Sustainability is waste of time

Few years back, whenever anyone just mentioned “Sustainability”, people looked at him as if he was coming from Mars.

In the last decade, no one even thought about sustainability meaning, objectives….etc.

It might be because of other terminologies that were used in that time like “Environmental friendly,” “Reduce Emission,” “CO2-Control,” …. etc. But is that all? Do these terms cover all meanings of sustainability??!!

Let us first understand the concept of sustainability; sustainable means something which will sustain (last) for long time…. irrespective of this thing either material, design, environmental aspects… etc.

From the engineering perspective, it is defined as the capacity to maintain or improve the state and availability of desirable materials or conditions over the long term.

From a social & cultural point of view, the idea of sustainability itself goes back to times immemorial, as communities have always worried about the capacity of their environment to sustain them in the long term. Many ancient cultures, traditional societies, and indigenous peoples had or still have practices restricting the use of natural resources by human groups.

However, this term of sustainability nowadays is used as the meaning of meeting our own needs at present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

All the above is very good, and fantastic for advertising and publicity…etc.

But what about time?

The biggest waste we have is time,

& the second biggest waste is people.

Do you agree?

once upon a time, an engineering company initiated a big forum collecting all their engineers & employees in a 3 hour session explaining the meaning of sustainability, but they focused only on the bottle covers, plastic waste, and this type of wastage, etc.

They have not spoken about the huge waste of engineered wasted material at the end of each project due to lack of proper competency and control. They have not talked about the delay in project schedules due to the non-availability of the right resources.

Isn’t this a waste?

Time is the most important & valuable thing to be sustained. From the English language perspective, this is a wrong statement as time cannot be sustained.

Time is passing. Yet, how you are using the time before it passes?

Secondly, nowadays, specially after covid, all business is looking to the manpower as just a number. For example, in this project I need 150 engineers costing x million. That is it.

How to get them?

How to maintain (SUSTAIN), them, etc.?

How to utilize their competency in the most effective ways?

How to develop them?

No one cares about those aspects. They are just a number (Hire and fire).

Isn’t this a waste??

One of the great business leaders once said, “people are your greatest assed, make use of them.”

And this is becoming one of the essential parts of project management where there are multiple subjects have been included, like:

-??????? Knowledge management =? how you maintain, transfer & develop the knowledge within the project and after it.

-??????? Human resources =? teamwork, leadership, loyalty

-??????? Emotional intelligence= how you maintain the spirit of the people, & respect their emotions….etc.

At the end, it is not only the environment to be sustained. We can protect the environment, but who will take care of the people, and, subsequently, how are they taking care of time?

As a project manager, time & people are your greatest assets so make use of.