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Executing the Project • 121

A point to remember when communicating is that there is a variety of
social networking sites that can enhance the experience.

For real estate agents, it’s “location, location, location.” Similarly, for proj-
ect managers it’s “communications, communications, communications”—
with the intraproject team, interproject team, and external stakeholders.
The alert mechanisms such as the jeopardy and escalation processes are
one area of communications that has to be monitored for any changes in
the greenality requirements of the project. The immediacy of intrateam
communications is crucial to maintaining the focus on the green aspects
of the projects. The project team is the first line of defense for protecting
the project’s greenality. Any issues that arise affecting the project’s greenal-
ity must immediately be brought to the attention of the project manager.
Because of the sensitivity of the greenality efforts, failure to immediately
report, acknowledge, and resolve such issues could result in the perception
that there is a lack of commitment to the effort on the part of the project
team. If the team is perceived to lack the commitment, then the project’s
green efforts can be viewed as insignificant. Here, actions speak louder
than words, and your project team is sending “messages,” intentionally or
not, by their apparent commitment as judged by the larger organization.
It’s your job as PM to be aware of that implication and to lead the team not
only as a project team but as an example.
For the same reason, regular status meetings should be held and will be
more frequent during the critical deployments of the greenality aspects
of the project. The reason is to closely monitor the greenality efforts of
the project to avoid a situation as described earlier. We all know about
scope creep. Here we are talking about avoiding hope creep, when indi-
viduals get behind on their deliverable and “hope” to catch up, and effort
creep, where individuals are working as hard as they can but cannot get
any traction, endangering their deliverable. This is what we’re trying to
avoid with earlier detection of any issue. Another technique to use when
encouraging project communications within the team is to develop an
environment where it’s okay to pass along bad news. The project manager
needs to always create a team environment that says it is fine to raise your
hand if you are having an issue, but especially with the deployment of any
green aspects of the project. It may be a little easier to do that with green
issues because they are relatively new and may not be well understood, so
questions are natural. Remember, we don’t mean to assert that greenality