Sustainability as a Leadership Discipline

Many organizations have established sustainability goals, but fewer have embedded those goals into the decisions that govern investments, portfolios and project delivery. Sustainability requires leaders to look beyond immediate delivery and consider whether today's choices will still make sense tomorrow. That makes sustainability not only a strategic priority, but a leadership discipline.

These organizations have already made meaningful commitments. They have set goals, published targets and signaled intent to stakeholders. Yet the harder work begins after the commitment is made.

Sustainability must be translated into investment choices and trade-offs, portfolio decisions, project requirements, governance and measurement. Without that translation, ambition can remain visible at the enterprise level but disconnected from the work where outcomes are delivered.

PMI’s latest research shows this gap clearly. Executives are largely confident that their organizations can achieve their sustainability goals. But confidence drops closer to delivery: only 43% of PMO leaders share that confidence, and only 20% of project professionals are extremely confident. While 79% of respondents believe sustainability positions their organization for long-term success, only 41% say it is fully integrated across projects and functions.

These findings point to a practical challenge. As our report shows, sustainability projects ask organizations to manage complexity across many dimensions at once. The value can be difficult to express in financial terms. The impact may appear beyond the project lifecycle and accountability can be spread across functions. And when cost, schedule or short-term pressures rise, sustainability can too easily be treated as separate from delivery rather than part of what successful delivery requires.

This is where project professionals have an essential role to play. Sustainability goals only become real when they influence funding decisions, project priorities, requirements, and delivery choices. It requires people who can connect strategy to execution, help leaders manage tradeoffs and create structures that allow teams to deliver measurable outcomes.

PMI’s purpose is to maximize project success to elevate our world and as such, puts sustainability in our spotlight. PMI GPM has launched the Certified Sustainable Project Professional (CSPP)™, a certification and e-learning experience grounded in the PMI GPM P5 Standard for Sustainability in Project Management. It helps project professionals assess sustainability considerations early and embed them into planning, execution and measurement.

Sustainability goals will ultimately be judged the same way as any other strategic objective: by whether organizations can translate ambition into measurable outcomes. Project professionals play a critical role in making that happen.

On behalf of the PMI Board of Directors, we encourage project professionals, PMO leaders, and executive sponsors to build the skills, practices, and confidence needed to increase project success in sustainability.

With appreciation,
Diane Alsing, D.Eng, PMP, PMI-ACP 
Chair, Compensation and Talent Committee, PMI Board of Directors