Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) “comes in many forms“and that is not just what we say in our Green Project Management. One of the brief examples we use in defining CSR is City Year. Timberland, one of the companies we chose to highlight in our chapter “At the Top of Their Game”, is one of the early supporters of City Year. Our book was published in 2010, so we felt it was time to revisit City Year to see how the initiative was progressing. We were not surprised that it is doing very well, thanks for an expansion of programs and continued support from some major corporations.
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CSR, City Year-Revisit
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One of City Year’s programs is National In-Link Sponsorship. Timberland continues to provide extraordinary support according to City Year’s website; "Over the past 20 years, the relationship between City Year and Timberland has grown from official footwear provider to a partnership in helping students and schools succeed. For the past 10 years, we have seen first-hand the energy, dedication and idealism of City Year New Hampshire corps members as they shared our headquarters as home base. City Year’s red jackets have become symbols of service and a mutual commitment to our communities. As City Year begins a second decade in New Hampshire, we are thrilled to see City Year expand to have a greater impact on the schools and communities where they’re needed most. Their presence and influence in our community are deeply felt – and valued – within Timberland." - Jeff Swartz, Former President and CEO, The Timberland Company. City Year is now a partner in IBM’s initiative World Community Grid (WCG), a program that has “more than 600,000 volunteers, and hundreds of companies, associations, foundations, nonprofits and academic institutions.” The program focuses IBM’s greatest resources, “technology and talent to develop initiatives that enrich the lives of communities across the globe.” The effort uses “surplus power of more than 1.5 million personal computers to advance humanitarian research projects.” For more information see WCG. KPMG, the international firm that provides audit, tax and advisory services, provides City Year with audit and tax review counseling at a discounted rate. Microsoft, another of our companies we felt were at the top of their game in 2010, continue to support City Year with software and technology. And, WilmerHale® provides legal representation to City Year. “The firm generously donates its time and expertise, providing critical legal services to City Year on an ongoing basis. In 2006, WilmerHale was officially named City Year's ‘National Legal Counsel’ and in 2010, WilmerHale received a ‘20th Anniversary Leadership Award’ for its extraordinary, long-standing partnership with City Year.” In 2010 we made a choice to include City Year as an example of what companies can do to support CSR. It is always a danger to commit to paper something that could be fleeting and just a “fad” or something just to satisfy the latest “buzz words.” We are happy to report that City Year is not one of those “fads”, but an enduring and expanding corporate social responsibility effort that is good for the world! |
We're all wet
Categories:
Activism
Categories: Activism
| ...but perhaps not for long. At least...not without the help of many water-related projects and project managers with sustainability awareness in their arsenal of talents. Read on - you will find that as a project manager, you may be a strategic asset! According to a U.S. State Department document released on World Water Day last year, the need for fresh water will exceed the supply by 40 percent by the year 2030. The document contains this interesting graphic, so if you learn nothing else from this post, here is one takeway with the latest facts:
From this, we see that only 2.5% of the world's water is fresh water. And in turn, that is used for all of the items shown on the right part of the chart - agricultural, industrial, residential. All of this points to shortages that concern us not only from an (important) ecological and business perspective but even as a security issue for the US. Quoting from the document: We assess that during the next 10 years, "Water problems will contribute to instability in states important to US national security interests. Water shortages, poor water quality, and floods by themselves are unlikely to result in state failure. However, water problems—when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions—contribute to social disruptions that can result in state failure." In other words, it can bring down whole governments. Tying this in to project management, and also from this report, "Pressure will arise for a more engaged United States to make water a global priority and to support major development projects, including through financial assistance." World Water Day was yesterday, but it's not too late to think about it. In fact, the entire year (2013) has been designated the U.N. International Year of Water Cooperation. It reflects the “multi-dimensional mandate in the realm of natural and social sciences, culture, education and communication, and its significant and long-standing contribution to the management of the world’s freshwater resources.” Back to the U.S. State department report. As a project manager, ever felt "strategic"? Well, perhaps you should. Here's a gem for you: "we assess that states will also use their inherent ability to construct and support major water projects to obtain regional influence or preserve their water interests.". Where does that 'inherent ability to construct and support major water projects" come from? Well of course, partially from the natural resouces of the state, but also, from....YOU. You - as a PM - are part of the states' ability to support the projects. So congratulations on your newfound strategic value! Read more here: |
Trends in Clean Energy for Project Managers to Watch
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People always ask us, "do I need to be an expert in a field to manage projects in that practice area?". Our answer is, of course, 'it depends'. But if pushed, the answer is no. No, one doesn't need to be an expert. But what one needs is something critical and that is conversancy. One needs to be able to talk intelligently and to know how to find out more and to find the expertise, even if it isn't directly part of your own capability. I suppose we could say that one doesn't need to be an expert, but one needs to be able to apply expert knowledge.
To that end, we'd like to help you take advantage of some recent research which will provide you with increased conversancy on the topic of clean energy, improving your knowledge not only of the technical aspects of this area but an advantage in terms of knowing where the PM jobs are - and will be - as the green economy grows. After all, Green Project Management, as we've written about in our book, is about the altruism of doing the right thing.... about PMs being the change agents and the ones who can help apply sustainability prinicples on their jobs... but it's also about the other green. The money, the opportunity, the growth, it provides for your PM career. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing the right thing for yourself, your career, your discipline of PM. "Clean Energy Trends 2013" was just released by CleanEdge. You can download the entire document here. The 5 trends they identify in this brand-new report are:
Here are some highlights from the report that shows a project manager how to "follow the money" in terms of clean energy project management opportunities:
Together, we project these three sectors will continue to grow over the next decade, nearly doubling from $248.7 billion in 2012 to $426.1 billion in 2022." Here's a graphic from the report for those visual thinkers out there:
So if you're interested in building your conversancy in the area of clean energy, have a look at the report. Do yourself a 'career favor'. |
Forewarned is Forearmed - Levels of Sustainability Information
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I am continuing to rewrite my course on Green IT for Boston University using a new text book, Harnessing Green IT, Principles and Practices, Wiley @2012, edited by San Murugesan and G. R. Gangadharan. I keep finding gems within the text. In Chapter 9, written by Edward Curry (Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway) and Brian Donnellan (Innovation Value Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway) entitled Sustainable Information Systems and Green Metrics, they talk about the different levels of sustainability information and what is included in each level. In the Product Level Information, “Understanding the impacts of a product or service requires an analysis of all potential impacts associated with a product, process or service for its entire life cycle. This is achieved by using a technique known as life cycle assessment.” Those of you who are familiar with us (EarthPM) and our book, Green Project Management, are aware of the emphasis we placed on life cycle assessment. We dedicated a full chapter to it and mentioned it in other chapters. That is how important we feel it is to that intersection between green business and project management. Looking at the product level, there are four stages of LCA; goal and scope definition, determining what type of information to give to decision makers about a particular product; inventory analysis, data collection “include all data related to the environment (e.g. CO2); impact assessment, the contribution to selected assessment categories (e.g. energy usage); and finally, interpretation, determining confidence levels of results to communicate to stakeholders. At the Individual Level, it is necessary to understand all of the aspects of sustainability resulting from impacts by individuals. It included the life cycle assessment of products and services we purchase, materials we use in various construction projects, operations of our primary residence and “private travel,” especially longer airplane flights. The Functional Level includes such things as data center efficiencies, data center power metrics, the standard Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) (PUE = Total facility power/IT equipment power) and data center infrastructure efficiency (DCiE) (DCiE = 1/PUE = IT equipment power/total facility power x 100%) and new data center measures like Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) (CUE = CO2 emitted (kg CO2) eq /unit of energy (kWh) x (Total data Center Energy/IT equipment energy). The Organizational Level Information includes establishing sustainability performance metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) like; investment in environmental protection, GHG emissions, water usage, etc. One can also get to the Regional/City Information Level taking into account quantitative and qualitative criteria around buildings, transportation, water and waste on the city or regional basis. We believe that by looking at sustainability in “chunks” or level, it will be easier both to convince people of the “why” for sustainability”, and the “how” once there are logical ways to measure it. |
People, Planet, Profits, Projects, and...Popes?
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As Pope Benedict XVI retires and the conclave meets at the Vatican, it's interesting to us to reflect on his leadership with respect to the environment - and the environmental projecs that he launched. Benedict, according to this article in the National Geographic online magazine, "approved a plan to cover the Vatican's Paul VI hall with solar panels, enough to power the lighting, heating, and cooling of a portion of the entire country (which covers, of course, a mere one-fifth of a square mile). He authorized the Vatican's bank to purchase carbon credits by funding a Hungarian forest that would make the Catholic city-state the only country fully carbon neutral. And several years later, he unveiled a new hybrid Popemobile that would be partially electric." But these are (quite literally) surface-level changes. If you will, in project management terms, these are 'operations' changes. What's much deeper, and much more in line with our (I guess you could call it) preaching, is at the mission/vision/values level. Remember, an enterprise is established, per the Stanford Execution Framework which we adopt to describe it, so that at the top level is "Ideation" which includes mission, vision, and values, in the center is "Strategy:, at the bottom is "Operations" (the steady state) and connecting strategy to operations is an entity with which you'll be familiar: projects, programs, and portofolios. So we - as project managers of any denomination - care a great deal about the strategy, mission, vision, and values 'above' us. And what Benedict, and Pope John Paul VI before him did in this area is not insignficant. Again, according to the article, which we recommend to you, "As Benedict begins his retirement today, the better way to judge Benedict's influence might not be in how many solar panels he had installed at the Vatican or how many gallons of gasoline he saved with the Popemobile, but in how he harnessed the influence of his global church to act on the sort of change he advocated. Many national dioceses around the world now include "environmental stewardship" on their list of advocacy topics. In the U.S., bishops have created curricula for discussing sustainability in school and pushed local officials on issues like clean air." An additional article on this topic from the UK's Telegraph can be found here. Also, if this posting intrigues you, the book which we used to illustrate the post can be found here. |