People, Planet, Profits & Projects

As we send 2011 off into the sunset and wish it good bye (or good riddance), we at EarthPM thought this would be a good time to set resolutions for 2012. 

But first...

..before doing something so angelic...

...we thought we'd play devil's advocate.  Below are some of the objections we hear to planning in sustainability to your projects.   All are reall, and all actually have some virtue (it's the ying and yang of PM, we suppose).  Early in 2012 we will play angel's advocate and explain why these objections to resolutions oughtn't, shouldn't, and mightn't make a (negative) difference to you, your projects, planet, people, and profits.

So here they are, people, in ascending order to the NUMBER 1 reason why we need not plan sustainability into our projects.

(insert drumroll here)

5.  My project has its own needs and must not be hampered by corporate or other enterprise 'weights'.  I have enough to worry about with my project alone.

4.  I don't want to worry about how my project's product/service will be used in the long term - what a bother!  I am a PM – my projects have defined beginnings and endings, and I work in the here and now.

3. Since my project only runs for a short time, I don't need to run 'the project itself' efficiently.  I just need to get it done.  The operations people can worry about the steady-state.

2. Any money or effort spent to 'green up' my project is money NOT spent on my REAL project.  We’re all splitting one pie, so there is only so much to go around.

1. They've begun to find planets with similar characteristics to Earth.  So, with regards to the earth and "using it up" -  it's replaceable! So, what, me worry?

Have a very pleasant, safe, and fun New Year's and best of wishes to you, your people, projects, profits, and planets in 2012!

Two strongly-related news stories caught our attention today.

One (from Politico.com) describes the closing of COP17, the UN Climate Conference which completed last week in Durban, South Africa.

The other, (from today's Boston Globe) using that as an opening, is a story about how technology is really the answer and that (as Gomer Pyle used to say: "surprise, surprise, surprise") the diplomats and governments are just not that good at solving problems.

Wherever you stand on climate change (and we're interested to hear just where that is), we hope you'll agree that the field of green technology holds promise for us - as project managers.  Indeed, to quote Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, the "efforts to develop these new technologies need to accelerate to full throttle". 

That means development projects:

• research
• design/innovation
• testing
• trials

That means deployment projects:

• design/implementation
• construction
• training
• conversion

In other words, jobs for us as PMs.

So - sharpen your tools.  Build your 'green vocabulary' and get out there and do what the diplomats and policy makers continue to NOT do, and that's to make a difference.

One way to do that is to check out the job opportunites here on GreenBiz.  Note how many of them are driven by new projects.  That's all we're sayin'.

In this somewhat toungue-in-cheek, somewhat serious post, we address the sustainability role of the project manager by illustrating this with a football statdium.

In particular, we want to draw your attention to the Dallas Cowboys.  After all, this is Thanksgiving season in the US, a holiday celebrated here with a family meal, acknowledging what we're thankful for, and watching lots of football.  In particular, this Thanksgiving, the Dallas Cowboys played the Miami Dolphins (the Cowboys won by one point). In fact, Dallas plays every Thanksgiving in their beautiful new stadium, a finalist in the 2010 PMI Project of the Year Award.

The stadium deserved its Finalist position - the project team did a great job and this post is not meant to be any sort of direct attack on that project.  However we will take a couple of good-natured pokes at it based on some news stories.

First: some context.  It's our assertion that project managers are responsible not only for the execution of the project and its end deliverable, but the handoff of that project to the steady-state.  And we think project managers should have more of a role in assuring that the steady-state, or the "sustained" operation, is successful for the ongoing users of the project's product.

In the case of this stadium, two flaws have shown themselves in terms of steady-state operation.

1. The gigantic TV monitor has actually interfered with play.  See this story. See this story.

2. Premium seating for high-paying patrons has ended up in obstructed views. See this story.

So what could the project manager and team have done?  Did they fully take into account the steady-state operation of the stadium?  Is it really their responsibility?

We're just asking the questions.  We're just raising awareness about this.  Perhaps this is example is extreme, but we want this conversation to take place.  We want this post to be a way to point out that sustainability often has nothing to do with ecology but rather with the general "steady-state".

Recently we've done a lot of thinking about how sustainbility is a driver of innovation.  Inspired by the words of Marvin Odom, President of Shell Oil, who has just come right out and said that sustainability "may now be the number one driver of innovation projects at Shell", we've been seeing this sentiment shared by leaders of enterprises around the world, and echoed by PMO leaders as well.

This thinking was reinforced in an odd way via two stories - one of which crossed our desk just this morning.

In this Boston Globe story, and again in this story from Mass High Tech, we learn about the Endicott House, a 1934 mansion in suburban Boston which has been converted into a guest house and conference center.

At the Endicott House, MIT has started to use two forms of electrolyzed water (hypocholorous acid and sodium hydroxide) instead of Windex, Ajax, and Spic 'n Span.  These cleaners are considered harmful in large doses and are obviously less sustainabile than what is basically ... water.

From a project standpoint, this means that the facility installs a system which is capable of separating salt water into the electrolyzed products and store it in two 55-gallan tanks, from which employees refil their spray bottles.

And they can do this withut fear of spills or burns.

A company based in Massachusetts calle Lynfield Green Technologies (LGT) has already sold 10 such systems, installing them in schools and companies that use these solutions to clean cafeterias and even semi-trailers.

So its about projects.

It's about economic sustainability.

It's about lowering toxicity and ecological sustainability.

It's about safer working conditions (social sustainability).

It's about cost of greenality.

Listen to Patrick Lucci, the co-founder of LGT: "The operating costs for using chemical cleaners or disinfectants is 20 to 25 cents per room per day, but you can virtually eliminate those costs by purchasing a $15,000 device and your carbon footprint gets smaller".

You can do the math, there is a finite payback period here.  In the case of the Endicott Center, they belive it will be only a year or two.  That's without taking into account the other "Cost of poor greenality" aspects which can be figured in as well in terms of health and well-being of employees, disposal costs for chemicals and packaging.  You can also mix in the attributes of "good corporate citizen", "greening up your enterprise", and "higher employee morale".

Check out the stories - if you're into chemistry you may find the science interesting.

No matter what - we insist that sustainability is not only a source of innovation, it's a source of PROJECTS, and thus, worth learning about.

And - coming back around to our opening - it's more evidence that sustainability is more and more an "instigator" for innovation.

Sustainability.  It’s a term that’s being used a lot these days.  It’s being used so much, in fact, that we’re afraid it’s losing its meaning.

One of the definitions that we’ve heard (and we like!) comes from a book called Getting Green Done.  In it, author Auden Schendler says that sustainability can be explained best by working as if you will be “staying in business forever”.

This is very difficult concept for us project managers because we are trained to understand (as we should) that a project has a definitive beginning and end.

So when a story like this one from NPR comes out, describing the decades-old problem of poisoned places – locales ruined for the very long term by industrial toxins - we can empathize, perhaps, but from a PM perspective we would tend to glaze over, since we are “only project managers” and are not focused on the steady-state operation of facilities or the long-term impacts of processes.

But maybe we should be.

And yes, of course we should be focused on the long term for the altruistic reasons that appeal to our sense of ethics, and if we have a lick of sense, because the planet is indeed our home and we must realize that we shouldn’t fill our own home with guck and goo and poison. 

But it goes beyond that.  And it goes beyond politics, and it goes beyond wherever you stand on climate change.

We, as a discipline, have to recognize that focusing on the steady-state can also greatly improve how our projects fit into the enterprise and meet enterprise goals.  More and more companies have very strong environmental statements in their mission and value statements.  Ray Anderson built Interface/FLOR into a tremendously successful example of this marriage of long-term thinking and mind-blowing profitability.

Marvin Odom. President of Shell, talks about sustainability being the top driver for innovation at his company.

And if you read this series of stories from NPR about Poisoned Places you will see what we learn about in the PMBOK® Guide (and rooted in Philip Crosby’s original writings) as “the cost of poor quality”, in the form of lawsuits, closed factories, ill-will, and mounting losses.  In this case, we would call it the “cost of poor greenality”.

As project managers we stand at the intersection of strategy and operations.  This means we have to be connected to both the lofty goals of our leaders - which are increasingly focused on sustainability - and the ongoing goals of our cousins in operations, who are "trying to be in business forever".  Why then should we end up being the ones who break the chain?  We should be a vital connection point, right?  Not a roadblock.

Can you do anything about this?

Funny you should ask.  Yes you can.  We’ve started a petition to drive more attention to the issue of sustainability thinking in project management.  It simply asks the PMI to consider already-submitted proposals about integrating sustainability thinking into the PMBOK® 5^th edition and the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Sign our petition by clicking HERE right now.

Thanks.