepts here back down (excuse the expression) to sea level.  What the “Climate Ready Boston” report is – in effect – is a risk management plan.  The risk (mainly threats) is the collection of effects of climate change on Boston, including mainly some pretty tropical/desert type temperatures in greater portions of the year, and even more strikingly, sea level rise (already happening).

The report is nearly 200 pages, so I’d rather see you refer to it for details – but let’s get a taste for the risk management planning going on here.

Focusing on sea level rise (SLR) first, instead of only looking at the environmental and social effects (they investigate those as well) they did sum up economic impact.  It’s often much easier to speak to stakeholders in monetary terms, even if the timeframe is decades away.  In the chart above we can see how the projected sea level rises of 9 inches in the 2040 timeframe, 21 inches in the 2060 timeframe, and 3 feet (1 meter) in the 2070+ timeframe affects the annualized loss of revenue to the city.  This is only one of many charts but it is representative of the way in which they crisply identify the threat.

How about the response?

Overall, the report recommends a 5-part response to create “Climate Resilience”.  They are:

1. Generate multiple benefits
2. Incorporate local involvement in decision-making
3. Create layers of protection
4. Leverage building cycles
5. Design in flexibility and adaptability

Again, I’d suggest reading through the document for the details on each individual part – it’s presented very well.  Below is one example of the “Layers of protection”.  I’d like to draw your attention to the obvious number of projects (and thus project management jobs!) involved with these initiatives.  Even if you are a climate change skeptic, you probably are not skeptical about a high-paying job overseeing one of these initiatives!  So regardless of your view of the science or the politics, paying attention makes sense.  From the relatively simple “elevating of mechanical systems to higher floors of buildings” to the larger “Harbor barrier” and creation of “Small Business Preparedness Programs”, there is a plethora of projects here waiting to be managed.

Below you will see a collection of criteria for prioritizing projects and some of the project types that are proposed within what they call “green infrastructure” – such as green roofs, rain gardens, porous pavement, and bioswales (landscape elements designed to concentrate or remove silt and pollution from surface runoff water).  Again – this represents a set of projects that will need short AND long-term thinking project managers.

Perhaps you cannot prevent the "worlds" from "colliding".  But as a project manager who takes the longer term into account, you may be able to help soften the blow.

I start my first post of 2017 with - of all things - a limerick.  

There was a young man named Pareto

Whose mom and dad christened Vilfredo

When you’re using his chart

You can see with a start

Where to locate the rotten tomato

Indeed, a Pareto chart is the graphic version of the Pareto Principle, sometimes called the 80-20 rule.  Many of my PMP prep students are under the incorrect assumption that Mr. Pareto worked for the Project Management Institute, or the International Association of Ranked Histograms.  However, it’s nothing like that.  Vilfredo Pareto was an interesting man.  Here is a snippet from the International Library of Economics and Liberty:

Born in Paris to Italian exiles, Pareto moved to Italy to complete his education in mathematics and literature. After graduating from the Polytechnic Institute in Turin in 1869, he applied his prodigious mathematical abilities as an engineer for the railroads. Throughout his life Pareto was an active critic of the Italian government’s economic policies. He published pamphlets and articles denouncing protectionism and militarism, which he viewed as the two greatest enemies of liberty. Although he was keenly informed on economic policy and frequently debated it, Pareto did not study economics seriously until he was forty-two. In 1893 he succeeded his mentor, Leon Walras, as chair of economics at the University of Lausanne. His principal publications are Cours d’économie politique (1896–1897), Pareto’s first book, which he wrote at age forty-nine; and Manual of Political Economy (1906).

A self-described pacifist who disdained honors, Pareto was nominated in 1923 to a senate seat in Mussolini’s fledgling government but refused to become a ratified member. He died that year and was buried without fanfare in a small cemetery in Celigny.

So, Pareto’s work was about economics, not quality or project management, or sustainability, per se.  But they can certainly be applied to all three.

From an excellent article on applying the Pareto Principle, here are some great illustrating examples (by the way, remember – it’s a principle, or a rule (of thumb) and not a mathematical formula.  So sometimes it’s 70/30, sometimes it’s 90/10 and sometimes indeed, it’s 80/20.  The principle is the key.

The 80/20 Rule means that in any situation, 20 percent of the inputs or activities are responsible for 80 percent of the outcomes or results. In Pareto's case, it meant 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth. In Juran's initial work applying the 80/20 rule to quality studies, he identified 20 percent of the defects causing 80 percent of the problems. Project Managers know that 20 percent of the work (the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent) consume 80 percent of the time and resources.

Other examples you may have encountered:

    80% of our revenues are generated by 20% of our customers.

    80% of our complaints come from 20% of our customers.

    80% of our quality issues occur with 20% of our products.

Or:

    20% of our contributors provide 80% of our funding.

    20% of our employees are responsible for 80% of sick days.

    20% of my ideas generate 80% of my traffic on my blog.

I like to use a "see saw" graphic to illustrate this.  There is a "more significant" 20% that outweighs the "less significant" 80%.  My drawing attempts to show this below.

To show how this is used in quality (and how it tends to appear on the PMP(R) Exam) below is an example of complaints from people staying at the Hotel Pareto – located fictionally, in the town of Turin, Italy.  Here, we apply the 80/20 rule, allowing us to focus on nominally 20% of the types of complaints (room, cleanliness, and appliances) that make up 80% of the total number of complaints and with a reduced effort, we can get rid of most of the complaints from guests at the Hotel.

I think you can see what this has to do with quality and project management, and if you’ve studied for the PMP Exam, you know the Pareto Principle already, to some extent.  So, what does this have to do with sustainability?

A recent article in Scientific American caught my eye.  It was actually the subtitle that grabbed me:

“A small number of industrial facilities emit an enormous share of toxics and greenhouse gases”

That’s the embodiment of the Pareto Principle, right there in the subtitle.  The first paragraph of the article:

A mere 100 facilities, out of 20,000, produced one third of U.S. industry's toxic air pollution in 2014. Another 100 released one third of industry's greenhouse gas emissions, among 7,000 installations that discharge the gas. And according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity that created the rankings, 22 “super-polluter” sites appeared on both lists (noted below). Many are coal-fired power plants, and some rank high because they are very large. This group is responsible for a significant chunk of U.S. industrial air pollution.

You can look at the figure below to see where these “Super-Emitter” facilities are located (in the US).  After all, this is Scientific American.  I’m sure that similar Pareto analyses have been done (or at least could be done) in China, Europe, India, Africa, Oceana and elsewhere.  Here, the role of "complaints" or "rotten tomato" is played by the super polluter.

So – what’s the point? The point, just as in applying Pareto to project problem root causes, is that we can look at these facilities first as the most effective way to reduce emissions.  As the article says,

The good news is that cleaning up the sites could make a big dent in toxic compounds that are implicated in respiratory illnesses and in the country's contribution to climate change. The researchers say that existing regulations are sufficient, but weak enforcement must improve.

Full article from Scientific American:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-top-22-air-polluters-revealed/

Note: if you want a more thorough listing of the facilities and the details on the quantities of emissions, you can go to this site: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/09/29/20248/america-s-super-polluters

In this post, I’d like to sum up 2016 (in terms of project management and sustainability) by referring to this article from Harvard Business Review: “Sustainable Business Stories That Shaped 2016”.

2015 was the warmest year on record and 2016 – despite some arctic weather at the tail end of the year in North America – is still poised to break that record.

Climate change is real.  However, even if you are a skeptic about the science, the effects on business and countries and companies and projects – especially projects – are certifiably real – with numbers.  With results.  With data you can see, touch, and feel.

We provide the article as a source of dozens of stories that relate ‘sustainable business’ to project management – your discipline.  Read the article for the key stories and the overall flow.  But here are a few hand-picked stories that may affect you as a PM in your work, even if you don’t work in the area of environmental science or sustainability:

A major, far-reaching deal was made this year in the reduction in HFCs in refrigerants.  If you are working on projects that involve refrigerants, this will likely affect your work.  And even if not directly, I bet you have, at one time or another, used an air conditioner or a refrigerator.  So...

• http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/world/africa/kigali-deal-hfc-air-conditioners.html?_r=0

Do you work in, or with China?How about the fact that China will add 20 gigawatts of wind power and 15 gigawatts of solar power in 2016?

• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-30/china-plans-to-raise-wind-solar-power-capacity-by-21-in-2016

Have you heard of Microsoft?They’re doubling their sourcing of wind power for their data centers

• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/microsoft-signs-biggest-wind-power-deal-for-wyoming-data-center

Speaking of Microsoft, and adding Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, and Michael Bloomberg and others, as investors, Bill Gates announced a $1B investment in clean energy innovation via a new entity called Breakthrough Energy Ventures

• http://fortune.com/2016/12/11/bill-gates-john-doerr-venture-fund/

In an endorsement of long-term thinking (something we are trying ever so hard to push for in our project management community), here the world’s biggest investor (Larry Fink of BlackRock with over $4.6 trillion of investments) writing to CEOs everywhere (and by extension, the PMOs of those organizations) encouraging them to scrap short-term thinking:

• http://www.businessinsider.com/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-letter-to-sp-500-ceos-2016-2

Are you in IT, so you’re thinking that – since you are not in logging or drilling for oil, you have no connection to efforts on sustainable business?  Think again: you work with data, data is driven by energy, and these companies have realized that sustainability figures in very much to their operations – initiating project after project to reduce consumption:

• http://www.smartenergydecisions.com/blog/2016/06/28/with-help-from-amazon-google-microsoft-data-center-energy-use-levels-after-years-of-rapid-growth

Are you of the belief that the efforts to ‘be more sustainable’ are necessarily costly?Not so.Read about 35 counties and 33 US States which have decoupled GDP growth and carbon emissions.

• http://www.wri.org/blog/2016/04/roads-decoupling-21-countries-are-reducing-carbon-emissions-while-growing-gdp

Again, these are just a few of the dozens of stories in the HBR article which wraps up 2016.  Really, we suggest you read through it yourself.

What’s brewing for 2017?  Do you think that the election of Donald Trump means an end to sustainability?  No.  Not so.  See this additional article from HBR (November 2016), from which we quote:

In short, Trump cannot stop all momentum on the clean economy. The economics are too good. The cost to build and produce solar and wind power, for example, has dropped 60%–80% since 2010, making it cheaper than grid electricity in most states. And, most critical, this economic reality holds even without subsidies. Of course, government aid is helping accelerate the transition, but given the economic boost that clean energy provides to many states, support for wind and solar looks relatively safe in Congress. GOP Senator Chuck Grassley said that if Trump tries to eliminate the wind tax credit, the president-elect will “do it over my dead body.”

And how about the American people?  In particular, how do millennials – who make up a huge and growing portion of the population – feel about this?  By 2020 (the next election year) they will make up 50% of the workforce.  They will be your project team members, your project management directors, your SMEs, your decision makers - in your projects, and in the voting booth.  And they are watching.  From the article:

A global survey of these 20- and 30-somethings earlier this year showed that 87% believe “the success of a business should be measured in terms of more than just its financial performance.” A Morgan Stanley survey confirmed that Millennials, and particularly those who are active investors, are three times as likely to seek employment with a company that cares about social and environmental issues. The jury is still out on whether this group will shop differently as it gets richer and deeper into adulthood, but every company I work with is feeling pressure from younger workers. In their role as employees, Millennials clearly want sustainability.

So we remain hopeful and confident that sustainability in business – and thus in projects – will continue to gain momentum.

Happy Holidays and the best of the New Year to you and yours from People, Planet, Profits & Projects!  Thanks for your readership and support.

This is going to be one of the strangest combinations of topics you’ve ever seen in a post about project management.  I think it will be worth it.  Read on.

It combines two seemingly unrelated things to convey the idea that you – as a PM – should be exercising your long-term thinking.

We start with a baseball bat donut.  A what?  Well, first of all, whether you’re from the US, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands – any of the countries that tend play or at least enjoy the sport of baseball (or honkbal if you are Dutch), you know that the batter stands in and tries to hit a thrown ball from a pitcher.  Major league pitchers throw the ball at speeds up to 100 miles per hour (about 161 Km/hour).  So if you are a batter who wants to practice for those high-speed pitches, you swing a bat which is a little heavier.  How do you make a bat heavier?  You slip a weight – in the shape of a donut – on the barrel of the bat (see photo) and take practice swings, to help your muscle ‘memory’ get used to the heavier bat, so when you take OFF the weight, you are swinging with more speed.

From Wikipedia: A baseball doughnut is a weighted ring that fits over the end of a baseball bat, used for warming up during a baseball game. A doughnut is thought to help increase bat speed. Doughnuts can weigh as little as 4 oz. and as much as 28 oz. Players feel baseball doughnuts increase bat velocity because after warming up with a baseball doughnut then decreasing the weight after taking the doughnut off, the swing feels faster.  The heavier load of the weighted bat stimulates the neural system and increases muscle activation during lighter bat swings. Researchers have found that muscle contractions are stronger after reaching near maximal loads. One research study also found that additional weight added to the bat may strengthen the muscles of the forearms and wrists.  

The doughnut was created by former New York Yankees catcher Elston Howard. Interestingly, Howard, in 1955, was the first African-American player on the Yankees' roster, but later played on the Boston Red Sox.

So keep the baseball donut in mind as you read the rest of this post.  Stay with me now.

I’ve been talking for a long time about long-term thinking in projects.  At EarthPM, we have published two books on the topic.  What we mean about long-term thinking is thinking through – that is past the end of your project to that time when the project’s outcome is in its ‘steady state’.  So if your project is a bridge, you are thinking about the maintenance of the bridge, the traffic going over the bridge, the need to paint it every so often.  If your project is a piece of software that operates machinery you are thinking not only about whether or not the software “works” once, but whether or not it operates the machinery efficiently in terms of power usage.

That takes mental ‘muscle’ for a PM.  We are trained to think about our project's outcome – and we are motivated to move on to our next project.  We are “get ‘r done” people.  And yet, I am urging you to think long-term.  Not always a pleasant thing to do for PMs.  Maybe what we need is a donut.  No, not the fattening kind – the baseball kind.  Remember, we just talked about this a few moments ago.  Come on, stay with me!

So here it comes – your long-term-thinking baseball donut.

If you are having trouble extending your thinking in terms of years, slip on this mental baseball donut – try thinking in terms of eons – then years become elementary.  In this recent article from “Cosmos & Culture”, in turn from the USA’s NPR (National Public Radio), author David Grinspoon (@drfunkyspoon) discusses the various eons that the Earth has gone through – Hadean, Archean, Proterzoic, and what we’re in now – Phanerzoic.  So next time someone asks you what time it is, just say, “oh, about quarter past the Phanerzoic”.  It’ll make you a hit at the holiday party.  Well, I suppose that depends on what sort of party you're attending...

 From the article:

From a systems perspective, the early stages of this transition are highly unstable because global influence precedes global control. Such a system is characterized by unstable positive feedbacks which threaten catastrophe. Hence the dangers of our current "Anthropocene dilemma": We have global influence without global self-control. However, global technological influence clearly contains both peril and promise. Conscious awareness and control can also be sources of stabilizing negative feedback. This merely requires recognizing a problem and acting to fix it.

We've done this with our, so far, successful efforts to repair the ozone layer. There are pathways by which this stabilizing cognitive phenomenon could become a very long-lived and even permanent part of the Earth system. This would require that we reach a stage where we have a deep understanding of nature and an ability to forestall natural disasters, as well as the deep self-understanding necessary to forestall self-imposed disasters. In other words, it will require both technical and spiritual progress.

How does this affect the way we view our future? It reframes our task. And it puts our immediate challenges over the next century, stabilizing population and devising an energy system that can provide for the needs of this population without wrecking the natural systems upon which we depend, against the backdrop of a much longer-term challenge. Once we get over the relatively short-term, century-scale threat of destabilizing fossil-fuel induced climate change, we need to learn how to become a long-term stabilizing factor on the planet. This will include: over the next several hundred to thousand years, asteroid and comet defense; over the next several tens of thousands of years, learning how to prevent ice ages and natural episodes of dangerous global warming; over several billions of years, compensating for the warming sun and preventing the inevitable runaway global warming that will otherwise result from solar evolution.

See what I did there?  Grinspoon just called ‘getting over climate change’ - something we think about as a huge, huge, and important problem, a ‘relatively short-term, century-scale threat’.  Using that measure (think baseball donut) of centuries as trivial ticks of a clock, a few years is like an instant… a blip.  When he says “long-term” – he is serious.  Given this definition – that is, after swinging the bat with Grinspoon’s Donut (maybe we should jointly trademark that!), it should be  really easy to think about our project’s product, say, 10 years from now.  Right?

There’s a lot to the article so I’d like to insist that you take an even smaller instant to read it, and note that the author (Grinspoon, not me) has a new book out called, “Earth In Human Hands – Shaping Our Planet’s Future”.  Just grab a donut, and read the article!