Canoyster
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Our admittedly strange title this week comes from the smooshing together of two other words: Canary Oyster Why those two animals? We stumbled on an interesting article from the Boston Globe about the increasing acid levels in the ocean and their effects on the oyster population in Maine. The piece that got our attention was this one: “Hatcheries are the canary in the coal mine for the shellfish industry,” said Bill Mook, oyster hatchery owner. “Because of our level of control, we can see problems that others might not — and we were seeing really big problems.” Let's make a project management connection here right away, because this story is generally about science and ocean acidity but we want our PM audience to see that there are indeed several important 'learning threads' here. The immediate connection is that of risk triggers. As a PM we need to know when a threat to project objectives is happening or is about to happen. Ideally, we prevent the threat from even being triggered - but the next best thing is to catch it as it is about to happen or as it has happened and before the major impact has taken place. Example: we think there may be a threat of a labor action which wold affect construction of our bridge. Instead of waiting for the union to strike, we watch the negotiations to see how they are going - we keep tuned to the news - so we know in advance if we need to apply a mitigation, transfer, or other risk treatment. In this case, the issue is some pretty astounding numbers, and evidence, which should serve as a major trigger for mitigation of what appears to be a looming disaster for the oyster (and generally shellfish and other fishing) industry. Listen to some of these facts from the article:
Those are some pretty big 'canaries'. What threat do they embody? What impact on the "portfolio" of ocean life and the fishing industry do they represent? Check this out:
How about risk response? It may have to come in the form of further research and legislation. For example in Massachusetts:
But risk and threat is not the whole story here, and not the only 'thread' binding this example of the 'Planet' part of our blog's title, People, Planet, Proftits & Projects. The other (related) part is the long-term view. As PMs we know about units and how to get order-of-magnitude estimates, right? Read this paragraph and note the relative timeframes being mentioned (it also shows up earlier in the post): "The oceans are becoming acidic at a rate 100 times faster than at any time in the past 55 million years, he said. Changes that previously took more than 10,000 years, he said, are now occurring over a period of several decades." The relative times here are 10,000 years and several decades. "Several decades" is a timeframe beyond most of our projects, so our eyes may glaze over when we hear such long, drawn-out periods. But compare and contrast several decades (let's say 50 years for sake of argument) with 10,000 years. That relative relationship is one half of one percent. So even though it seems like a long time for us PMs, it's a blip on a bump on a mountain range of time. Our point? If you'll allow us a shellfish metaphor, we need to come out of our shells a bit, and extend our thinking - in time, in focus, in impact assessment, in risk assessment - in a whole sea of aspects that we might not have had to do before. We have to think through to the impact of the operation of our project's product in its steady state. These are the sorts of impacts that have led (for example) to ocean acidification. I know - I know... we have enough constraints already. But unless you want your project to be one that contributes to the problems you see being triggered above, problems that come back and actuall affect your own industry monetarily as well as ecologically, it makes sense and is a professional responsibility to do so. If not for yourself, do it for the canoysters! |
Rare Medium
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Tantalum. Samarium. Gadolinium. Lanthanum. Neodymium. Erbium. Europium. Neverheardovum? At least, we bet that many of you have never head of them. And yet, you probably have some of these “rare earth” metals in your pocket, pocketbook, and definitely your home. Smartphones, rechargeable batteries, gaming devices, fiber optics, headsets… they all rely on the properties of these metals. I couldn’t be typing this, and you couldn’t be reading it (at least these days) without these rare earth metals. It's part of all of our media - and thus the title of this blog post. As written up in this article from 1-March-2015 Sunday Boston Globe, and featured in a book called, “RARE: The High-Stakes Race To Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth” by Keith Veronese, the story turns out to be one regarding sustainability. As the article says, While there’s no reliable way to gauge how much of this stuff we have left, we can at least be sure of one thing: Supplies of the elements that drive our iPads, missile systems, and Xboxes are going to run out. “It’s not going to be possible,” Veronese says, “to keep the game going forever.” From where are these metals extracted? The richest location is China’s Bayan Obo Mining District. China’s market share for rare earth metals is 97%. This is a potentially scary scenario, since China could decide to suddenly withhold these metals for its own purposes. Why do we discuss this in a project management blog post? Two reasons, really. First: it reinforces our idea about sustainability being not only about saving species and renewable energy. It’s about anything that is related to the long-lastingness of enterprise. And second? Well for that we need to talk about where a shortage of these minerals is leading us: outer space. There may be mining on the moon in our lifetimes and it won’t likely stop there. Asteroids are likely to be fertile sources of these metals. Talk about a project – there’s a project! Create a mining operation on an asteroid. So it’s the rarity and potential unavailability of these key ingredients to technology that may be a driver for your next project – or perhaps the beginnings of your son’s or daughter’s career in project management! |
Ambition
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As project managers, we don’t hear the word “Ambition” a lot. We often, however, hear these words: Target, Goal, Objective, Target, and Plan. Above you’ll see a dictionary definition of this word, ambition, and what you’ll see is actually quite revealing. Even though we don’t use the word “ambition” a lot, we use the words that are given in the DEFINITION of the word. To put it in language that even project managers would understand (perhaps ONLY PMs would understand), it’s almost as if we are focused on small work packages and missing the rolled-up workstream deliverable. We do have ambition to make our projects succeed. But are they really successful if they aren’t aligned with the ambition of the senior leaders of the enterprise? Andrew Winston, who was one of the authors that first inspired us to write Green Project Management, recently blogged on this subject – the subject of ambition. It falls right into our ‘preaching’ that project managers need to be sure that the deliverables of their projects and their project work in general, is connected to goals and objectives (mission, vision, values – maybe even use the word ambitions) of the senior management. Now, it appears that his new book, The Big Pivot… has a similar message as our upcoming book, tentatively titled, “Sustainability in Projects, Programs, and Portfolios”. So it’s tempting to use this blog post to begin introducing our book. But suffice it to say that it has the same ambition as Winston’s book. And, since this is a blog post and not a chapter of our book, we felt it’s better to point you to some of what Winston is saying so that you can have an improved context for what we’ve written – although our book will be aimed more at the program and portfolio manager. Check out this blog post from Winston regarding “ambitious goals” https://hbr.org/2015/02/the-ambitious-business-goals-aiming-to-change-the-world If you have just a few more minutes, and/or if you’re more of a video person, you should watch this recent TED talk by Winston.
And finally, if you want to benchmark your enterprise against more than 4,000 others, he has put together a tremendous resource here which has captured these ambitious goals in a readily-searched database. Enjoy, and go get ambitious! |
$100B worth of thread
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This is a post about golden thread. And this time, when we say golden, we mean a lot of gold.
We like to point out that sustainability is not only in the domain of wind farms, biofuel factories, and electric vehicles. Companies who deal in insurance, finance, telecom have all been featured in our hundreds of blog posts.
Citi itself has set aggressive goals for the ecological part of its triple bottom line: Citi has also set a 2050 GHG emissions reduction goal of 80%. Citi is going for LEED Platinum certification for its NYC company headquarters – this being included in its target to have 33% target of its real estate portfolio to be LEED certified. So what’s the point? The point is that Citi has integrated sustainability thinking into its portfolio, into its bottom line. It has seen the benefit of thinking long-term, and it is putting its money behind those efforts. The “golden thread” between its mission, vision, and values, and its operations, seems to be intact and strong. Here is Citi’s statement of Global Citizenship: Citizenship at Citi means recognizing the impact we have on the world and ensuring our business is enabling progress in the communities we serve. We focus our efforts on the promotion of financial inclusion and economic progress and the advancement of environmental sustainability. Our people are the key to these successful efforts, and we invest in recruiting and maintaining a diverse and talented workforce. Together we are working towards that simple yet powerful goal: enabling people to make progress in their lives, businesses and communities. With the announced investments, Citi is showing that these are not empty words. Is Citi perfect? Of course not. Have they set a benchmark for connecting their “ideation” to their “operations” as we’ve so often touted? Yes. We suggest that you look up your own company’s ideation (mission, vision, value statements) and see how they connect to your operations. It’s a worthwhile investment of your time. |
Navy-funded Robot Army
Categories:
Government
Categories: Government
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Okay, total transparency here. This post is mainly here because of the amazingly cool title and a chance to post a picture of a robot army. Mainly, but not only. We've been reading about (thanks to NPR) how a US Navy-funded project has begun to uncover some of the science of Arctic weather. The article features comments from Martin Jeffries, an Arctic researcher with the Office for Naval Research, which paid for the development of the strange device. "The Arctic essentially has been a closed ocean [to surface ships] because of the ice cover, which did not retreat so much in the summer," says Jefferies. But climate change is causing the Arctic Ocean to thaw. In the summer of 2007 a lot of the ice covering the ocean melted; and in the summer of 2012, even more ice disappeared. The Navy is paying researchers to develop gliders and other gizmos, and stick them in and near the ice, because it needs to figure out how quickly the thaw is coming. The US Navy, after all, is about protection of the USA from ocean-bound threats, and thus changes to the ocean mean changes to strategy. The military is interested in fact – and science – to make decisions. Relying on anything else is not only dangerous; it is counter to the Navy’s mission. You can actually read about the Navy’s strategy for the Arctic here, in a document succinctly titled, “U.S. Navy Arctic Roadmap 2014 - 2030: American National Interests, Evolving Arctic Region Security Environment, Navy Roles and Missions, Alaska, Climate Change and Loss of Arctic Sea Ice": http://www.navy.mil/docs/USN_arctic_roadmap.pdf It opens with a letter from Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, with these words: The U.S. Navy recognizes that the opening of the Arctic Ocean has important national security implications as well as significant impacts on the U.S. Navy's required future capabilities. The national security interests of the United States, an Arctic nation through the state of Alaska, extend into the entire Arctic Region. The United States has a history of maritime homeland security and homeland defense concerns in the Arctic Region along with a longstanding North American security partnership with Canada. The U.S. Navy, with its long track record of Arctic Ocean operations and exploration, is planning today to address future Arctic Region security concerns.
Here are a couple of other links with good information about the Seaglider: http://www.apl.washington.edu/projects/seaglider/animation_1_640x480.html
http://www.apl.washington.edu/project/project.php?id=miz
So what about the PM and Sustainability connection? Our interest in this is from the perspective of the project, the types of stakeholders and their interaction, and its deliverable. Here you have an example of a green-by-definition project. The purpose of the study being undertaken by the University of Washington on behalf of the Office of Naval Research. So we have a state university, a Navy department collaborating on a project which, as an outcome, is all about taking data, advancing it to information and reports (see the PMBOK® Guide for this theme DataàInformationàReports) which can elevate the Navy’s knowledge and wisdom about operating in Arctic waters. It’s all good. And as we said above, it’s a good example of the ‘golden thread’ connecting Mission to Operations, as illustrated by the Stanford Execution Framework. It’s the same ‘golden thread’ that we convert into the Sustainability Wheel™ which is the foundational element in our upcoming book, Sustainability in Projects, Programs, and Portfollios. So, what do the results say? What can a "Seaglider" tell us? At the moment it looks like it (ice melt) is happening faster than expected, according to Craig Lee, a University of Washington researcher who led the Arctic study the Navy sponsored. Lee says scientists are still going through the data from last summer's study, but early indications are that warming Arctic waters are absorbing more sunlight and melting more ice than in past summers. "There's a positive feedback that happens," Lee says. Whatever you believe about climate change and sustainability, you can see from this example that project, program, and portfolio managers can learn from the idea that an enterprise’s mission and its connection to what it actually does day-to-day, via projects, programs and portfolios, is a fundamental piece of learning. |
