I appeared suddenly at the table where Monica and Mohamed were having their breakfast with two other unknown project managers. “Good morning, Paola. I was just saying to our colleagues that you are the right person to answer their question about the meaning of sustainability in project management”, said Mohamed. “Good morning”, I smiled to them. One of the unknown colleagues asked me with a big surprise: “How have you found just this table?”. He was right. There were hundreds of round tables in a huge hall, where thousands of project managers were having their breakfast at the congress site. How? This is another story (see the note below).
I provided a detailed answer to Mohamed’s question. At that time, I was the Knowledge Management Leader of the Global Sustainability Community of Practice of the Project Management Institute (PMI). It was about ten years ago.
Events proceed very fast in this period. Now everyone knows what sustainability is and why we need it everywhere. Or they should know, or they think to know. Unfortunately, the first and the most important goals of sustainability have been lost along the path. The word has been manipulated cleverly.
The well known “green washing” is used to replace true environmental sustainability.
“Social washing” is used to confuse true social rights, that are about human rights, workers’ rights, and users’ rights. Social wellbeing is mistaken for social security and surveillance.
“Economic washing” is used to replace durability, repairability, savings and prosperity with the interests of particular entities.
The recent propagation of the sole thought has led to the disappearance of the PMI Communities of Practice. They were more than twenty, about different subjects of project management.
And, also, PMI is no more “my” PMI. Even though I was able to have one of my comments about sustainability approved and added to the latest version of the PMBOK® (Project Management Body of Knowledge), the real direction of the profession is just opposite.
The supremacy of the “agile” way of working overwhelmed more fair approaches. Simplifying very much, agile could be understood like the Italian saying: “Tie the donkey where the owner wants”. The owners have just the money and the power and could know nothing about donkeys, where and how to tie them, and if they really need to be tied. They take no responsibility for the decision and no one is in charge for what happens. The global and comprehensive vision in time and in space is lost. Sustainability needs a holistic approach, which means with competence and from different sides at the same time.
I found this definition of sustainability, dated 2009, in a document of the Project Management Institute, and liked it very much from the very first moment: “Global sustainability is the attainment of endurable economic, social, and environmental wellbeing of all elements of society”.
If you want to know what sustainability really is, you should go back to its roots, including my book “Handbook for sustainable projects – Global sustainability and project management” published in 2014, and to the books of that period of other colleagues on the same subject. Later on, some thieves took possession of this powerful word and changed its meaning for their own interests.
Poor sustainability, it has been stolen and counterfeited.
Paola Morgese, PMP
Civil Hydraulic Engineer
M.S. Sanitary and Environmental Engineering
http://it.linkedin.com/in/ingpaolamorgese/en https://sustainableprojectsblog.wordpress.com/
Photo: Azalea, Rhododendron, © Paola Morgese 2023
Note. To know how to appear in the right place at the right moment, it could be useful to read my latest book “Timeo, Iside svelata e La dottrina segreta nei loro concetti più belli” only in Italian, or its direct sources published in English (“Timaeus, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine in their most beautiful concepts”).
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