People, Planet, Profits & Projects

Sustainability in project management it is not about how to manage projects, but how to be.  This has been and always will be our message.   We never wanted to see a separate PMBOK® Knowledge Area called Project Sustainability Management.   Sustainability must be interwoven, intertwined with project management in a way that it cannot be separated out, a piece to be negotiated or used as a tradeoff.  The only way to do that, to make sustainability real in projects, is for the project manager to be.  “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”  Mahatma Gandhi 

It is a leap of faith.  It requires discipline, but discipline is the project manager’s middle name, after all.  We use the discipline of project management to do our jobs every day, don’t we?  We don’t fly by the seat of our pants.  We don’t trust luck and intuition to bring project in on budget, on time, and within stakeholder’s expectation. 

So how do you be when we’re so busy now? And, how do you be unless you know?  “Why should I care about sustainability?  I’m a project manager and my job, which is hard enough, is to deliver the project on time, on budget and meet my stakeholder’s expectation.  I don’t think they care about sustainability, why should I?”  Oh, have we heard this before.  It is interesting.  Among project managers there are pockets of resistance to sustainability.  It just may be a case of not knowing.  I’m not saying that it is pervasive, but more localized.  For instance, we have had over 100 people attend one of our webinars.  I can’t say that kind of attendance happens regularly, but we always have good attendance, whether it is a webinar, seminar or course.  It may be that we’ve target the audience that already buys into the intersection of PM and sustainability (EarthPM) because we don’t receive a lot of pushback.  So for those who may not have bought into it yet, in the words of Sergeant Joe Friday, “All we want are the facts.”   Let’s not just be, let’s be the leader and the change agent for sustainability, the connection between sustainability and project management.  Why, because it is the right thing to do and it is substantiated by the facts.

Whoa, facts?  Yes, facts.  Surprisingly enough, the answer to “If my stakeholders don’t care about sustainability, why should I?” has its foundation in fact.  You may have made the assumption that your stakeholder is only interested in having the project delivered on-time, on budget and within the specifications agreed to in the beginning of the project.  Sounds about right, so what am I missing?  What you are missing is the fact that sustainability may be very important to this stakeholder and even though the project is delivered on-time, in budget and in spec, the stakeholder is not satisfied.  We all know that specs aren’t perfect.  And there is a difference between a customer who reluctantly agrees to the end product and one whose expectations have been met or even exceeded.  Wouldn’t you rather have the latter than the former?

So where are these facts?  A little investigation can go a long way.  Let’s say you are managing a project and the stakeholder is Rockline Industries.  What does Rockline Industries do?  They manufacture a lot of the products that we buy from retailers, like baby wipes, antibacterial wipes and household cleaning items, sold under the retailers own brand.  You might assume that they are not interested in or don’t necessarily care about sustainability.  Did you check?  (Have you checked in on your stakeholders?)  That’s where the facts come in.  Looking at Rockline Industries’ website, the first clue to their caring about sustainability is that one of the tabs is “Environmental Sustainability.”  If you click on that tab, under the logo you see “Changing Our Environmental Footprint™”  There is further information on “Sustainability Aspirations”,  a sustainability report for 2012, and their “Rockline-Zero Landfill” effort.   The sustainability report for 2012 is particularly impressive.  These are the facts, so before you say “If my stakeholders don’t care about sustainability, why should I?” I challenge you to check the facts in your organization or customer.  Make sure you connect your project’s sustainability with the organization’s (customer’s) sustainability efforts.   It is a way to be.  

My wife and I just watched Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.  I know, we are behind the curve.  But with a busy life and an early start to our days, it causes a backlog of movies to see.  Because I am a fly fisherman, the movie held a particular appeal to me, and as those of you who saw the movie know it wasn’t about the fish.  It was about sustainability and a project.  Most of us as project managers have experiences a project that seemed impossible.  This project was particularly difficult, and as one of the main characters, Dr. Jones, puts it, “conditions in the Yemen make this project fundamentally unfeasible.”   Of course the movie is somewhat predictable, but there were some moments that I could resonate with.

First, a little bit about fly fishing and its appeal for me.  I am a process guy.  Whether or not fly fishing helps me to understand project management better, or the discipline of project management makes me understand fly fishing better, it is a “chicken and egg” thing.  But like projects, the end product is important, but the journey is just as important.  For me, it’s not about the fish.  It is about sustainability.  Take trout fishing, for instance.  Trout need clean, clear, cold water to survive.  And, they need to survive.  What I mean by that is that they are a limited resource.  That is why there are both “catch and release” areas and “catch and kill” areas.  Typically, catch and kill areas are places where the water will warm to a point where trout will not survive.  They are areas that allow local fishermen to partake in the sport (get their value from their fishing licenses) early in the spring.  Hatchery raised trout are stocked into streams to allow fishermen access to the sport.

My favorite pursuit is for wild or native trout, and here is where sustainability is most important.  Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries (MDIF) defines wild trout fishery as “a body of waterthat has not been directly stocked with brook trout in the previous 25 years.”  MDIF defines a native trout fishery trout as “abody of water that has no record of being directly stocked, or indirectly stocked as a result of a stocking event in a connecting water.”  These fish, both wild and native, are self-sustaining.  They breed in the wild.  They need protection.  Some waters are fly fishing, artificial (no bait), and/or catch and release fisheries.  However, there are other aspects of sustainability that come into play.  It is not just the trout that need to be protected, that is not enough.  The areas where the fishery is located need to be protected and those protections garner increased benefits.  Protecting water supplies by limiting development and regulating land use also helps an areas biodiversity.  Regulating water usage so that streams are not dewatered and adequate water flow is maintained keeps fish spawning areas open and helps maintain water supplies for the human populations downstream, and the effects go on and on.

Keeping with the analogy of downstream, sustainability has “downstream effects.”  Back to the movie; Sheikh Mohammad was trying to irrigate the desert by building a dam.  To paraphrase the Sheikh, the downstream effects would “green” the desert and provide sustainable agricultural for present generations and future generations.  The salmon are a symbol of that effort, doing the impossible, bringing cold water fishery (and agriculture) to an area that would seem impossible to do.  Another and perhaps more subtle sustainability aspect, was the fact that no matter how much it was bred out of the salmon (farm raised) somewhere in the DNA they were imprinted to swim upstream to spawn.  Again, it is a movie, and movies have a tendency to play fast and loose with facts, and that is an interesting premise that seems to be believable.  The Salmon Fishing in the Yemen project was definitely a Green by Definition, using the definition in our book.  It was attempting to “water” the desert, provide a viable coldwater fishery and provide a sustainable future for the human inhabitants.

But for me, the “aha” moment of the movie came at the very end, *SPOILER ALERT* after the attempt to destroy the fishery.  My “aha” moment came when the project team discovered that some salmon survived the onslaught of the dam being opened.  It was then that the impossible seemed even more possible.  At that point Dr. Jones says “I’ll start again.  I’ll do it on my own, if I have to.  I’ll start small, a few fish to begin with, and involved the local community more so that it is their project, not ours.  That’s the way it will be protected.” So, lessons learned, right? 

Sustainability projects are unique, not that all projects are not by definition.  So I should say, projects and sustainability is a unique undertaking.  Stakeholder involvement (in this case the community) is critical for success.  If not considered, the results may not be as overt and violent as those in the film, but the ramifications can be significant. 

On a side note, a salmon fishery in Yemen may not be as far-fetched as it seems.  Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) power generating dams in the United States have provided a cold water fishery (through cold water releases from the bottom of their dams) in areas of the Deep South that would not normally support cold water fishes.  

Project managers are a pragmatic lot.  That’s what we really like about them.  They are always looking for the “facts”, the bottom-line, and no BS.  Whether we are consulting, networking, giving a seminar or teaching a class in sustainability, one of the most often asked questions is “What is the end game for project sustainability?”  In other words, what are we trying to accomplish at the intersection of green (sustainable) business practices and project management.  After all, that is where Rich and I live. 

We know what our end game is.  It is not about another certification, the addition of more alphabet soup.  Sometimes we wonder how some people fit all that on their business card.  And that’s okay!  The most important thing to us is that the “alphabet soup” represents learning, or at least we hope it does. 

That’s our end game, education and the meshing or smashing of sustainability and project management together.  For those of you who have seen our webinars or read our book know that we coined word “greenality”, the smashing of green and quality together.   We also have a set of assertions that smash project management and sustainability together: (1) Doing the right thing helps the project team do the right thing, (2) Green PM helps better equip the team respond to project risks, (3) Green PM helps the project and the product of the project, (4) An environmental lens is a necessary part of a PM’s toolbox, and (5) Greenality, like quality, must be planned in, not bolted on.  No matter what the book you read, course or webinar you take, you’ll see that those basics assertions reflected somewhere.

While all of these assertions are important, for the purposes of this discussion, “Greenality, like quality, must be planned in, not bolted on,” is the key.  It is not complicated (as the AT&T commercial says).  We advocate that it is critical not to consider Green Project Management as a separate entity.  Don’t “bolt it on.”  We get concerned that in an effort to differentiate the various efforts out there to provide courses and/or “certifications”, this concept is lost.  We’ve always advocated that Green Project Management should be a part of project management, not separated from it.  The “environmental lens” becomes a part of the PM toolbox, like the communications lens or quality lens we PMs are always considering.  Green PM becomes second nature.

Does some sort of sustainability credential help?  It doesn’t hurt?  Is it needed?  It probably is not as long as the project manager has a basic knowledge and understanding of the language and conditions of sustainability.  Those can be found in the various books on the subject.  “The proof is in the pudding,” so to speak.  It is a logical approach to utilize the learning’s of sustainability in the project managers’ everyday life, so that the project team does the right thing, responds to the projects sustainability risks (both opportunities and threats), and help the project and the product of the project be more sustainable.  When that is accomplished, the end game is near!

Note: The words Green Project Management or Green PM are used in reference to our book, Green Project Management, (C) CRC Press, 2010.

Serendipity?  Maple sugaring is big here in New England.  For the past several years my wife and I have been invited to a small farm in the local area to witness, and at times feed logs into the fire, the cooking down of maple tree sap into that golden nectar we love so much called maple syrup.  It is also a Rite of Spring, although spring may have a different meaning in New England than it has in other parts of the country.  It could be 70 degrees and sunny, but most likely it is cooler than that and sometimes with a snow flurry or two thrown in.  But that is New England!

So getting to my point, at this year’s event, I met a woman (serendipitous) who heads a public relations firm whose client is the Songdo International Business District (IBD), located on 1,500 acres of reclaimed land along the Yellow Sea in Incheon, South Korea (above is an aerial view of Songdo IBD).  Songdo IBD, thought to be one of the largest public/private real estate ventures in the world, will include forty million square feet of office space, thirty-five million square feet of residential space, ten million square feet of retail, five million square feet of hotel space and ten million square feet of public space. When completed in 2017, Songdo IBD will be home to 65,000 residents and 300,000 people will commute in daily. Currently, 22,000 people reside in Songdo IBD and by year-end that number will grow to more than 27,000. More than 25,000 people now work in Songdo IBD.   I invite you to take a look at their website http://www.songdo.com/default.aspx.

Songdo is a model for sustainable city-scale development project as it is one of Asia’s largest green developments.  Heading the firm providing the public relations for Songdo, not only did May Lou provide me with information about Songdo (tremendous high-res pictures), but she is also a wealth of information on sustainability and the entire project/product life cycle.  I intend to share some of that with you over a couple of posts.  It is obviously way too much information to share in one post.  Why should we be interested?  Because it is one of the largest sustainablity projects I have ever run into.  It is a massive undertaking within the shadow of North Korea.

One aspect of the project is the commitment to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design www.usgbc.org/leed).  Songdo is considered a world leader in this aspect for the design, construction and operation of green buildings, quite a project.  To date, Songdo IBD has more that 13.7 million square feet of LEED-certified space in the first LEED-certified exhibit hall in Asia (Convensia Convention Center), the first LEED-certified residential tower in Korea (Central Park I), the first LEED-certified hotel in Korea (Sheraton Incheon) and the first LEED-certified School in Korea (Chadwick International School). 

More than 50% of Songdo IBD is complete including such core components as the Convensia Convention Center; the Sheraton Incheon; the 100-acre Central Park; numerous residential, commercial and retail projects; Chadwick International School; and the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, which hosted the PGA Champions Tour for the second consecutive year in September, 2011. The iconic 68-story Northeast Asia Trade Tower (NEATT), which will be South Korea’s tallest building is scheduled for completion in 2014. Lotte Shopping Town and an E-LAND mall will together create Korea's largest complex commercial district, and Songdo's planned IFEZ Incheon Arts Center will be one of the country's most sophisticated cultural centers.

In future posts, we will look at some more sustainability specifics of Songdo.  In the meantime, I continue to “sing” its praises.  Pictured below is the Convensia Convention Center. (all picture used with permission)

 

 

 

 

 

We all know that communications is the key to successful project management.  As a rule of thumb, project managers spend 90% of their time communicating.  At times it seems that we have some difficulty getting our messages out, whether the message is about customer changes, status or performance reports, just simple updates or expressing the value of our work.  Reading a recent article by Cindy Mehallow on GreenBiz.com (www.greenbiz.com) triggered some thoughts about how to communicate with management about the value of corporate socially responsibility efforts.  One of the issues we find with getting management to embrace sustainability is that there is a lack of understanding as to its value.  Perhaps that misunderstanding has a lot to do with the “message” being received.    Cindy talks about “loaded language, over-communication, misdirected messages, semantic short circuits” and “too much noise” as impediments for communications.  We think that understanding and addressing those communications issues may lead to a better acceptance of the message.

Sometimes, we, at the intersection of project management and sustainability, speak in tongues (or as we refer to in our book, the “Language of the Green Wave”), but don’t realize it.  It is clear that there is terminology that should be understood by the project manager.  But because the project manager has a grasp on the terminology doesn’t necessarily mean that the “receiver” has the same understanding (“shared experience”).   A reality check with the receiver needs to be done in order to assure a mutual understanding of expectations and results.  In addition to the understanding of the “lingo,” the effect of the words needs to be understood.  As an example, the words “global warming” can be tempered by the words “climate change” to avoid controversy about the causes of global warming that can cloud judgment. 

That leads us to another point by Cindy, and that is “noise.”  Anyone familiar with the Sender-Receiver Model, first introduced by Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver, Bell Laboratories, (Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press), and referred to above, will recognize the references.  In that model, messages are carried over a channel. As the message travels the channel and crosses the boundary between the sender and the receiver and then crosses the boundary back from the receiver to the sender during feedback (across the area know as the "shared experience", there is the potential for noise.  Noise can be anything from literally noise ("I can't hear you!"), to distraction ("Something else has caught my ear!") to competition for the channel (more than one message being transmitted at the same time).  

Reducing the distraction by using a common language, avoiding controversy when possible, making sure that the right stakeholders are engaged, checking the understanding of the message and not "fire hosing" the information to the point of having the receiver glaze over, will go a long way in reducing the noise and allowing your message of the value of sustainability to get through.