People, Planet, Profits & Projects

In our last post on EarthPM, we talk about the possible connection between "Superstorm Sandy" and climate change.  And we of course make a connection to projects and project management.  And you know, we did a pretty good job.  But it's also good to know when someone else, someone with even more knowledge, expertise, and experience on the issue at hand, says it better than you.

And that's the case with Andrew Winston.

As you may know, Winston and Esty's book Green to Gold was the inspiration for our book, Green Project Management.  Winston and Esty were so amazingly convincing in that book (and follow-up efforts since) that they have continued to inspire us.

With that, we'd like to encourage you to read Andrew Winston's full blog post on the topic, which follows along the lines of our posting but gives an even stronger business perspective.

Please read Winston's entire blog post, "Should Companies Care If Hurricane Sandy Was "Caused" By Climate Change?"

If you're impatient (and which project manager isn't?) here are a couple of key extracts:

It's about business continuity, stupid!

"Take the example of one of my clients, a Fortune 200 consumer products company. As the VP of global risk management told me, the most expensive events in company history in every weather category (flood, earthquake, hail, wind, etc.) occurred in the last few years. After making $50 million in insurance claims in 2011 alone, the company's insurance rates will certainly rise. But that's a side issue; the real problem is the constant threat to business continuity. At one of its large manufacturing plants in Asia, a drought stopped production for 3 weeks."

Risk Assessment will be sexier

" Smart companies will be examining supply chains and operations very closely for risks associated with water shortages, floods, storms, and resource constraints. Risk assessment is going to get much sexier and much more important to global organizations. Their leaders will also seize the opportunity to offer products and services that help other companies and society deal with a world of weird weather. Think drought-resistant crops, new insurance products, distributed energy systems (so homeowners won't care if the power goes out), and perhaps boats for getting around Wall Street."

Let's get real!

"..let's get real about business impacts. If you're going to really assess risk to your operations now and in the future, you have to understand how climate change will increase the likelihood of severe events and what it will mean for your value chain. Not doing so would be costly, stupid, and irresponsible to your shareholders.

Companies are waking up to the immediate impacts. The most recent report from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), compiled with the help of PwC (full disclosure: my consulting firm has a partnership with the U.S. arm of PwC), shows that most global companies acknolwedge climate-driven risks. Fully 37% of those reporting to the CDP — most of the world's largest companies — say that climate change is already creating business risk (up from 10% in just two years). Another 43% see risk to the business within the next 10 years."

So as we've always said - it doesn't matter where you are on the political spectrum, the climate science spectrum, or any spectrum for that matter.  The bottom line is, well, the bottom line.  And the organizations in which we work - or to whom we offer project management services of any kind, are taking note of these observations - and you would serve yourself - and your organizations (and perhaps the planet, but that's just our opinion) better by paying attention and acting on the basis of solid information, which means getting smart about this topic.  We intend to help - just stay tuned to this blog and EarthPM and we will do our best to provide you the latest from industry thought leaders.  Stay smart - and stay safe!

John S. Hoffman, an innovative US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official, died late last month.  We'd like to take a moment to point out some of his work and connect it to our discipline - project management.

In the US, Hoffman was responsible for Energy Star. 

One of his quotes really impressed us - he wrote this in 1992:

"profitably prevent pollution...using voluntary market enhancing programs"

Here's a little blurb about how that got started:

Legend has it that ENERGY STAR began 20 years ago after Hoffman conducted an informal walk-through of EPA offices. He wanted to see if employees remembered to turn off their computers when they left their workstations. He was not pleased with what he saw. He figured that if many of his staff members – who were well aware of the link between energy use and greenhouse gas emissions – forgot or found it too inconvenient to shut off their computers, the situation in the general population was far worse. He thought that a technical solution was needed – a way to automatically power down computers when not in use. And thus, a “star” (or at least a twinkle of a star) was born.

Source: http://ase.org/efficiencynews/memoriam-john-s-hoffman-father-energy-star

It worked - and continues to work.

This program, according to an editorial in today's Boston Globe has saved $230 billion in electrical bills and has avoided 1.7 billion metric tons of carbon emissions in the US alone.  Hoffman's goal - and this is strangely reminiscent of our own blog title - was to "profitably prevent pollution, including greenhouse gases, using volutary market enhancing programs".  His programs were instituted with no cost to consumers.

The connection we see to project management is multi-faceted.  First, the institution of these programs were projects in and of themselves.  Secondly, this shows what one change agent (and we, as PMs are nothing if not change agents) can do.  Thirdly, this shows how partnerships of government, industry, and consumers can be built to further a program objective.  We as project managers do this routinely for our projects.  We can learn from Mr. Hoffman's inspiring work, not only the focus on the environment, but the pure intelligence of consortium-building that he demonstrated.

20,000 organizations now participate in Energy Star programs.

These organizations have had a huge impact on people.

They have helped reduce the impact of energy-hungry devices on the planet.

They have helped companies save money and increase profit.

And they have launched many successful progrmas and projects.

So you see the connection and the reason we choose to pay tribute to Mr. Hoffman's legacy here.

Get more detail about this "warrior for the ages" (Boston Globe Editorial, today, 16-October-2012) at these sites:

Boston Globe, "Energy-saving guru"

Think Progress story

Have a look at the drawing above.  We'd like your opinion...we have been looking at a bunch of definitions of "project susccess", and serendipitously, this month's issue of PM Journal featured this topic.

One of the articles, "A perspective-based understanding of Project Success", covered the topic very well.

But we couldn't leave well-enough alone.

We think the authors did an outstanding job of capturing how we must, as a discipline, move from PROJECT to PRODUCT to ORGANIZATIONAL dimensions as we think about our work and our projects' successes.  But we think we, as project managers, have to think even further.  This is represented by the "breaking through" of the dotted line we show on the right of the diagram.

The intent is to show that even if we think beyond the project, and to the product in steady-state, and the portfolio of projects, and the organization, we still need to think in terms of the overall environment, and long-term effects of the product of the project.

We assert that this even-further-extended thinking will assist project teams in doing an even better job at identifying and handling environmental risks, amongst other things.

At this point, we just would like your opinion(s) about this visualization of thie issue.

What do you think?

Is it a success?

A wind turbine whirrs wistfully, whispering eagerly and urgently of its unbridled energy.  Sunlight glimmers off the sleek, shiny surface of a solar panel, as it emphatically sends surges of sustenance to energy-hungry inhabitants.  A shapely new red Croatian electric vehicle veers vivaciously by a vineyard.

These are the images we're presented with when the marketeers have their way in showing us what sustainability looks like and feels like.

It reminds us of air travel.  You don’t see (unless it’s depicting the ‘competition’) images of a paunchy, middle-aged man sitting in the middle seat, struggling to set up his laptop as the seat in front of him reclines fully, while a baby cries two seats ahead, and a rambunctious 2-year old is kicking the back of his seat, and… well you get the picture.

It’s not sexy.

What we see instead are happy people, relaxing with apparently unlimited legroom, headroom, in blissful relaxation as they are whisked promptly to their destination.  Which brings us back to our shapely Croatian model.

Our expectations in sustainability are set around the whirring wind turbine, the wave-action power generator, the biofuel facility, the winery that uses finches and bluebirds as a natural insecticide.

But as in air travel – it’s just not always that sexy.  Most of you frequent flyers will agree, it’s rarely that ideal.

Take the feature story in today’s Boston Globe.  Titled “A Basic Approach”, it’s the story of Ameresco, a local company which does its work in sustainability by retrofitting companies to be more efficient in their energy use without up-front cost via the financing of these improvements from the expected future savings.  It’s the ‘blocking and tackling’ of energy, as opposed to the quarterback, if you will allow us an American Football analogy. 

As an example, Ameresco has a US$21M project with the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, involving 47 buildings; this project is targeted to provide annual savings of $1.5M via upgraded equipment, weatherizing of buildings, new lighting, air conditioning, and boilers, and some solar installations.

Ameresco averages about 35% savings on their projects, so clearly they will pay back.  And their financial performance has reflected this success.

And so it is with project management's engagement with sustainbility.  As authors of PMI's Cleland Award-winning book, Green Project Management, our pubisher asked us to pick between two covers, one of which had sunflowers, wind turbines and shimmering solar panels.  We went for the other one - a picture of a tree yielding money.  We knew back then that it is indeed the blocking and tackling - the integration of sustainbility thinking into our discipline that will make the difference.  This is to take nothing away from shapely Croatian models - like the one we just blogged about.  These will also contribute, and may represent huge leaps forward.

But it's going to be the focus on efficiency, removal of waste from projects, connecting the enterprise's long-term vision to your project vision that moves us forward consistently.  And although it may not be as flashy, numbers like Ameresco is flashing, while not sexy, are at least...attractive, n'est pas?