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188 • Green Project Management

The 4L Approach
Lean – Be aware of your operational
counterparts and their efforts to reduce waste
and make operations more efficient. Apply
this to the project and its product.
4 L Learn – Collect project artifacts, lessons
learned, and share benefits from the
community of project managers with respect
to environmental/sustainability. Grow
organizationally.
Lasting
Linked – Connect with your organization’s
Linked Environmental Management Plan and break
down organizational walls.
Learn Lasting – Think long-term, and of the lasting
effects of your actions as project manager, not
only for this and future projects, but also in
Lean terms of the product of your project.

Figure 10.2
The 4L approach.

summary—the 4l approach
To wrap up this section as well as to integrate other portions of our book,
we provide the 4L approach. The 4 Ls (lean, learn, linked, and lasting)
describe how these aspects generally associated with operations can indeed
be linked to the project and to the project managers and their team.
See Figure 10.2—this is self-explanatory.

endnotes

1. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Great Barrington,
MA: North River Press, 1992).
2. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal, http://www.vimeo.com/6440653.
3. James P. Womack, What Is Lean? Lean Enterprise Institute, http://www.lean.org/
WhatsLean/.
4. James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth
in Your Corporation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
5. Mary Poppendieck, Principles of Lean Thinking, http://www.poppendieck.com/
papers/LeanThinking.pdf, 2002.
6. Ibid.
7. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lean Manufacturing and the Environment,
2009, http://www.epa.gov/lean/thinking/index.htm.