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The Beginning and the End?

Famous Dutch author Harry Mulisch organized one of his more lengthy
books, The Discovery of Heaven, into four big chunks. He titled them:
1
The Beginning of the Beginning
The End of the Beginning
The Beginning of the End
The End of the End

heaven on earth
Mulisch provides an interesting way for us to think about his book (which,
by the way, has been made into an excellent movie), but it also gives us a
way to think about the projects on which we work. Even more important,
it’s a good way to look at the products of the projects on which we work.
In fact, we could take a lesson from The Discovery of Heaven and apply it
to Earth. We could say that our projects usually involve only the first two
chunks. We take an idea from its inception to the point to which it can be
deployed en masse—put into operation or the steady state. Whether it’s a
bridge, a sales-training program, a new piece of software, or a wind farm,
we, the project manager, get that idea to the steady state. So ironically, we
tend to focus not on that steady state, but rather on the beginning of the
beginning and the end of the beginning—the getting to the steady state.
Here, in the first two chunks, there are indeed green considerations, but
they are focused on the project itself and the resources the project team
itself uses. They are not focused on longer-term issues like what happens
to the product as it is manufactured, used, and disposed of.

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