People, Planet, Profits & Projects

In the US, it's almost Thanksgiving, a major family holiday.  Mom, Dad, family, and friends - kids of all ages -  gather to give thanks for all that they have and to celebrate this 'harvest' time of year. 

And so we choose this timeframe to talk about the important role that Mom and Dad play as project managers - and/or leaders in general - when it comes to integrating sustainability thinking into the mindsets of their families.

We'd like to draw your attention to Project Sunlight.  This is a project created by Unilever targeting parents as the key influencers for their families, and thus communities.  They invite, and we also invite you to first  watch a film online which aims to both inspire and motivate parents to then act by doing a number of small things which, added together, will contribute to a better society and environment. Unilever, the parent company of well-known brands like Ragu, Hellmans, Lipton, Popsicle, and Ben & Jerry's, is trying to get the public to join a movement and become part of a growing community of sustainability-minded people and organizations.

We know how hard it is to start grass-roots, ad-hoc movements.  As a company of two people, EarthPM is finally seeing some success in this area but only after years, hundreds of blog posts, and scores of presentations at PMI Global Congresses, PMI Chapter Meetings, and PMO Symposia as well as in local sustainability organizations, constantly pushing the message that there IS an intersection of Sustaianbility and Project Management and how we as project managers can contribute to lasting success - triple bottom line success - of our projects' products.  But this is Unilever, a large multinational corporation.  They can make a quicker, deeper, broader difference.  We urge you to help them.  At least watch the video, and as you do so, consider the Project Management role that Mom and Dad have in influencing the world around them.  Most likely, you - as a project manager who is the child of Mom and Dad and a Mom or Dad yourself, are at least at that intersection: the intersection of parent and project manager.  Now, just extrapolate that to the intersection of project management and sustainability.  Of course, if you're having trouble extrapolating or just find this idea intriguing we invite you to read our book, Green Project Management, which covers the topic well, so we're told.

Unilever's Project Sunlight lets you take action locally as a Mom, as a Dad, as a child, as a Project Manager.  And by definition, if you take on one of these challenges, you are a Project Manager!  Check out what you can do in the USA on this Facebook link.

Happy Thanksgiving to our USA-based readers.  We're thankful to have this opportunity on Projects@Work to share our thoughts and hope you have a terrific holiday week and weekend!

We've just returned from the West Coast (sometimes called the 'left coast") of the USA, after a great week at the PMO Symposium in San Diego, California.  Our presentation, "Should Your PMO Serve as a Chief Project Sustainability Office" was well received, and although the visit was good, it was short, and it was time to fly back over our magnificent continent and return to the East (right) Coast.

And just around the time of our visit, the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington, along with the province of British Colombia, did something that the corresponding national governments have failed to do. 

They agreed on something.

But hey, what's the big deal?  How big are these few states and a province?  Well, combined, they would be the world's 5th largest economy.  That's why it's a big deal.

And what does this pact mean?  Further, since you're probably a project manager, what does it mean to you?  To us?  To your PMO?

Actually, you can easily find out yourself.  The document is surprisingly succinct, given that it comes from 4 governments and 2 countries.  Have a look at it here.

In this two-page document, the word, 'program' appears explicitly four times, the word 'project' appears explicitly four times and both are implicitly woven through almost each and every paragraph in the document.  Here are a couple of paragraphs to illustrate our point:

Project managers may have a “rough ride” when it comes to sustainability.  As a naturalist, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt certainly had a clear vision about sustainability with his “conservation movement”, a social, political, and environmental (sound familiar) movement whose mission is to protect natural resources.  The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), an organization founded on Roosevelt’s principles, is an alliance formed in 2000 with Trout Unlimited until 2002 when TRCP applied for their own tax exempt status.  TRCP’s primary mission is to protect quality open spaces for hunting and fishing. 

We’ve written and spoken to many attendees of webinars, key notes, workshops and conferences about the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill.  In this month’s issue of Fly Fishing in Salt Water (Nov/Dec 2013, Vol. 20 No. 6, pg. 62), there is a brief note titled TRCP Partnership.  “The Theodore Roosevelt Partnership (TRCP) and other sport fishing interests have stressed the need for stakeholder input in charting a project-based approach for recovering fisheries and economics affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Recreational anglers as well as the Gulf Coast Ecosystems Restoration Council welcomed a vote to adopt a plan outlining recovery efforts both ecological and financial for the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the oil spill.  Projects will help repair habitat degradation that occurred from the spill and address issues affecting the region that date from decades before.” [Emphasis is mine.]

A couple of things stood out in above brief note.  The statement includes or infers all of the aspects of the triple-bottom line, financial (or economic), social, and environmental.  “The need for stakeholder input” is a very telling phrase for us project managers.  The Project Management Institute in its Fifth Edition of the PMBOK® thought that stakeholders were so important that it added Stakeholder Management as the 10^th knowledge area.  It is rare that PMI® makes additions of this magnitude, so we pay attention.  Stakeholders needs have always been important to project success, but those needs are also being driven back into the decision making process for choice of projects.  Stakeholders are also becoming more and more concerned with environmental issues which will help to drive more sustainable projects.  One of our tips to project managers is to become aware of those issues and take advantage of that awareness to avail themselves of opportunities in this emerging project area.

 “A project-based approach for recovering fisheries and economies” is a reality.  Wouldn’t we want to both be aware of the issues and be able to speak the language of sustainability in project management (SiPM™)?  Again, forewarned is forearmed!  As project managers, the more information we can accumulate on a particular area of interest, the more we can differentiate ourselves to take advantage of new opportunities.  One of the key phrases in the note is “…address issues affecting the region that date from decades before.”  Not only is the relatively recent oil spill creating projects, but the potential of decades of damage will also drive projects.  If all of these projects are to be successful, it is my assertion that we will need knowledgeable project managers, to smooth out their sustainability ride.

PMBOK® and PMI® are registered trademarks of the Project Management Institute

SiPM™ is a trademark of EarthPM @2013

In the latest edition of PM Network there is an article entitled “Weather Alert: Flooding Ahead.”  The subtitle is “It’s high time to plan for high tides with global projects” and it is by Mark Guarino.  The article points out a striking example of how future projects will be driven by issues of sustainability; by the triple-bottom line, people, planet, profits. 

Rich and I are facilitating a ‘sustainability in project management’ course for the Sustainability Learning Centre and we use two examples of how high tides are affecting the environment.  An island that was being contended by India and Pakistan, South Moore Island, AKA Talpatti, is no longer a problem.  It is now under water due to rising ocean levels.  The people of Talpatti needed to relocate themselves and their personal property (a project).  The other example we used was from an article in The Boston Globe, August 4, 2012, Rising Tide of Concern.”  That article pointed out the developers and building owners in Boston are considering locating their electrical facilities on upper floors, building new buildings with floodwalls, higher first floors, landscaping buffers, etc., to prevent the problems caused in New York by Hurricane Sandy. 

We’ve always believed that project managers should avail themselves of the opportunity to lead sustainability efforts.  Whether it is an obviously sustainable project like managing the installation of a wind farm, to managing the planning organization and implementation of a new software release, project managers should be involved.  One of the ways to avail yourself of those opportunities is to understand that there is a 'rainbow of green ; from projects that are green by definition, projects that are green by project impact, projects that are green by product impact, and projects that are green in general.  The specifics are detailed in our book and we’ve talked about it quite a bit in this blog as well as on our website. 

That’s not what I want to talk about here.  What I want to talk about here is that it is just as important to the project manager to be aware of the terminology and the fundamentals about sustainability in project management.  Yes, you can get a good basic understanding from our book.  In addition, Greg Balestrero (he gets it!),  former President and CEO of Project Management Institute (PMI®) is now working with  the International Institute of Learning (IIL) and will be speaking during International Project Day (Thursday, November 7^th, 2013) on the subject of Organizational Survival: Profitable Strategies for a Sustainable Future.  For more information go to IIL’s website.   It’s free and you can get some PDU’s and it will be available on demand for those who cannot participate during the live presentations.  Greg and Nathalie Udo also co-authored a book by the same name as the presentation.  That book is now available.

Another way is to become more educated is to take a course or two in sustainability and sustainability in project management.  The Sustainability Learning Centre has some great offerings in this area. 

Forewarned is forearmed.  Arming yourself with sustainability and sustainability in project management information is another way to make you, a project manager, more marketable as well as ready to take advantage of any and all opportunities.

We’re just back from the PMI North America Congress.  It was a very good take with well over 2,000 colleagues sharing knowledge and doing some pretty intense networking.  We were presenters ourselves, but this post is not about that talk, it's about others.

Let's start with the venue - New Orleans was the backdrop and theme for 2013, and that city knows how to host a convention full of project managers.  Everywhere you go in NOLA there is music, beautiful music, flowing around each streetcorner and from classic locations like Preservation Hall.

The music of New Orleans is jazz.  We got to experience this wonderful, expressive, eloquent music at Preservation Hall.  This is some of the most eloquent music we've ever heard.

And speaking of eloquence, that’s what we want to discuss with you.  Although there’s a twist.  This is eloquence in which the speaker doesn’t necessarily even realize that they’re being eloquent.

Here’s the deal.  Over the last four or five years, we’ve been expressing (hopefully eloquently) a need for project managers to be more focused on their products’ triple bottom line.  Yes, we mean product, not project or process.  Every project has some sort of outcome – we’re using the word product to refer to this.

And we’ve seen others discuss this topic – or surrounding topics – in such a way that they describe our exact main points - the points of what we call greenality:

• Long-term (sustainability-oriented) thinking - beyond the delivery of their project's product to the steady-state operation
• Use of information from the above in initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing processes
• Connectivity to the organization’s mission/vision/values
• Strong awareness of, and concern for, for a triple bottom line, including social, economic, and ecological aspects.

But they do this in a way in which they don’t…. quite… get… to sustainability.  We've seen it in PM Journal magazine articles (see posts on EarthPM).  We've seen it in blog posts.  And we saw it in the presentations at PMI North America Congress in New Orleans. They come so, so close, but don’t make the point that this is really about integrating sustainability into project management.

Here’s an example from the PMI Congress.

One of the speakers, Kevin Repa, in his talk, “Planning for Program Closure”,  was eloquent in his description of the closing of the Space Shuttle program.  He held the audience’s attention as he described the intriguing story of ending the space shuttle program and figuring out what to do with its significant artifacts (see sidebar). 

To summarize, the shuttle program initiated a “closing project” initially estimated to cost $2.8B or more in and of itself.  Through good project management practices enumerated by Kevin, the project came in well under that, almost by a factor of ten.

One very striking and practical example is what happens to the shuttle vehicles themselves.  They are a “must” for the museum that has one of everything.  And when these shuttles go to a museum, the planners have to know whether the shuttle presents any safety issues to museum-goers.   Are there radiation issues?  Are there any components that will outgas poisons to bystanders?  These are questions that may not have been thought of if the project managers hadn’t thought about the steady-state disposition of the product of their project.

But the underlying message was this: had the planning for the disposition of the shuttle and all of its supporting infrastructure been incorporated into the project from the start, the closure would have had better management of risks, lower environmental impact, and overall even further improved financials.

Mr. Repa used the phrase, “think centuries, not decades”.  Eloquently put.  And unconsciously, Kevin was a huge proponent of our effort to incorporate sustainability thinking into our discipline of  PM.

Kevin, we at EarthPM salute your eloquence, and your being right on target from our perspective.  We would humbly suggest that you and others could parse out the excellent message that you have with the 'greenality' framework we provide above.

And the rest of you?  Eloquent or not, we urge you to be very, very conscious of your key role as project manager when it comes to disposition of your project’s product.  Stay tuned here and at EarthPM's main blog, we can help.