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114 • Green Project Management

efforts. By doing this you will be able to better identify those individuals
who may need some additional, and perhaps off-line, coaching.
Explicitly define the project goal and objectives referring to SMARTER
if necessary. It is also important to introduce the project team, letting each
discuss their roles. Ask them each to talk about their expectations of their
contributions to greenality. Note that although we focus here on greenal-
ity, we realize that this is a general meeting to discuss the project’s execu-
tion. Still, we insist that this will be the right time to introduce and get
buy-in on greenality. There will be additional meetings with individual
team members to discuss the contributions of each. In this meeting, you
need to keep the team focused on the project.
This meeting is the first time many of the team have seen the proj-
ect in its full context, especially with respect to greenality. The purpose
is to establish a baseline project plan, to make sure all of the tasks are
included, the right people are assigned, the costs and schedule are reason-
able, and that risks are represented. Input requested at this time should
be confined to those attributes of the project. Since this is the first time
the plan is shared with the entire team, expect changes, controversy, and
some pushback. Realize that greenality will be a new concept to some,
and therefore may appear to be riskier than prior projects without the
greenality component. The project information shared during this meet-
ing is the road map for the project and for project tracking, so it is impor-
tant to capture all team members’ concerns. Other aspects of the project
are probably well understood; carefully emphasize greenality, the newest
component of the project’s plan. There will be a tendency here to wander
off track, but again, it is very important to stay focused. Remember to
stress that greenality, like quality, must be built in and not “sprayed on”
after the project is complete. One technique to keep the team focused is to
document greenality concerns in the project’s action register. Make sure
that you have a category for greenality action items, with some sort of
identifier. That way, the project manager can quickly identify those issues
related to greenality that need to be addressed. Remember the visual
cues you gained earlier during the meeting? Use these to help you assign
action items for greenality-related tasks of the project. Using your judg-
ment you could choose to assign a task that has some green focus to the
more cynical contributors, thus challenging them and perhaps gaining
buy-in through their involvement. Or, you could tap into the energy you
noted earlier, and assign a greenality task to one of the most fervent sup-
porters. Depending on the types of issues that arise during the meeting,