Carry on sustainably

Eddie Obeng muses on what ‘sustainability’ should really mean, and what makes a project truly sustainable.

Elon Musk’s dream of sustainability is to ensure that life can extend beyond Earth to another planet and then on to entirely new solar systems.

You will lead projects that will propel the future of the world, so what’s your dream of sustainability? Do you gaze into the future and see sustainability as an adventure of each person living their full life forever? Or do you dream of a controlled set of guidelines making people do ‘the right thing’? Perhaps you focus beyond homo sapiens to a global habitat for all living beings? Most likely, you’re too busy to pay attention.

A silent room and shuffling feet

The first time I heard my insurance client say ‘sustainability’, I made a fool of myself. While I was growing up, my mother fought to set up an Institute for Aquatic Biology to ensure the creation of the world’s largest man‑made lake on the Volta River in Ghana didn’t repeat the ecological and human carnage of the previous record holder, the Aswan Dam project. After the 1972 UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm, she became Director of the UN environmental programme. Gaia was in my baby milk.

Back to my insurance client… I blurted out excitedly, “That’s a huge new market for you, but who will pay the premiums?” The room went silent; feet shuffled. They meant sustaining profits, not exploring the interdependent complexity of ecosystems and human activity. I was so embarrassed.

I just keep misunderstanding what people mean by sustainability. Recently, two huge plastic wheelie bins, the weight equivalent of about 10 years’ worth of use of plastic bags, were left on my drive as a ‘sustainable solution to carbon’. Giggling to neighbours, I called it crazy. None of them laughed. Design mentor David Kester, persuading me to work on an HS2 sub‑project, addressed my objection to felling ancient woodland, saying, “They may be felling a 500‑year‑old oak tree but they’re planting 500 new one‑year‑old oaks!”

“A shame for the beetles who have lived for 400 generations in the same tree‑home, but we must end privilege!” I laughed. He didn’t.

Now my council hands out free wildflower seeds while approving the demolition of sound, 50‑year‑old homes that would last another 100 years to develop Parthenon‑style, faux palaces from imported stone and wood, paving over gardens with carbon‑hungry concrete. I see black humour everywhere, but everyone else sees #sustainability.

What are the project principles for sustainability?

Although sustainability is critical, popular approaches are dire. Elon Musk says he ignores ‘what everyone knows’ and starts from first principles. What project principles should drive our vision for sustainability?

Perhaps stakeholder management? Projects fail when narcissistic project managers who think that they know best psychopathically force a solution onto stakeholders. We should instead discover the stakeholders’ views on sustainability and deliver for them. I feel we have vocal and silent stakeholders. Vocal stakeholders are human; silent stakeholders include my family of beetles. To engage the silent stakeholders, we will need humility to study the complexity of their needs and then we must innovatively shape projects we lead to ensure sustainability.

Providing plastic bins to reduce a single element in the atmosphere is not sustainable. It does not sustain the fish who eat or get entombed in plastic. Like good marketers we need to stand in the shoes of our silent stakeholders to protect them forever (although I’m not sure beetles wears shoes).

Perhaps risk prelimination? Seventy per cent of projects fail or underperform. Such huge waste is not sustainable, and we must learn to deliver perfect projects. We must FutureMap deliverables, checking the project solution fixes the stated problem without collateral damage. After all, most of today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions.

Conserve and don’t waste

I dream of sustainability as a spinning top. It’s like evolution over the past three billion‑plus years, always changing and yet always staying the same. It’s like in Alice in Wonderland, where the Red Queen describes Wonderland as a world where, “it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place”.

So, stop projects that chase progress – a focus on opportunities and challenges is too narrow. Sustainable projects are scoped to include all the additional activities required to conserve what existed before the project starts and are executed without waste. Sustainable projects ensure that every stakeholder, vocal or silent, will give you the thumbs‑up and say, “carry on sustainably”!

Professor Eddie Obeng HonFAPM is an educator, TED speaker and author. You can join his masterclasses, courses and workshops on the QUBE #SuperReal campus.