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At the Top of Their Game

Who are the companies that have planned and are achieving their goals of
greenality? How are they achieving those goals? What lessons in greenal-
ity can the project manager take away from the efforts of business—at the
organizational and project level? We’ve always asserted that project man-
agement is a microcosm of business. Running a project is like running
a business. There is a mission, goals, budgets, and other constraints that
both “business leaders” managing a business and project managers run-
ning projects have to take into account. Projects can be small or can cost
hundreds of millions of dollars and anywhere in between. Project manag-
ers have the responsibilities that corporate leaders of big business have; as
a matter of fact, project managers of large-scale, costly projects have bigger
budgets than many countries. The parallels are both significant and obvi-
ous to us. As mentioned before, it has always been our assertion that proj-
ect management is a microcosm of business; and to take it one step further,
project management is a breeding ground for good corporate leadership
because of the parallels of managing a business and running a project.
When we look at companies that model the best of green behavior, we
look at all of the aspects of the triple bottom line—people, profit, as well as
the environment. We believe the companies that we are highlighting are
examples of the best of the best, and have successfully balanced profit with
their commitment to their employees and customers, and the environment.
We should point out that in our research, we came across dozens and doz-
ens of excellent projects at scores of companies, but it’s beyond the scope
of the book—and less productive for the reader—to simply survey their
green projects. Again, focusing on the assertion that projects are a micro-
cosm of business, by modeling projects after these green business leaders
PMs will get the biggest “bang” for their green efforts.

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