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Who Are Green Stakeholders?

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Who Are Green Stakeholders?

Recap of GreenPM:

GreenPM® integrates environmental thinking (“GreenThink”) into all of the project management processes. The point about GreenPM is not that you make every decision in favor of the one that is most environmentally friendly. The point is that you start to take the environment into account during the decision-making process. You might make most decisions the same as you do today. But there might be some decisions you would make differently.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholders are specific people or groups who have a stake or an interest in the outcome of the project. Normally stakeholders are from within the company and could include internal clients, management, employees, administrators, etc. A project may also have external stakeholders, including suppliers, investors, community groups and government organizations.

The first part of stakeholder analysis is to determine the project stakeholders.

Green Stakeholders

The additional question we ask in GreenPM is whether there are any “green” stakeholders that are relevant to our project. In most cases I think the answer will be “no”. That is, most projects may not have any obvious connections with the environment or green concepts.

However, on some projects, with a little bit of thought, you might realize that there are some additional stakeholders that are interested in your project from a green perspective. Some examples of green stakeholders are.

  • Your internal Environmental Management Group. Check the mandate for this group to see the areas where they have an interest. You might be surprised that they could have an interest in many projects if the project manager and sponsor only bothered to ask the question.
  • The facilities organization. If your project touches on the facilities organization, you may well have some green implications. The facilities group is interested in recycling, waste handling, trash removal, office moves, cleaning, and much more. Of course, most projects don’t have a need to engage the facilities group. But if you do, they may very well have green policies that you will want to take into account on your project.
  • Procurement. If your project will work with vendors, make sure that the vendors meet any green requirements that have been established by the Procurement Organization.
  • The public or public agencies. If your project impacts the public, or a public agency, you may well fall under some environmental scrutiny. For instance, let’s assume your project requires a survey to gather stakeholder feedback. If the survey is only internal to your company then only your company would be interested in the format of the survey. However, if the survey goes to the public, you may get held to a higher environmental standard. For instance, you may be criticized if your survey extends to multiple pages. You might be scrutinized if you print too many physical surveys and you have many extra copies. You may be asked to use recyclable paper. These are just small examples. The point is that if your project has a public component you may get held to an even higher level of green scrutiny.

The prior examples show that you may have some stakeholders that are interested in the environmental aspects of your project. Some of them may be stakeholders anyway and you will just need to be aware of their green interests as well. However, in some cases, thinking about GreenPM will allow you to include some stakeholders that you may not have identified before.  

Save the World – Use GreenPM®.