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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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) – Lessons Learned
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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. |
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.Driving advances - electrifyingly!
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Let's say you are in the market for a new desktop computer.
Those are some of the key features of the new IBM 5150 Personal Computer! And all of this for a starting price of only $4400 (in 2013 dollars)! So - are you buying? Probably not (unless it's for collectability reasons). Why do we mention this in a blog regarding sustainability and project management? Simple. It has to do with innovation, with inspiration, and with the fact that if you do things right, the environment - as a stimulus - falls to the wayside in comparison to the end result in terms of innovation. So the analogy of the PC is meant to help take away the 'sticker shock' (pun intended) of the Tesla Model S - an all electric vehicle, costing about $75,000, which just received the following quote from Consumer Reports: "it's not only the best electric car we've tested, it's now our top-rated model overall". So that's the point, isn't it? We can - and should - use sustainability as a trigger for innovation. But it doesn't mean that everything having to do with sustainably-developed products has to mean sacrifice and skimpiness. The Tesla is luxurious, comfortable, spacious, and loaded with features. Sustainability can be a driver (pun again intended) but does not have to be the rationale for purchasing. The Tesla is an example of a product that in-and-of-itself is just better than its carbon-hogging peers. We need more of these innovations. And yes, it's expensive. But that brings us back to the IBM PC. Go back up again and look at the features and price. When it first came up, only the extremely wealthy (or extremely geeky, or both) were buying that machine. Same for the Tesla. But look what happened to the great-great-grandchildren of the IBM PC. Witness the fact that your $50 MP3 player or even perhaps your coffeemaker has more computer power than that PC, and you can buy a Chromebook for $199. The $75,000 price of a luxury sports Tesla can easily become a price that is more than competitive with combustion-engine sedans. If not ourselves, our kids will be driving cars like this (carefully, we hope). It will take projects and project managers to get that price down - to design more workaday vehicles that you and I may drive - but it will happen. And it's going to take sustainability thinking built in to our discipline of project management to keep the spark of innovation alive and to keep electrigfying products like the Tesla Model S coming down the road. The move to electirc vehicles is a good thing for the planet. Yes, there is debate over the fact that this simply "moves the problem", but we're on the side that says it's much better to have the car run on electricity because we can innovate more easily on making power generation (in general) more renewable, and not so easily when each vehicle is a small fossil-fuel power plant itself. In fact, each combustion-engine car generates about 20 pounds of C02 for every gallon it consumes. And transportation consists of 29% of all human-generated CO2. We just blogged about great successes in the ICT industry, which makes up only 2%. So improvements in the area of transportation are more than 10 times more effective in impact - clearly showing that innovation in this area is key. We at EarthPM have been working in this area ourselves, as we've described on previous blog posts, running workshops for the ECOCAR2 program of the US Department of Energy and General Motors. We look forward to more collaborations in which project management contributes to innovations that electrify us and improve our lot - and, oh-by-the-way contribute to a more sustainable world. Note: the inspiration for this posting came from a great opinion piece in today's Boston Globe by Tom Keane. |
Told you a THOUSAND times...
Categories:
Leadership
Categories: Leadership
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We all have probably heard that phrase - "I told you a thousand times", from our sons, daughters, moms, dads, spouses, nurses, doctors, customers, bosses, and so on. Above, you see an old 45rpm record label with the title, "I've Changed My Mind A Thousand Times". So it seems like a bad thing... But in this case - it's a good thing. The 1000 times we're talking of is a 1000x reduction in energy use by the telecom industry. Yes - a one thousand times reduction. GreenTouch, a non-profit consortium of companies (see http://www.greentouch.org ) which are normally compeitiors and customers and suppliers of each other, have collaborated on several key energy saving schemes since its inception in 2010. We blogged about this on our EarthPM site. This story, posted just a few days ago, gives a great update in detail. To save you some time, we're just going to point you to a short video that sort of says it all. After watching it, we'll give you the connection(s) to project management, which you've probably already made.
Our favorite quotes: "Anything that is not green does not belong to the future" "new projects - ongoing....starting... it could be the blueprint of what R&D means to society" "give yourself the freedom to think differently" The project connections are obvious:
Once again - opportunity is knocking. If you are in the ICT industry, it's wise to become conversant in the language not only of bits, bytes, lasers, radio... but also the language of sustainability. |
End Game
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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. |
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. 
