It’s the time of year when the Jewish High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, literally “Head of the Year” and “Day of Attonement”) take place.

And this year, it yielded a connection between an Old Testament story, and our job of project managers.

Huh?

It’s possible, just give it a chance.   C’mon!

Let’s start with a story, which comes from a book called Rosh Hashanah Readings, Inspiration, Information, and Contemplation.

The story goes like this:

Rabbi Menahem Mendle of Kotzk once put this question to his students:  What was the hardest part of the Akedah (the episode where he was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac) for Abraham?  Was it the initial call (where he was first told he had to do this task)?  Was it the long walk to and up Mt. Moriah (the location where he was told to sacrifice Isaac)?  Or was it the binding of his son?

The answer from the Rabbi – of course – was “none of the above”.  The hardest part instead was coming down the mountain.  As Rabbi Wolpe, the author of the referenced book, says:

In peak moments of our lives, the immediacy, the rush of adrenaline often carries us through (sound like some of your projects?).  What happens afterward is the true test of sincerity, for afterward we must live with the consequences of our actions.  Are we faithful to those peak moments?  Dow we forget them, or disregard them?

He goes on to say:

“There is great drama in falling in love.  But the test of a love is not in the falling; it is in the staying.  The test of life is not in the moments of passion that can stir the blood and push even the sluggard to new swiftness and resolve.  The test of life is after the crisis has passed.  Our worthiness is not measured at the pinnacle, but in the persistence.

“In teaching (we substitute project management here), there are times when we are kindled by the task (project) at hand.  Such experiences are wonderful, but ultimately it is in the daily work, when we come down the mountain, that our achievement (project) will be measured.  In our [projects] we should recall that [projects] are not a parade of peaks but a long, loving walk together through valleys and level plains.  We should treasure the summit of inspiration, but not live by it.  Here below, once we have come down the mountain, our task awaits.”

The connection, if you haven’t got it yet, is that projects are often like the story of the binding of Isaac.

Think about Abraham’s Project – the binding of Isaac.  As project manager, Abraham faced these project elements:

• A project packed with high stakes and high emotion
• He was personally involved as a key stakeholder
• The project required both physical and mental devotion
• The project involved consuming important resources (in this case, potentially, Isaac!)
• Subject to radical change in scope by a Really Big Boss
• Subject to cancellation at any moment by a Really Big Boss
• The project manager did not agree with the end objective but “soldiered on” because it was the directive from the Really Big Boss
• The project manager needed to think of the long-term consequences of the project even after it was closed

Sound familiar?  Although human sacrifice is unlikely the product of your project, your project does have a product.  Its product – the bridge, software package, coffeemaker, new pharmaceutical or biomedical device, is a quest.  But don’t make the project the quest.  Make the steady-state success of the product your quest.  You indeed put your effort into bringing that end deliverable from idea to reality.  But have you thought about its life?  Have you considered the ‘long walk down the mountain’ and beyond?  How does the steady-state use of the project’s product meet your organization’s stated strategies and mission statement?  Because even if the project is successful and the product works, there may be some steady-state issues that, if taken into consideration now, could enhance your organization’s longer-term success.  Yes, it means thinking beyond the project.  But that’s what Rabbi Mendle was saying.  Think sustainably.

Often times we talk about the Green Spectrum, particularly with respect to projects that are green in general, or appear to have no sustainability aspect, when, in actuality, all projects have a sustainability element.  This time, we’ll look at a project that is Green by Definition, but is scrutinized through a sustainability lens.  And, it is a very,very interesting concept.

As part of the “Smart from the Start” (that sounds like a good phrase for sustainability in projects, too) initiative by Secretary of Interior Salazar, there is a proposal for a 200 mile-wide wind energy corridor stretching from Canada to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

While we don’t know yet about the other sustainable aspects being considered, we do know, at this point, that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) will write an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).  “Wind energy is crucial to our nation’s future economic and environmental security. We will do our part to facilitate development of wind energy resources, while ensuring that they are sited and designed in ways that minimize and avoid negative impacts to fish and wildlife,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. “This EIS process gives us an opportunity to evaluate impacts to dozens of imperiled species at a landscape level to ensure that wind energy development occurs in the right places in the right way.”

The reasoning behind the EIS is that in order to accomplish the project, an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) needs to be granted.  Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act and its implementing regulations “prohibit the take of animal species listed as endangered or threatened.”  It doesn’t allow the harassment, harm, pursuit, hunting, shooting, wounding, trapping, capturing, or collecting or, an attempt to engage in those practices when it comes to endangered or threatened species.  However, Under Section 10 of the Act, it allows for people to obtain an ITP as long as they are pursuing otherwise legal activities.  The permittee is then provided “incidental take” authorization.

The applicant must submit a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) containing the measures that it will take to minimize, avoid, or mitigate incidental take.  The Service will then review the HCP and issue an EIS that considers the impacts.  The Service will also identify “potentially significant impacts on biological resources, land use, air quality, water quality, water resources, economics, and other environmental/historical resources that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of implementing the proposed action or any of the alternatives. Various strategies for avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating the impacts of incidental take will also be considered.  Sounds like risk management to me!

“The proposed Permit Area is defined as a 200-mile wide corridor determined by defining the center line of the whooping crane migration based on the database of confirmed whooping crane observations from the Cooperative Whooping Crane Tracking Program and buffering that line by 100 miles on either side. This corridor spans the Gulf Coast of Texas north to the Canadian border and encompasses such cities as Houston, TX; Oklahoma City, OK; Wichita, KS; Bismarck, ND; Grand Island, NE; and Aberdeen, SD. In addition, the permit area includes the current and a large part of the historic range of the lesser prairie-chicken which extends the covered area beyond the 200-mile wide whooping crane migration corridor to include parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.”

“Species currently considered for inclusion under the permit include the following: the endangered whooping crane (Grus americana); endangered interior least tern (Sterna antillarum athalassos); endangered piping plover (Charadrius melodus); and lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus), a candidate species.”

There are two important points here for a project manager.  The first is that this will be one heck of a program, involving a huge amount of projects, wind energy projects including; the wind power generators themselves, transmission, distribution, support facilities, etc.  Secondly, it involves looking at the project through a sustainability lens.  In above case, a very narrow view because of regulatory issues (specifically the Endangered Species Act) one of the “drivers” in our book.  There will be more and more of these opportunities for the project manager who is not only aware of sustainability issues, vocabulary, and problems and drivers, but also uses that knowledge and considers greenality* when approaching any project.

* The degree to which an organization (project manager) has considered environmental (sustainable) factors that affect its projects during the entire project life cycle and beyond.

Some of the push back we’ve received is that unless you can assure economic benefits from instituting sustainable practices, it will be a hard sell.  Project managers, already managing scarce resources, may be put in the untenable position of using those scarce resources for issues that may not appear to be directly related to the project’s success.  As I said, that is some of the push back, certainly not our position.  We’ve always asserted that “a project run with green (sustainable) intent is the right thing to do”…..and that “an environmental strategy for a project provides added opportunity for success of both the project and the product of the project.”

From a friend of ours at the DOE, we received some information on a website that may be able to provide some additional ammunition for the project manager to help “sell” the concept of sustainability,  the Natural Capital Project. In further investigating this site, we came across this quote from Robert Costanza, Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont.  Professor Costanza puts it this way, “Natural capital is the extension of the economic notion of capital (manufactured means of production) to environmental goods and services. A functional definition of capital in general is: “a stock that yields a flow of valuable goods or services into the future”. Natural capital is thus the stock of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services into the future. For example, a stock of trees or fish provides a flow of new trees or fish, a flow which can be sustainable indefinitely.  Natural capital may also provide services like recycling wastes or water catchment and erosion control. Since the flow of services from ecosystems requires that they function as whole systems, the structure and diversity of the system are important components of natural capital.”  We particularly liked the example of the stock of trees and the stock of fish.

In our book, we’ve have some example of how sustainability can produce physical capital savings.  We’ve always asserted that there is other capital to be saved, and we think that Dr. Costanza echos our thoughts!

Various cultures celebrate this season differently, but in just about all of them, gold is considered valuable.

The book Green to Gold was one of our original inspirations when we started Earth PM, and wrote our book.  So we, of course, follow Andrew Winston’s excellent blog.  And he just put up a real nice posting.  We’ll be very lazy (getting in the holiday spirit) and simply send you there (a link is provided at the end of the list).  However, we ask that you take the time to follow the links he provides, and not just to read the list.

1. The climate bill dies in the U.S. Senate.

2. Nature strikes back/Climate change is real.

3. Resources get very tight.

4. China, China, China.

5. Renewables are for real and moving fast

6. Supply chain pressure continues to rise (a.k.a., Wal-Mart doesn’t slow down).

7. Zero is the new black.

8. Big goals were back.

9. Electric vehicles storm the market.

10. Small guys can do it too.

11. (Bonus!) The Military gets serious about green.

Click here for the top 10 (really 11) green business stories of 2010.  Again, we implore you to check out the well-assembled links that Winston has made available!

To our many subscribers, followers, and readers: thanks for your support, and have a great Holiday Season – may you find some green gold yourselves!

That was the subtitle on an article, Building Green, by Dave Choate (dchoate@seacoastonline.com) in one of our local papers.  The article focused on a local project, a newly constructed shopping center with 4.5 acres of porous asphalt and “an innovative gravel wetland that filters nutrients, oil, and metals out of the stormwater at the site.”    The construction was controversial at the time because of the proximity to an already “impaired” stream.  To some, protecting the environment is the most powerful driver, to others it is economics, to us they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  We consider both to be limited resources that project managers protect.

As a mater of fact, as we assert; when greenality is planned into a project, the cost is more than offset by the “savings and opportunities it provides.”  As we point out in our book, green makes cents.   In the aforementioned article, Dr. Robert Roseen of the University of New Hampshire’s Stormwater Center said “an increasing number of developments are finding it more cost-effective to build in green solutions….”  He also said that this project is “..the best stormwater management system for a site that I’ve seen, ever.”

Bottom-line, and this is where the economics come in, is that the total project costs was $9.6 million and even though the cost for the porous pavement was $884,000 more than conventional blacktop, the project netted a total savings of $930,000 (almost 10% of the total cost) because there was less earthwork and infrastructure that had to be done.  That’s the real message here.   While Dr. Roseen “Cost will still be a primary driver.  There may come a day when it’s not only arguably more effective to use LID (low impact development) methods, but also cheaper.”  We believe that time has come!

This is a follow up to an earlier post.

The California vote “signifies the largest public referendum on clean energy legislation. Tom Steyer, co-chairman of the NO on 23 campaign, stated “In the midst of a major economic downturn, and with a barrage of fear mongering and scare tactics, voters still said they want a clean energy future.”” from  Solar Novus Today (www.solarnovus.com)

Californians rejected the attempt to suspend the state’s global warming law signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The defeat was by a significant margin, 39 percent to 61 percent, with 93 percent of the precincts counted, according to the Associated Press.

The San Francisco Chronicle states that; “The vote clears the way for a state law restricting greenhouse-gas emissions to go into effect in 2012. The law requires the state cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It will require utilities to get almost a third of their electricity from renewable sources such as solar panels, and create a market for carbon-dioxide pollution permits.  Proposition 23 was “the largest public referendum in history on climate and energy policy,” said Fred Krupp, president of the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund.”

Although backers of Proposition 23, conceded defeat, they called the outcome “a victory for Wall Street over Main Street” vowing to continue their efforts to “save jobs” and curb energy costs.   I’m a little confused.  When I look at the contributors to the fight for and against Proposition 23, I might say it was a victory for Wall Street over Wall Street, because on one side are the likes of Microsoft and Apple, on the other is Big Oil.  It reminds me of the Harlequin, turn one way it is dark, turn the other it is light, but overall, it is the same, but that’s the subject of another post.

Continuing with the Chronicle, “”Millions of voters have said they see clean-energy jobs as the path forward through a tough economic climate,” Krupp said.”  For us, as project managers, that is key.  We need to continue to “surf the green wave.”  Green jobs mean green projects, mean project managers to manage those projects.

Don’t you think that those sponsors of green projects would rather have someone familiar with the reasons, the driving forces, behind the green wave, to manage their projects?  For further information on how you get SMARTER* on this “green revolution” see our book and follow us on this site.  The revolution is here, evidenced by the defeat of California’s Prop 23 and a continued emphasis on tax incentives for alternate energy development.

*From Green Project Management, CRC Press (Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic, Timely, and Environmentally Responsible)

Our good friend and EarthPm/Green Project Management supporter Elizabeth Harrin has written a new book and is a must read for every project manager, and for that matter, anyone who is remotely interested in the phenomenon know as “social media”.  Having co-authored a book and just submitted a manuscript for another one, I am always interested in the process (surprise, I’m a project manager).  According to Elizabeth, here is how her book evolved: “I am part of PMI’s New Media Council and at the Congress in Orlando last year we did a presentation on the uses of social media for project teams.  It was really well attended – I was surprised at the turnout.  It made me realise that there was an appetite amongst the project management community to learn about how we can embrace new technology and specifically social media to help with the way we manage project teams.  There are lots of books written about how to use social media for marketing and communication with customers, but nothing about how to use it behind the firewall for collaboration and communication between colleagues.  That’s the gap I was trying to fill with my book, Social Media for Project Managers.”  In other words, the book is at the intersection of social media and project management.  Sound familiar?

Using social media saves scarce resources, time, human, and environmental, if it is used effectively.  It can increase your greenality! Elizabeth lets you in on her methods to help project managers be more effective through the use of the technology, understand how other teams and individuals use technology to be able to tap into that enormous resource, and be aware of their own online presence and use that awareness to improve career prospects.

You probably know that Elizabeth is a force to be reckoned with.  Her previous book,  Project Management in the Real World, is a case-study based book covering what project managers really need to know to make their projects successful.  She also writes a very popular, award winning blog  A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, and was named one of the Top 25 Online Influencers in talent management by HR Examiner.   We highly recommend this book and urge you to check it out at PMI®, Amazon, B&N or your favorite book seller.

“Opt Out of Print” screams the insert in the most recent PM Network Magazine.  “Do your part to conserve resources.”  That is a terrific idea with green intent.  And, conserving resources doesn’t only mean saving trees.  If everyone decided to read PM Network electronically, it would mean saving the human resources required to put together a print journal.  Even if everyone didn’t “opt out of print”, only if some did, it would save trees, transportation (reduce carbon footprint), human resources, etc.  Yet, the bottom-line is the bottom-line.  How much would going electronic with PM Network , even some of the readers, save in $ resources for PMI®?  Just like we say in our book, going green is good for the environment and good for the bottom-line.

Rich and Dave are taking a road trip to the PMI® Global Congress-North America in our nation’s capital.  Washington, DC, is host to the 2010 event, October 9-12 at the Gaylord Conference Center.  The co-authors of Green Project Management will be engaging in a conversation about Green Project Management in the theater from 1:30-2pm on the 12th and will be at the DeVry University/Keller Graduate School of Management booth signing books  1-2pm on the 11th and 2-3pm on the 12th.  They will also be around for the conference to answer any of your questions.  Stop by the booth, or just stop them to say hello.  They are looking forward to meeting all of you to thank you for your support and interest in Green Project Management and to hear your stories.  Who knows, maybe you will be a member of the next Shamrock 7 group.

ONLY KIDDING – But seriously, we have a gig scheduled in September and more on the horizon.  On September 21st, we’ll be doing a presentation and be available to sign our book at the Boston BioPharmaPM Conference: Delivering Value Through Projects titled “Blue Pill-Green Pill-Chlorophyll-Landfill”.  It’s about sustainability; its importance and applicability to the biopharma industry and how projects within the industry can benefit from green project management.  As always, we’ll have tips and techniques to help you.

Watch our site for we just may be appearing in a “theater” near you.  We’d love to meet you.