Life Cycle Assessments

My training and education as an industrial engineer taught me to be a systems thinker, i.e., someone who can see the whole and the parts and how they work together. In my opinion, this is a fundamental skill for effective management. At a minimum, for my classes, I teach that:

* a system is a purposeful collection of components,
* a business system can transcend organizational boundaries,
* a system's environment consists of factors outside its control but can affect its operation, and
* good management systems have measured and actionable feedback loops.

One of the reasons it is important have a systems perspective is to understand how changes in one part of the system can affect the other. Optimizing one part of the system may be suboptimal for the system as a whole.

This comes to mind because I have been reading Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence. Understanding the environmental and social impact of products we produce and purchase extends the system perspective to include the dimension of time. He describes life cycle assessment (LCA) as "a method that allows us to systematically tear apart any manufactured item into its components and their subsidiary industrial processes, and measure with near-surgical precision their impact on nature from the beginning of their production through their final disposal" (p. 14). The complexity is staggering.

One example he gives is glass packaging (pp. 18): "The basics for making glass have changed little since the time of ancient Rome. Today, natural gas-powered furnances... melt sand into glass... But there's far more to it than that. A chart showing the thirteen most important processes deployed to make glass jars revealed a system stitching together 1,959 distinct "unit processes." Each unit process... represents an aggregate of innumerable subsidiary processes, themselves the outcome of hundred of others, in what can appear an infinite regression."

Producing a glass jar requires the use of hundreds of substances (and 659 different ingredients) throughout the jar's supply chain. According to Goleman (p. 18), around one hundred substances [are] released into water and fifty or so into soil along the way... [with] 220 different kinds of emissions into the air." In addition to these ecological concerns, the LCA examines the energy use and health risks, such as carcinogens, in the product and its various unit processes. Incorporating recycled glass saves hundreds of gallons of water and mitigates carbon dioxide emissions, so the LCA incorporates negative as well as positive effects.

Increasingly, consumers and environmental advocates are pressing manufacturers to disclose such information. With the Internet and social networking tools, it is easy to build a groundswell of support for -- or against -- a particular product for its impact. Independent information providers, also known as "infomediaries," are compiling this vast array of information and developing summarized and simplified indices. Manufacturers and retailers are gradually recognizing the need to be more transparent. The NYTimes published an interesting article describing this trend earlier this summer.

I find this trend to be heartening, yet overwhelming at the same time. I'm still not sure if "paper or plastic?" is the best option when I don't have my reusable grocery bags. Or what kind of light bulb I should buy. Flourescent bulbs use less energy to illuminate, but if you consider the production process and hazardous materials, are florescent better than incandescent bulbs?

I don't know -- I guess I'll sit in the dark and think about it.

Clarity in Communications - Not!

In my Leadership class yesterday, we were covering Andy Stanley's suggestions for the necessary characteristics for leaders in his book, The Next Generation Leaders. When we covered "Clarity," I explained that this meant not only did a leader need to communicate clearly, but that s/he must have clarity in the vision of what is to be done. As Stanley explains, it's uncertainty that creates the need for leadership. With certainty, the actions needed are clear.

To protect one's credibility -- and ability to be an effective leader and provide clarity -- it is important to be honest and forthcoming with people. It is much better to say, "I don't know the answer to that, but I'll look into it," than to bluff your way through a situation. People will see through you, pretty quickly.

You can also undermine your credibility by being vague. "Vagueness sands the clarity off of vision," says Stanley. Having plenty of scratched reading glasses, I like the metaphor.

So, here I am in class, trying to think of a story to illustrate the point, and was really coming up blank. There wasn't even something on the "tip of my tongue!" (4:00 in the afternoon is NOT my sharpest time to teach.) Grasping at straws, I said, "what if there had been several cases of swine flu detected on campus?"

"Here's a situation in which people would be uncertain of what to do. Being honest and forthcoming doesn't mean shouting, "We've got swine flu on campus!" and encouraging people to panic. But it also doesn't mean to say something vague, like "A few students have reported flu-like symptoms. I encourage everyone to take special precautions." A leader in this situation would have to be very clear about what precautions to take (e.g., quarantine, class cancellations, extended health services), and very deliberate about how to get the correct information out and how to get it updated. Communicating clearly usually requires repeated messages over a variety of pathways."

As an example, it was ok, something the students could relate to in their life experience. But a few of my students apparently missed the part where I said "what if," and thought that there really were cases of swine flu on campus. (There aren't, as far as I know.)

There's an irony in being misunderstood when talking about clarity in communications.