People, Planet, Profits & Projects

Photo from http://design-milk.com

You may have missed this story, but here in the US, Democrats 'took to the Senate floor Monday night to talk about global warming and planned not to let up until morning. By midnight, lawmakers had been talking for nearly six hours'.  We suggest that you read one of the stories about this talk-a-thon here.  (This story was published on March 11 by NPR).

We're not political.  We're project managers.  We're focused on sustainability - but that doesn't put us anywhere in particular on the political spectrum.  We are advocates for learning and action in this area, and we believe that project managers are change agents, and some of the people in the world with the most power to DO something about making their projects, their programs, and their portfolios more sustainable.  And yes, that does involve the earth, but as our blog title says (look up there right now, folks, look at what it says!) we are looking at and acting on sustaining the social aspects of projects (People issues), ecological connections to projects (Planet issues), and financial longevity of organizations (Profit issues).

Still, it's frustrating to see an important body like the US Senate spend so much time talking and failing to act.  To quote the referenced article, "Democratic leaders have no plans to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor this year, so the speeches were about little more than theatrics. House Democrats pushed through a bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming in 2009, then lost their majority the following election. A climate bill led by then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry collapsed in 2010 without a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

So the Democrats have failed to act.  And many of the Republicans have failed to understand.  From the article:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the talkathon amounted to "30 hours of excuses" from senators who think it's OK that "families are losing work because of government attacks on the coal industry."

"Well it's not OK, it's cruel," McConnell said, speaking on the Senate floor before the talkathon began. "It's cruel to tell struggling coal families that they can't have a job because some billionaire from San Francisco disagrees with their line of work."

And so it goes.

But here's the secret, and the good news.  Although we recognize that it would make sense to have some sweeping changes in laws, there are things we can do as project managers to integrate sustaianbiltiy thinking in our projects.  One of the biggest is simply to make the connection from the mission/vision/value statements of your organization to your project's charters.  In an informal poll of 50 project managers in our classes, we found that only 5-8 of them even knew what the mission/vision statements were, and only 2 had seen the commitments made by their leaders to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) objectives.  We project managers - who are so focused on action, milestones, and deliverables - we are not prone to staying in a chamber and talking (while doing nothing) or boycotting that session altogether because we don't even have the sense to recognize the problem (that's our view of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, right now).

So - take some action RIGHT NOW.  Go to your company/organization's home page.  Click on the "About Us" section (or whatever it is called) and look for your leadership's statements on CSR.  You may be very surprised.  And you may be very empowered.  But either way, you will be able to take action which is tied to your leaders' ideas.

And that's more than the US Senate can say.  Or rather, it's more meaningful than anything they can say.

 Less of this.                  

                                More of this!

E-waste disposal is an increasingly challenging project.  In a recent article in Green I.T, “Dell Computer leaders have joined members of the E-Waste Solutions Alliance for Africa in Nairobi to mark the opening of East Africa Compliant Recycling - the region's first large-scale e-waste recycling facility - and the creation of a new e-waste business to be supported by a regulatory model, tailored for developing countries.”  Dell has taken this on because the company is establishing itself as a global leader for the collecting and disposing of e-waste.  Also, it doesn’t hurt that consumers (stakeholders) are becoming more aware of sustainability issues and will lean towards companies with more social responsibility.

Kenya in particular was chosen for this project for several reasons.  One of them was regulatory.  In an effort to curb the irresponsible disposal of e-waste, the Kenyan government is developing new regulations requiring electronics manufacturers to meet certain thresholds for e-waste collection and disposal.  Kenyon officials, representatives for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the IT industry, and e-waste recyclers have developed a model to show that e-waste has a monetary value, especially when recycled in a responsible way.  Without showing the economic value of e-waste, because of the new regulations, the burden of cost could have been shifted to the consumer.  If that occurs, it could put the cost of computers and electronics out of reach for most Kenyon and, taking it one step further, other African nations. 

The new “hub” structure of the recycling efforts will also provide good jobs in areas that are depressed and could greatly benefit from a “shot in the arm.”  The hub structure model will have shipping container collection points.  Beginning with four collection points, two sponsored directly by Dell, the plan is to grow to at least forty.  “Once a shipping container is filled to capacity, its contents are resold to the main hub where the e-waste will be sustainably processed into material fractions and sold back to the technology industry. Each stage of the model is designed to be profitable for participants, from individual collector to collection point to hub.”

“In addition to protecting the environment, the model is aimed at creating thousands of green jobs at the facility and across supporting logistics and collection networks, in part by converting existing informal-sector e-waste 'pickers' into trained and legitimately compensated e-waste collectors. Dell and others have invested in training programmes to educate workers on the safe collection and recycling of e-waste.”

In our book, we define this type of project as “green by definition” projects that have far reaching benefits; profits, to people and jobs, to protecting the environment.  Green by definition projects clearly have all the elements of sustainability; People, Planet, Profits & Projects!

One of the reasons I've stuck with project management as a career choice for 150 years (well, okay it's a little less than that) is the challenge and fun of working across disciplines.  As PMs we have to make the engineers and marketeers play nicely together. 

And, as I said above... this can be challenging and... "fun". 

So we are indeed "silo busters".  This is a metaphor based on the idea of vertical organizations (Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Engineering) as silos (you know, those big tall cylinders you can see on farms to store grain; see above photo) and us as project managers providing the necessary ‘horizontal’ or cross-silo communication and collaboration one needs to have a project succeed.

This same scenario can – and must – take place at the corporate level as well if sustainability is to become part of the fabric of modern business.  Thankfully, it is happening.  From this week’s ‘edie’ report:

There is a growing awareness of how cross-sector partnerships are providing environmental benefits to business, particularly in the automotive industry, says Toyota's Steve Hope,  general manager of environmental affairs and corporate citizenship, told edie that industries are starting to break away from a linear way of thinking and companies leading in sustainability are looking wider than their "own doorstep".

Noticeably, wider industry collaboration is beginning to progress areas of resource efficiency, particularly water and energy, says Hope.

"We've joined the Centre for Industrial Sustainability, headed up by EPSRC. We're involved in various projects but this is where we can discuss these issues with other big companies from different sectors, such as Marks & Spencer's for example.

We’ve seen this ourselves.  As a proud contributor to ECOCAR2, we’ve seenoutstanding, sustainability-oriented, creative, productive collaboration between Government, the auto industry, the IT industry, and 15 great North American universities in their effort to take ‘leap-and-bound’ innovation in the development of a hybrid automobile.  Learn more about ECOCAR2 here.

We also see collaboration between customers and even competitors in the IT industry under the guidance of GreenTouch, where the goal is to to” deliver the architecture, specifications and roadmap to increase network energy efficiency by a factor of 1000 compared to 2010 levels”.  Read more about GreenTouch here.

The point?

The point is that once again, we as project managers are poised to be leaders in the area of breaking silo walls.  We, more than any other discipline, have the ‘muscle memory’ of getting people who don’t normally work together well – to play in perfect harmony for our project purposes.  We just have to bring our game to the next level and get our leaders, even our industries, to participate in collaborative efforts in which sustainability is brought to the forefront.  How do you do that? 

Learn more about sustainability, about CSR, and in particular, learn about your own company’s current commitment to these areas.  Stay tuned right here at People, Planet, Profits & Projects, where we post regularly on this topic and give examples of how companies are collaborating and gaining a competitive advantage by incorporating sustainability thinking throughout their company – and especially – especially – at the project and program levels.

You can also follow EarthPM’s blog where we’ve recently been talking about CVS/Caremark and their efforts to bring their mission/vision to reality with CSR projects – very interesting and important work.

So – strengthen those silo-busting muscles, work out regularly, get the vertical organizations in your enterprise to work together and….get stuff done!  It’s what we do.

There is no doubt about it, cloud projects add to an enterprise’s sustainability strategy.  According to Harnessing Green IT, Principles and Practices, Wiley @2012, edited by San Murugesan and G.R. Gangadharan, “cloud computing –A new computing or IT paradigm in which computing resources – computing capacity, storage and applications – are delivered and consumed as a service accessed over a network.  It is easily scalable and highly flexible, and users pay for services they use.”  It is the wave of the present and future.  “The Cloud” is a virtual environment.  In other words, to a user, no local hardware is required to store their files, whether it is work, music, applications, and/or video files.

As the definition above implies, the amount of storage allowed can be increased or decrease at will.  All the user has to do is direct the data to the cloud and pay for the storage.  In many instances, a large amount of data storage is free.  Services like Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. offer a certain amount of data stored free.  Users are connected to the cloud via the Internet.  Here’s where that sword comes in.  There still needs to be energy consuming hardware somewhere.  Data doesn’t just go up into the air and float around.  There also may be a “chicken and egg” situation here, too.  Because of the flexibility and easy access to the cloud, more users may want to store more data requiring more hardware, a larger data centers, to provide the platform for the cloud services.  If more and more applications reside on the cloud, the same situation exists.  Greenpeace International in 2010 observed that because of the increased demand caused by cloud computing that there may be a negative impact to carbon emissions and global warming. 

But all is not lost.  Cloud computing projects being relatively new can take advantage of the latest technologies including blade servers.  Blade servers provide more efficient data storage facilities.  The efficiencies include onboard cooling, power and networking for all blades housed in the entire system, rather than the older style that provides cooling, power and networking per rack of servers.  Because blade servers are large capacity in a smaller footprint, more of them can be placed in the same original footprint.   

But then the sword grows another edge.  In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (February 11, 2014), of the 90 or so Chief Information Officers (CIOs) attending the February CIO Network Conference, in answer to the question “Has cloud computing allowed you to repurpose your traditional IT resources, cut IT staff to reduce costs, or both;” 42% answered repurpose, 6% answered cut staff, and 52% answered both.  The cost cutting is good, the reduction in jobs affects the “people” aspect of the first 3Ps; planet, profit, people.

Two of the most pressing issues for data centers, therefore Green IT are: power consumption and cooling. A cloud project allows for a concentration of resources to be able to utilize economies of scale.  However, it is important to remember that the cloud isn’t really a cloud, but has to have a landing pad.  That landing pad will be energy intense and could affect the business case for cloud computing.

As project managers, we are necessarily focused on the term of our projects.  Most projects - even the "long" ones that take years to complete - have numbers that are tiny when you compare the numbers in those plans comparison to the types of numbers associated with our planet.

But we do need to think about the long-term effects of the product of our project.  Our projects fit in with programs.  Our programs and projects are part of an overall portfolio, and that portfolio is your organization’s way of getting their overall objectives accomplished.  Further, at the portfolio and program level, it’s very likely that there are mission and vision statements that have Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) targets that are financially and ethically tied to the company’s shareholders, stakeholders, owners, and customers.

So regardless of your views on climate change, the connection you make from your project’s product to the longer-term view is a strategically and tactically important connection.

And that brings us to the beautiful picture you see at the top of today’s post.  It comes from a striking exhibit at Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA, entitled “Seeing Glacial Time: Climate Change in the Arctic”.  You can read about the exhibit in this article, and you can visit the exhibit’s home page here.  It’s on until May of this year, so … for a “long time” in project terms.

Here is the description of the exhibit:

Seeing Glacial Time examines how eight contemporary artists employ the "real time" of photography to visualize the largely imperceptible, gradual changes in "glacial time" from the bellwether Arctic region. Most of these artists have gone to extreme lengths—and distances—to capture and create their imagery. Some utilize scientific and appropriated photography as source material, while others depart from documentary traditions to create expressive images suggestive of a melancholic Sublime. This timely exhibition of paintings, photographs and a video installation introduces Boston audiences to artists who either have not been seen before in the area or have created new work for this occasion.

Featured artists are:

Subhankar Banerjee
Olaf Otto Becker
Resa Blatman
Diane Burko
Caleb Cain Marcus
Gilles Mingasson
Joan Perlman
Camille Seaman

But our point comes back around to us as project managers.  Perhaps as you wander around the museum exhibit – either in person, or virtually – take some time (there’s that word again) to consider some of your Gantt chart “bars” and whether or not they shouldn’t at least have a ‘dotted-line-dependency” with the impact of its product in the longer term, seen in the context of the planet.

Examples: What consumables does this product generate in the long-term?  Does the outcome improve, or at least keep stable, the working and living conditions for the local population where it will be used?  A new book on which we are working, one to follow up Green Project Management, will ask – and by way of real examples and measurements – will help answer these questions.

In the meantime…

Get the context, and ask yourself these questions.  It couldn’t hurt.