Disclaimer: In this post we will feature two environmental activists. We do this only to show what they've done, what they've accomplished, and the connection to our discipline of project management.
do (Green) City
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 
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Keep the change.
Categories:
Activism
Categories: Activism
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Project management is about change. It's literally about change because we try to make projects more effective and efficient, leaving our sponsors with a little bit of change (as in money, thus the image above). It's also about change because by definition, projects are put in place to make a change. A bridge where there was none before. A new release of software which didn't exist last week. A new drug. It's all about change, and so by definition, we are agents of change. When it comes to the environment, this does not mean that we all need to become members of Greenpeace. However, if we feel the inclination to do something about climate change, we have more power (excuse the pun) to do so, and to pull away from that urge to do so, we deny what should be in our own PM DNA. Here are two examples of activism with regards to the environment, which are recent and striking - and also which have been effective. Tim DeChristopher - Bidder 70 Soon, you willl be able to see a movie - a documentary - with this title. It tells the story of Tim DeChristopher, an environmental activist who went to a US Federal Bureau of Land Management auction, and... well, we'd rather let the movie's web page describe what happened: On December 19, 2008 Tim DeChristopher disrupted a highly disputed Utah BLM Oil and Gas lease auction, effectively safeguarding thousands of acres of pristine Utah land that were slated for oil and gas leases. Not content to merely protest outside, Tim entered the auction hall and registered as bidder #70. He outbid industry giants on land parcels (which, starting at $2 an acre, were adjacent to national treasures like Canyonlands National Park), winning 22,000 acres of land worth $1.7 million before the auction was halted. Two months later, incoming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar invalidated the auction. DeChristopher, however, was indicted on two federal felonies with penalties of up to 10 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. Patrick Shea, former BLM Director for Clinton, represented DeChristopher pro-bono. With the threat of prison looming, DeChristopher stepped up his activism and evolved into a charismatic and ingenious climate justice leader. He co-founded Peaceful Uprising, a grass-roots group dedicated to defending a livable future through empowering non-violent action. After two years and nine postponements, his trial began on February 28, 2011. Outside the courtroom, hundreds rallied in solidarity with Tim. Inside, Judge Dee Benson disallowed every defense his lawyers put forth. After a five-day trial, DeChristopher was found guilty. His sentencing was scheduled for summer 2012. Refusing to back down, Tim flew to D.C. in April 2011 to give a keynote speech at Power Shift 2011 in front of 10,000 students. He then led students to occupy the Department of the Interior. Tim wisely avoided arrest, but dozens of others were arrested for this mass act of peaceful civil disobedience. Tim just finished serving his sentence. Here he is on the US talk show, "Late Night with David Letterman":
Ma Jun's new playbook for change in China A recent story in Time magazine shows us another, very different, but equally effective form of activism, this time in China. Ma Jun, who founded the non-profit Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs in 2006, in China, has aimed at cleaning up China's environment. After all (see our post covering the book, The Devouring Dragon) China is responsible for about 25% of global carbon emissions. Ma worked with the government to effect change, not by stopping an auction, like DeChristopher, but instead by the power of data. This snippet from the article makes the main point: Working with two staffers (he now has 10) in a tiny Beijing office suite, Ma found a creative way forward. Rather than overtly pressuring the government--a strategy that rarely succeeds in China--he embraced the government's data as a tool. Ma cut a deal to put China's records about pollution by Western firms and their suppliers online, then used that information to quietly pressure the companies. The results have been remarkable. A 2011 report on Apple, for instance, resulted in a major effort to clean up environmental violations in the company's supply chain. Ma hopes for even more impact with his new action against the huge power and energy companies that are responsible for the lion's share of China's pollution. Because they are largely owned by the Communist Party and funded by state-owned banks, they've traditionally been off-limits for criticism. But buoyed by his wins with Western corporate giants, Ma recently announced plans to compile a similar database on these SOEs. "It's a much more delicate issue," he says with a somewhat nervous smile. "We're not sure yet how it will all work out." Ma's leverage this time is that the government is increasingly concerned about the environment. Leaders know the issue has the potential to galvanize mass protests, bringing out everyone from rural farmers whose land is contaminated by heavy metals to soccer moms worried that their children will get asthma from playing outside their schools in the Beijing smog. The initial goal is to coax the SOEs to grab the low-hanging fruit--retrofitting coal-fired power plants to reduce the worst emissions or stopping overproduction of steel. (China churns out 1 billion tons of it a year even though total global demand is only 1.7 billion tons.) Whether with auction disruptions (like DeChristopher) or increased transparency (like Ma Jun), we see that it's possible to be a change agent in the area of environmentalism. As a project manager, we can be change agents in - and around - our projects. A quick example. We're trying to purchase some supplies for the project and have a choice of two vendors. One has a product which is more environmentally-friendly but consts a little more. How do we justify the more expensive material? Event though the project itself may only use a little in the pilot period, we know that this material will be used in quantity when the product is handed over to operations. We could tie the rationale to the company's environmental purchasing policy. Wait. We don't have one? We can be the change agent that suggests a company policy. Why not? We are, after all... change agents. Have a look at the two stories, see if they inspire you to become that agent of change that you already are. |
Sing of Songdo and Sustainability (Part 2)
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I promised to do another blog posting on New Song Christine Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and Member, International Advisory Board for Songdo City wrote the foreword to the “Green Book.” She says “The rapid growth of suburban sprawl that I observed during my seven years as the Garden State’s governor awakened many in my state to the environmental damage caused by unchecked and uncoordinated development. It is a trend witnessed across the country, around the globe, with the Republic of Korea a prime example. Over the past four decades, Korea has been transformed from a predominantly rural society to one overwhelming urban, and the nation’s ecological footprint has grown so large that it is now among the top 10 in carbon-dioxide emissions in the world.” She further asks “Is the solution to climate change to build cleaner-burning cars? Is it more nuclear energy and other emission-free sources? Does it require more recycling and less energy waste?” She answers that question stating what we, at EarthPM have always believed, that it takes all of those projects and a holistic view, from the design, to the materials, to efficiency of usage, to looking at the end product, cradle-to-cradle, to have a sustainable project. The Green Book also includes the quote from the Bruntland Commission, 1987, a quote we also use in our book to define sustainability; “Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” I also know that, as project managers, we are interested in statistics. Using actual versus potential is a good way to build a business case, in this case for sustainability. Here are a few used in the Green Book Annual green house gas (GHG) emissions of a typical low-density development – 780,000 tons o Potential GHG emissions of high-density New Songdo City – 260,000 tons Annual CO2 emissions from building energy demands 350 buildings, conventional) – 674,000 tons o LEED certified – 250,000 tons Annual CO2 emissions from building transportation demands, typical low-density – 109,200 tons o Non-car dependent - using diesel buses (70% residents )– 17,290 tons o New Songdo City potential using hydrogen buses (70% residents) – 7,740 tons
One thing to remember is that as project managers (and citizens of the world for that matter), we manage the scarce resources of our projects. By extension, and an assertion of ours, the environmental influences of the project is another of those scarce resources. So I’d like to close this installment with another quote from the Green Book. “Our cities, our industries, and our lives today consume far more resources than nature can sustain, causing an extreme imbalance in our planet’s ecosystems. Sustainable design in urban planning and architecture can help to balance the ebbs and flows of these ecosystems with economic and social mechanisms, so that what a city consumes in resources is balanced by the resource recovery efforts leaving ample reserves for the needs of future generations.” This is some food for thought when considering your next “building” project, or for that matter, the philosophy in that statement can be universally applied whenever scarce resources are used. That’s just about anything, right? There is so much more information on sustainability provided in the Green Book that you may be seeing more related posts in the future. Pictured right is the canal walk. (All pictures used with permission.)
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Your Customer as a Sustainability Driver
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As we research the intersection of project management and sustainability one of the questions we run into is "who's driving?". Don't take this literally, we're not talking about driving a car, but more from the standpoint of stakeholder analysis. As our observant readers will know, the PMBOK(R) Guide's 5th Edition, recently released, has a brand new Knowledge Area, called Stakeholder Management. PMI has correctly surmised that this is a major piece of what we do as project managers. As we've always said, an unidentified threat is an untreated threat, and an unidentified stakeholder could mean a whole family of both threats and opporunities that are unidentified. So we should know our stakeholders. And obviously, one key stakeholder is the customer. There is hardly much bigger of a customer for many companies as global retailer WalMart. Walmart has made some news over the past few years pushing for sustainability from their suppliers. And more recently, this story from Reuters indicates that WalMart has quite literally become a threat to laggards in the field of sustainability. The threat is this: comply with our environmental rules within 5 years or your projects are off of our shelves. Off. Kaput. Finished. Here's a key clipping from the article. We suggest you read it all because there is more to the story, especially surrounding WalMart's contribution to the trade deficit between the US and China.
The new requirements, announced in China where Wal-Mart has more than 20,000 suppliers, will compel workshops that churn out much of the world's toys, clothing and electronics to improve on energy efficiency, waste reduction and other markers on the retailer's checklist. Wal-Mart said the checklist was voluntary. But if suppliers fall short, they could be cut off from the nearly 4,000 Walmart discount stores and more than 600 Sam's Club wholesale warehouses that the company operates in the United States. The standards set in Wal-Mart's "sustainability index", which has helped to burnish an image tarnished by criticism from labor groups and local communities, have already been embraced by 500 of the world's major consumer product makers. The retailer said that by the end of 2017, U.S. Walmart and Sam's Club stores will get 70 percent of their goods from global suppliers that use the sustainability index. Our take - as project managers? Well, you're right to identify this as an operational thing more than a project thing, but consider this. How would a supplier to WalMart start to meet these requirements? With a project. What is the entire roll-out of WalMart's initiative to control its suppliers? A project. And from our perspective as project managers it helps answer the question we asked up front in this post. Who's driving sustainability in your project? Sometimes it's the EPA. Sometimes it's a group of 'environmentally-minded' employees. It could be the CEO, after having a sort of green epiphany. Or, as in this case, it could be a gigantic big-box store which just happens to be your biggest customer. |
Connect (Projects to Sustainability) to BE
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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. |
Sustainability: is it a PM thing?
Categories:
Activism
Categories: Activism
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Since we started asserting that there is a vital, fundamental intersection between project management and sustaianability (since about 2009), we have seen three basic responses, which we summarize below with representative composite "quotes" from these response populations:
(now leave us alone, we have enough constraints already) [To you, we say, with the deepest respect, you are missing the boat. Look at your sponsor organization's website - you will find that they are indeed comitting publicly to CSR goals. To be honest, as a pure PM you need to take a step back, look at your project's objectives as linked to enterprise-level objectives, and look at the steady state success of the product of your project, not just the project handover - you'll actually be serving your sponsor more effectively]
(I'm willing to learn, even to become a change agent) [To you, we say, welcome. Join us. There is a lot to learn. And here's a secret: there is a lot to gain, both from an altruistic standpoint and for you personally. As a person well-versed in sustaianbility language and familiar with these issues, you will likely advance more quickly than your colleagues in the other two categories]
(La, la, la, la, I am not listening) [To you, we say... well, it doesn't matter what we say. But we'll wait. One day you will end up unblocking your ears, even if it's because your current projects are successful but there are no more forthcoming because you took the short-term view.] What's alarming to us is that even some very respected voices in our field fall into to the Busy Ostrich or Purist categories - either straightway disagreeing with us, or choosing to simply not really listen. One of the ways we realize in which we have to make our point is that sustaianbility issues, only ONE of which is ecological in nature, don't seem to have an impact on our projects. To that particular end, we wanted to provide a couple of recent videos that show that climate change is not only an environmental challenge but rather one that is economic and more "overall human" in nature. Sustainability is also increasingly a drivier of innovation, and thus a "launcher" of projects (the Cesara Harada response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an excellent example). This is evident in the final video from the BBC. As project managers, overseeing budgets and people, and wanting to understand the rationale of the project's launch in the first place, perhaps this will strike a chord, if you are in the Purist camp. Consider. Think. It really can't hurt.
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