Come See Kristina at the PMI Global Congress in Barcelona

Kristina will be presenting on "Closing the Gap Between Sustainable Strategy and Implementation at the PMI Global Congress 2016 in Barcelona on May 11. Sustainable strategy considers the impact of organizational decisions and actions on natural, social, and financial capital. Increasingly organizations are seeking to adopt a sustainable approach because of the benefits of sustainable strategy such as increased innovation, new market opportunities, improved employee engagement, better risk management, increased access to capital, and improve operating performance. However, a gap exists between sustainability vision and organizational adoption and integration.  In order to reap the benefits of a sustainable strategy, it must become part of organizational core values and integrated into organizational culture. Yet many barriers exist for organizations seeking to transform into sustainable organizations.

Adopting sustainability begins with an understanding of the concepts of sustainability, the business value proposition, and gaining the support of the C-suite to promote strategic alignment between sustainable and business strategy. Once leadership has embraced the benefits of a sustainable approach, the challenge becomes integrating sustainability into core values that impact people, process, and policies.

To begin the process, you must understand your organization’s readiness for sustainable change. Where is the organization on its sustainability journey? Are you just beginning the process or are you experienced with sustainability programs and projects. Tools such as the Sustainability Assessment helps to identify areas of organizational strength and weakness as it relates to sustainable strategy providing a roadmap for improvement.

The key to transformational change is creating alignment between business and sustainable strategy and then effectively implementing the strategy. Project management professionals offer part of the solution through methodologies and structure for planning and implementing programs and projects that drive organizational sustainability. In order to achieve success, project management professionals need additional skills to over come organizational barriers. These include gaining tools and techniques to identify and gather requirements from a broad and diverse stakeholder group. The stakeholder engagement process is complex and multi-faceted.  Identifying material issues through evaluating an organization’s product value chain provides perspective on the full impact of operations on natural, social and financial capital. Forging relationships with key business leaders through identifying the impact that sustainable strategy has on their areas of responsibility is an effective means of forging alliances and gaining additional champions. In particular, human capital professionals can be strategic allies in the process of transforming an organization’s culture toward sustainability.

The portfolio management process facilitates alignment between sustainability and core business strategy through the portfolio component selection process. Tools such as Sustainability Portfolio Alignment Matrix facilitate the process.

In order to unlock the benefits of sustainability, we focus on driving change and embedding sustainability.  Defining metrics, gathering and managing data, and reporting on progress adds credibility to the impact of a sustainable transformation. This approach considers how sustainable strategy impacts all aspects of an organization’s value chain from raw material sourcing, supplier selection, engagement of talent, to customer requirements.

Project management professionals will learn from case studies, project plans, and interviews with sustainability professionals who have undertaken programs and projects to embed sustainability within their organizations. Project management professionals will gain a better understanding of drivers of misalignment between strategic sustainable vision and implementation as well as tools and techniques to improve their sustainability program and project success. Full benefit realization of a sustainable approach relies on effective alignment between strategy and implementation.