The Sustainability WheelTM

Driving Project, Program and Portfolio Success: The Sustainability Wheel by authors Richard Maltzman and David Shirley is another great resource for project management professionals who are seeking to drive the concepts of sustainability into their organization’s project, program, and portfolio processes. Using The Sustainability Wheel^TM , they have identified 6 key interrelated components that are critical for embedding sustainability into to project management process. While the approach is relevant for individual project managers, it seeks to address the enterprise level through focusing on the PMO level in order to develop systemic protocols that impact organization wide projects, programs, and portfolios.

This book is structured to help the reader understand how an organization is connected to sustainability.  In order to explain these connection points, the authors utilize the parts of the wheel to connect to the road leading toward a more sustainable organization. The book contains many case studies and real life examples of these practices.

 Rich and Dave have a great deal of project management experience and the bridge that they build between the project management profession and the core concepts of sustainability-people, planet, and profit-serve as a useful guide to project management professionals. The authors are winners of the 2011 David I. Cleland Project Management Literature Award.

It is a must read. Enjoy your sustainability journey!

Driving Project, Program, and Portfolio Success

Kristina Kohl, MBA, PMP

Author of Becoming a Sustainable Organization: A Project and Portfolio Management Approach

Becoming a Sustainable Organization

People, Planet, Profits, and Projects

People, Planet, Profits and Projects

The aforementioned piece provides great insight and tools to promote sustainability within the field of project management. The author, Rich Maltzman draws on findings from the survey that Kristina Kohl co authored with Tom Baker and Pedro Echeverria for PMI entitled "The Voice pf Sustainability Project Managers." The original survey can be found here.Voice of PM

Leveraging Sustainable Strategy to Attract, Engage and Retain Your Workforce

On September 29, 2016, Kristina Kohl, MBA, PMP, principal of Becoming Sustainable moderated a panel at the Sustainable Business Initiative Meeting hosted by the NJDEP and Bergen Community College. The panelist included John Queenan, Senior Director of CSR, ADP, Nicole Dube, Outreach Coordinator, NJ Board of Public Utilities, and Nick Lange, Senior Consultant, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. The panelist participated in a lively discussion around environmental and social responsibility as drivers for employee attraction, retention, and engagement.

Nick Lange of VEIC discussed the concept of a Sustainability Benefits, which works similarly to health or retirements benefits for employees. The benefit is company funded and it can be used towards environmentally beneficial expenditures such as solar panels for the home, high efficiency HVAC equipment, or improved insulation. The concept is for an organization to expand the reach of its environmental impact by engaging employees and reducing their environmental footprints as well. Sustainability Benefits provide value to employees, companies, and society.

John Queenan of ADP shared his experience with how sustainability drives engagement especially with the millennial generation.  ADP’s CSR pillars align business goals with organizational culture. The foundational pillars are employability, ethics & compliance, environmental sustainability, and associate & community engagement. From their survey, their key drives of engagement are satisfaction, pride, retention, and advocacy. Alignment between organizational and Millennial values is an important driver in recruitment, retention, and engagement. Utilizing a social media app to recognize employee actions promotes a positive impact. Volunteer programs like partnering with Habitat for Humanity to donate used office furniture to flood ravaged Louisiana helps to promote a shared corporate vision while creating opportunities for skills development. CSR drives attraction, engagement, and retention based in ADP's data and metrics.

Nicole Dube, NJ Board of Public Utilities, spoke about the benefits of the NJ Clean Energy Program (NJCEP) for businesses and their employees. She also shared several case studies that highlight the NJCEP incentives, annual savings, and payback periods to demonstrate the effectiveness of the programs. She also gave some personal insights as a Millennial and what is important to her generation.

The event was well attended and concluded with a drawing of Kristina Kohl’s new book entitled “Becoming a Sustainable Organization.”

Gotham Green Hosts JetBlue

At the fall meeting of Gotham Green held at the famed, Friars Club, we received an informative presentation on JetBlue's sustainability strategy from Sara Lindenfeld, Sustainability Analyst. Jet Blue was named a 2015 Gotham Green Award winner for their commitment to sustainability.

One of their more visible projects is the T5 farm at JFK Airport where they farm blue potatoes, herbs and kale using organic methods. A portion of the organic soil for the container farm comes from composted food waste collected from Terminal 5. The composting is done by farmers in NY state. Employee volunteer to work in the garden and they pick produce for their families to eat at home. The blue potatoes are taken to Terra's nearby manufacturing facility where they are utilized for blue potato chip in new product formulation and testing.

While the T5 farm is highly visible to staff and customers, the JetBlue team is focusing on other important sustainability issues as well such as reducing emissions through using plug in vehicles (PEVs) to service their fleet of planes and biofuels for use in for existing fleet. Sustainability is part of everyone's job everyday.

The JetBlue leadership team views sustainability as an important part of creating financial value for the organization. One of the major markets served by JetBlue is the Caribbean. If the beauty of the beaches in the Caribbean is degraded through climate change, then JetBlue stands to lose a popular tourism route. Environmental stewardship is not only good for preserving natural biodiversity, but it is also good for preserving an organization's bottom line.

Sustainable Business Initiative Fall Meeting 9/29/16

On September 29, 2016, the Sustainable Business Initiative will be hosting its fall meeting at Bergen County Community College in Wall, NJ. The event is being held from 9:00am-12:15pm. Industry experts will discuss the positive impacts of sustainability on their core business strategy. Kristina Kohl, Principal, Becoming Sustainable, will host a panel discussing the benefits of sustainability on recruitment, retention, and development of your workforce. Building a sustainable workforce creates longterm value for organizations. Come learn about real life success stories from NJ business executives.

The SBI is a program of the NJ Department of Environmental.  It's vision is to raise awareness, educate and motivate companies to pursue sustainability as a competitive business strategy.  For additional information on the upcoming meeting, please go tohttp://www.nj.gov/dep/aqes/os-sbi.html#stakeholder.

Accelerating IT Success Article

Check out Kris' article entitled Becoming a Sustainable Organization published in Accelerating IT Success by Computer Aid. 

The headlines are full of reports on organizational compliance lapses, ethical missteps, environmental cover-ups, and social disconnects with key stakeholder groups. Yet the number of public companies reporting on environmental, social, and governance metrics has increased significantly over the past several years. If companies are incorporating sustainability into their mission statements, why do they continue to have environmental, social, and governance compliance problems? There is a performance gap between organizational sustainability vision and implementation of strategy because it isn’t being fully incorporated into the culture of the organization. Why is it so difficult to create a culture of sustainability that embeds valuing natural and social capital into the daily operations of an organization? Because it requires engaging the workforce and fundamentally changing policies, processes, and people in order to drive the sustainability vision forward.
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ITMPI Webinar -Becoming a Sustainable Organization

Recently, Kristina presented an ITPro webinar entitled Becoming a Sustainable Organization hosted by ITMPI to over 165 attendees who received PMI PDU credit.The focus of the webinar was to help project management professionals gain sustainability knowledge and skills to embed sustainability into project management methodologies in order to close the gap between their organization's sustainable vision and benefits realization. If you missed the webinar it is available in the ITMPI Library Becoming a Sustainable Organization  with a short clip available on YouTube Clip.

If you are interested in having Kristina speak at your conference or event, please email Kris@Becomingsustainable.org. Kristina's book Becoming a Sustainable Organization: A Project and Portfolio Management Approach is available through CRC Press and Amazon.