Episode 120 – Taking Responsibility in Project Management

The podcast for project managers by project managers. How can practitioners incorporate sustainability and social value into their current practice? Karen Thompson and Nigel Williams are the co-creators of Responsible Project Management, an initiative that aims to accelerate achievement of sustainable development goals, encouraging responsibility in the context of projects and project management. PLEASE REFER TO OUR ‘CLAIM PDUS’ PAGE TO NOTE THE CHANGES TO THE PDU CLAIM PROCESS. Table of Contents 02:12 … The History of Responsible Project Management06:42 … Comparing Responsible Management to Corporate Social Responsibility07:45 … Changing the Role of the Project Manager10:43 … Correctly Defining Sustainability12:24 … Who Might I be Hurting through This Work?16:38 … Questions to Ask as a Responsible Project Manager19:51 … When it’s Not about Success or Failure22:19 … How to Raise Awareness amongst Stakeholders24:48 … A Manifesto for Responsible Project Management29:40 … 2021 The Year of Responsible Project Management32:02 … Learn More about Responsible Project Management33:13 … Closing WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  And we’d like to wish you a very happy New Year.  This is 2021, and we hope it’s going to be a good one. BILL YATES:  Oh, yes.  It’s got to be. WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s got to be better.  We like to talk with experts who are doing new and exciting things in the world of project management.  And that brings us to today’s guests.  Dr. Karen Thompson is a senior academic at Bournemouth University Business School in the U.K.  She’s a project professional turned innovative educator.who has done a lot of research and education in managing projects sustainably. And we have Dr. Nigel Williams, the Reader in Project Management and research lead at the University of Portsmouth.  Karen and Nigel co-lead the Responsible Project Management Initiative, which is aimed to encourage sustainability and social responsibility in an ethical manner by project managers. BILL YATES:  Yeah, sustainability is a topic that we’ve hit on a few times.  And I know just recently we interviewed Scott Berkun, and we focused on his book, “How Design Makes the World.”  Berkun talked about four questions in that book, and the fourth question:  Who might be hurt by your work, now or in the future?  This conversation that we’re going to have today just goes right in line with that.  I think some projects produce amazing things, could be a product or a service.  But we don’t really think about the fallout. We had conversations with Henk about the ocean cleanup project; right?  Episode 106.  Orbital space debris.  We talked with Dr. Heather about that problem in Episode 75.  We all want our cell phones to work.  We want to have GPS.  But what happens when the satellite dies? Sustainability is something that we’re passionate about.  This kind of takes it to another level.  It’s challenging to me as a project manager to think about, okay, in my day-to-day work, how can I be considering these questions?  So I’m excited about this conversation. WENDY GROUNDS: Not so long ago we spoke to Kaitlyn Bunker about the Islands Energy Program.  And that was also an incredible program where they’re really thinking about what is the good that we are bringing in our projects. And with that, let’s get talking to Karen and Nigel. The History of Responsible Project Management Karen, could you tell us a little bit about the history of Responsible Project Management, how you started it? KAREN THOMPSON:  Yes, certainly.  Well, how it started was way back in 2017 I’d just finished my Ph.D.  And one of the things that I uncovered while doing that were all the claims that project management research – there were criticisms around it not being relevant enough to practice.  So in 2017 I held a sort of networking event where I brought together practitioners and researchers and educators for a sort of an event to try and start stimulating discussion around research. And making it more relevant to practice. Sustainability wasn’t specifically on the agenda at that point.  But it’s something that’s been in the forefront of my mind for a very long time, and a great frustration, that projects contribute massively to economies around the world to change.  And if we don’t manage that change responsibly, then we’re contributing to degradation of the planet, social division and so forth.  So in 2018, in the summer, we held a workshop at Bournemouth University, where we brought together researchers, educators, practitioners to start exploring what being responsible might mean in the context of project management. So several points we touched base with.  One were these 17 United Nations sustainable development goals, and another was the literature on responsible management.  The Business School at Bournemouth University were advanced signatories to PRME, which is the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education.  But project management has tended to develop over the years in something of a little bubble.  There’s been lots of developments in management that haven’t necessarily always found their way through into project management. Either the literature from an academic perspective or indeed from practice.  So that was partly where we started. We chose the word “responsible” really to echo those sustainable development goals and responsible management ideas. Really also with the view that project management underwent a rethinking around 2003/4.  There was a network that was funded to start looking at issues and project failure and how that could be improved.  At the same time, interestingly, sustainable development went through a rethinking exercise.  As far as I know, the two initiatives were completely separate.  And both fields, one of the things they recognized was sort of a bit of a PR problem.  So sustainable development, it was recognized that it was the narrative that was causing a lot of problems.  So we’ve been talking about sustainability for a very long time.  But as is becoming ever more apparent, very little action had been taken.  The way it was defined was around future generations. Well, the future we were talking about in the 1980s is now.  We need to refine our definition.  It’s no longer appropriate to be thinking about this just for the future.  These impacts are here now.  So we want to act on those.  And similarly, the problem is a well-managed project, the project manager and the project management is invisible.  So we firmly believe that Responsible Project Management can help accelerate achievement of the sustainable development goals.  And the other aspect that I’m sure Nigel will pick up on in a moment is that sustainable development has tended to focus on the environment.  Now, actually, if you look at the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, you’ll see an awful lot of them are about society and about people. NIGEL WILLIAMS:  Right.  I’ve been involved in the project management community for some time.  I used to run Organizational Project Management PMI for a bit, and stuff.  And I found out all the conversations that were happening there were pretty much the same, that there’s lots of discussion about project success.  There’s a lot of discussion about tools and techniques.  It felt we’re having the same conversation over and over.  So there were developments happening in the general management world that weren’t really reflected in project management.  I think the last big think was Agile maybe. The idea of responsibility in management is a long-debated issue from the early conception of modern management.  And even from the ‘50s there were lots of debates as to what is the social responsibility of business.  So a little later on we developed corporate social responsibilities where organizations had an official stance as to how they should deal with communities and so on.  Comparing Responsible Management to Corporate Social Responsibility So how responsible management differs from corporate social responsibility is that it looks at managers, individual managers, who take ownership of environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and enact them in their daily practice in an ethical manner.  So that’s where we separate responsible management from corporate social responsibility.  Now, in project management, it’s doubly so because project managers have a lot of uncertainties that they deal with that can’t necessarily be prescribed in advance by the organization. So if you work in a traditional operational environment, a lot of the organizational rules can be scripted in advance because a lot is known in advance.  If you work in something like projects, you deal quite a lot of uncertainties, and project managers have to create responses to a lot of unforeseen circumstances.  So you really want to have managers who internalize the idea of responsibility, rather than simply relying on external perspectives on responsibility. Changing the Role of the Project Manager BILL YATES:  Karen and Nigel, I can already feel the tension of the project manager who has certain goals and objectives that they have to reach.  And now we’re saying, okay, as you do that, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension that we want you to consider as you carry out your project.  What is the impact you’re having on society, on the environment, on those stakeholders or those people that are even part of the project team?  I’m delighted to have you guys talking with us about this.  Just jumping right into that, how does this concept of being a responsible project manager change the role of the project manager? KAREN THOMPSON:  I’m very aware that the role of the project manager is already very stressful.  Managing cost, time,