Follow your passion: The project manager’s mandate for sustainability impact

Let’s be honest. When you decided to read an article about sustainability, it’s probably because you already care. You care about the planet, about the people around you, and about building a better world, for ourselves and others. As project managers, we often come to this profession with a deeply personal desire to create positive change. Yet, once we’re in the role, it can feel as though we’re little more than cogs in a machine. We get handed a project, told to deliver it on time, on budget, and to a certain quality, and assume we have very little flexibility from there.

But what if that assumption is wrong? What if the project manager’s job isn’t just about managing constraints but about exercising our mandate to drive genuine, meaningful change? As I wrote in a recent article for Project Management World Journal, this mandate is our personal and professional opportunity to connect our passion for a better world with the projects we deliver.

From taskmaster to value-driver

The traditional view of a project manager as a taskmaster, focused solely on the “iron triangle” of time, cost and quality, is a mistake the profession is thankfully outgrowing. An effective project manager – and more broadly the benefits aspects of this role (or the benefits manager on your team) – understands that a project’s real value lies not in its deliverables, but in the benefits it creates and how those benefits contribute to the long-term success of the organisation. This is where sustainability comes in. Sustainability isn’t a separate, “nice-to-have” objective; it’s a fundamental component of organisational success and therefore relevant to every project it does.

If we adopt this benefits-led mindset, we begin to see that as project managers we have far more flexibility than we first thought. The project manager’s core job is to navigate the obstacles and challenges to deliver success. We can use this requirement to be flexible, to proactively seek ways to include sustainability and regeneration outcomes, including sustainable ways of working, into the projects we’re already doing. We don’t have to wait for a perfect “green” project to fall into our laps. We can find opportunities to make every project a little greener, a little more socially beneficial and a little more human-centric.

Practical ways to weave in your passion

So, what does this look like in practice? How do we take that personal passion for a better world and weave it into the fabric of our professional day job? We can start by demonstrating the clear return on investment (ROI) for sustainability initiatives. When we show that doing good also means doing well financially, we unlock the door to genuine change. As I’ve found time and again, when you put numbers on things, the right things show an ROI and get done, and sometimes the resources needed are freed up from things that didn’t (on analysis) actually contribute to the organisation’s success.

Here are a few examples:

Customer loyalty: A project that introduces a more sustainable product or a fair-trade supply chain might initially cost a little more, but it can build fierce customer loyalty and command a price premium.

Proactive innovation: By developing processes that align with or exceed future environmental/ societal/ workplace well-being regulations ahead of time, we can create a competitive advantage, reduce waste and avoid the costly disruptions of having to stop and re-work a project once new regulations are in place.

Attracting and retaining talent: Motivated, productive employees and contractors are an organisation’s greatest asset. Projects that integrate sustainability not only create a better end-product but also foster purpose and meaning within the team, improving engagement, loyalty, and recruitment success, driving down costs and up productivity.

Investor sentiment: investors can see where the world is going, and that countries and companies with poor sustainability practices are in for a whole lot of pain. Investors price in risk, so if your project reduces risk, the money to fund it is cheaper and easier to obtain.

Public sector success: For public sector projects, delivering sustainability can enhance the organisation’s reputation with the public, with employees, and with central government, ensuring long-term support and funding.

Reduced waste, reduced costs: On a more fundamental level, reduced waste is simply reduced cost. A project to optimise resource use is a win for both the environment and the bottom line.

Follow your passion

The message is simple, yet profound: follow your passion. You chose to read this because a part of you wants to make a difference. Don’t leave that part of you at the door when you clock in. Bring your whole self to work. Use your skills as a project manager to understand the full context of your project’s benefits, not just the technical ones. Find the flexible spaces and use them to drive positive change.

The project manager’s mandate never was about just delivering outputs; it’s now about delivering a better world, one project at a time. It is an opportunity to find purpose in your work, to lead with a passion, and to leave a positive legacy for your organisation, your community and yourself. How will you apply this to your next project?

Listen to the Sustainability Interest Network APM Community Podcast today.