Developing an Environmental Golden Thread - Part 1 (Using a DSM)

In this blog post we walk through the approach developed by Marissa Kephart in collaboration with Lean Compliance to define a golden thread of assurance for an environmental program.

In this post we look at the use of a Dependency (or Design) Structure Matrix (DSM) to better understand the interactions of The12 Environmental Pillars (download them here), which interactions are essential, and which ones contribute the most to overall program effectiveness. This information will help determine which should be part of the golden thread.

In Part 2, we will consider the use of a balanced scorecard to monitor the golden thread and provide insights for decision makers on how to improve overall program performance.

To provide assurance that environmental obligations will be met, an environmental program must perform such that its outcomes are continuously advanced towards the overall goal of community sustainability. This outcome is created by the product of the interaction of 12 environmental pillars.

A “golden” thread that runs through the pillars of an environmental program – Environmental Golden Thread – can serve to provide assurance that essential capabilities exist and are operational. It can also provide traceability and transparency for retrospective and prospective analysis, ensuring the integrity of the environmental program and all its systems and processes.

Using an Environmental Golden Thread can also provide leadership and management with valuable insights to help make better decisions associated with environmental obligations, commitments, and investments.

Additionally, this thread will enable better coordination and alignment of effort across an organization in support of overall program objectives.

A Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) is a tool used to represents a system and its components to better understand critical dependencies. A DSM models system elements and their corresponding information exchange, interactions, and relationship in a compact visualization to highlight the important dependencies.

An environmental program will include many aspects which can be modelled using a DSM. We have used it here to model the 12 environmental pillars which need to be advanced simultaneously towards the goal of community sustainability.

Since program outcomes are a product of system interactions, using a DSM will help to better understand how to manage environmental pillars collectively to achieve program objectives. In the process, this understanding will contribute to the development of an environmental golden environmental thread - the mechanism to provide program assurance.

The following baseline DSM was created based on an original ordering of the 12 pillars:

Within a system there can be various types of relationships between elements. As shown below, a relationship can either be sequential, coupled or parallel. The latter was not considered since it represents no interaction between elements.

In a sequential relationship, element A influences B, as shown in the diagram below. This gives an idea of which elements to focus on before others for increased program output.

There also exists adjacency relationships which are called, "coupled". This is where the flow of influence or information is intertwined: element A influences B and element B influences A, as shown below.

The performance of an environment program is helped by knowing which program pillars have sequential and parallel adjacency with other pillars. This will help determine which pillars depend on another and how this might impact how they are managed.

For sequential relationships, two pillars within the DSM are intertwined where pillar A influences pillar B. As pillars are more like streams rather than static assets not all of pillar A may be necessary before Pillar B. What is important is that Pillar B needs something from Pillar A to be effective.

Knowing the type of relationship provides visibility as to which pillars need upfront planning and should be prioritized. This planning may help uncover other dependencies that have secondary influences.

Within the Environmental Golden Thread DSM, there exists many adjacency relations between pillars. Most of these relationships are sequential where A reinforces B, fostering an increased output for B with the presence of A. For example, the following pillars are sequential relationship in the Environmental Golden Thread model:

*The bolded pillars in the above list indicate which dependencies are primary and can be sequentially prioritized within the coupled relationship, since the Environmental Golden Thread model is built with a combination of primary and secondary dependencies.

Coupled relationships are seen where two dependencies are located directly across the DSM’s diagonal from each other, where A must exist to get B and B must exist to get A. As such, the coupled relationships in the model show the critical areas of focus in the system.

For example, the following pillars are coupled:

Coupling is even more vital to the health of the overall system. Coupled dependencies' proximity to the diagonal axis of the DSM indicates their role in connecting the pillars of the Environmental Golden Thread.

Additionally, since all coupled relationships within the model include both primary and secondary dependencies, the primary dependencies should be prioritized over the secondary ones in the coupled relationship. However, due to their tightly coupled nature, the performance of the primary dependency may affect the performance of the secondary dependency, and vice versa.

The total number of dependencies in either the vertical or horizontal rows of the DSM give insights into which program pillars should be managed more carefully and with a higher priority. Pillars that are high on both lists indicate that they should be of high priority, whereas the lower ones serve to connect-the-dots together, effectively keeping the critical chain intact.

This analysis is dependent on the organization’s interest in either primary or secondary dependencies, or both, as the figures below show that multiple combinations of priority can be determined dependent on individual priority of system dependencies and pillars.

Marks going down a single pillar’s column in the DSM indicate how many outputs that pillar has, as well as which of the other pillars that pillar is dependent on. Knowing which pillars have the most vertical marks, or dependencies, gives an idea as to how many and which pillars are necessary to achieve the objectives of the individual pillar and the system. As such, this gives an idea as to the pillar’s overall dependence on the other 11 pillars within the system model.

The total number of dependencies in each pillar’s vertical row were then counted and ranked by the total number of dependencies, as well as the primary and secondary on an individual level, as follows:

Based on total number of dependencies (primary + secondary):

1) Food Security

2) Zero Waste

3) Environmental Stewardship

4) Active and Green Transportation

5) Circular Economy

6) Infrastructure Resilience

7) Adaptive Management for Service Reliability

8) Environmental Health and Safety

9) Climate Change Risk and Adaptation

10) Carbon Neutrality

11) Community Sustainability

12) Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions

Based on the number of primary dependencies:

1) Food Security

2) Climate Change Risk and Adaptation

3) Environmental Health and Safety

4) Zero Waste

5) Environmental Stewardship

6) Active and Green Transportation

7) Circular Economy

8) Infrastructure Resilience

9) Adaptive Management for Service Reliability

10) Carbon Neutrality

11) Community Sustainability

12) Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions

Based on the number of secondary dependencies:

1) Zero Waste

2) Environmental Stewardship

3) Food Security

4) Active and Green Transportation

5) Circular Economy

6) Infrastructure Resilience

7) Adaptive Management for Service Reliability

8) Carbon Neutrality

9) Environmental Health and Safety

10) Climate Change Risk and Adaptation

11) Community Sustainability

12) Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions

The figure below shows that the pillars “Climate Change Risk and Adaptation”, “Environmental Health and Safety”, and “Food Security” have the most primary dependence on other pillars in the model.

This demonstrates that to achieve these pillars, the other pillars that they are dependent on must be started first to support the other. This analysis is dependent on the organization's interest in either primary or secondary dependencies, or both, as the figure below shows that multiple combinations of priority can be determined dependent on individual priority of system dependencies and pillars.

Marks going across a single horizontal row of the DSM represent dependencies flowing to pillars that are necessary to achieve the objective of the pillar corresponding to that row. The more dependencies each pillar has in their row indicates that it is more connected to the other pillars of the system model, therefore it should be prioritized over pillars of lower dependency counts. These horizontal dependencies show which pillar has the most inputs, or how many other pillars the pillar row supports, as well as its overall contribution to the program model.

The total number of dependencies in each pillar’s horizontal row were then counted and ranked by the total number of dependencies, as well as the primary and secondary on an individual level, as follows:

Based on total number of dependencies (primary + secondary):

1) Environmental Health and Safety

2) Carbon Neutrality

3) Community Sustainability

4) Adaptive Management for Service Reliability

5) Climate Change Risk and Adaptation

6) Circular Economy

7) Active and Green Transportation

8) Food Security

9) Infrastructure Resilience

10) Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions

11) Environmental Stewardship

12) Zero Waste

Based on the number of primary dependencies:

1) Environmental Health and Safety

2) Adaptive Management for Service Reliability

3) Climate Change Risk and Adaptation

4) Active and Green Transportation

5) Carbon Neutrality

6) Circular Economy

7) Food Security

8) Infrastructure Resilience

9) Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions

10) Environmental Stewardship

11) Zero Waste

12) Community Sustainability

Based on the number of secondary dependencies:

1) Community Sustainability

2) Environmental Health and Safety

3) Carbon Neutrality

4) Adaptive Management for Service Reliability

5) Climate Change Risk and Adaptation

6) Circular Economy

7) Food Security

8) Infrastructure Resilience

9) Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions

10) Environmental Stewardship

11) Active and Green Transportation

12) Zero Waste

The figure below shows that the pillars “Active and Green Transportation”, “Environmental Health and Safety”, “Adaptive Management for Service Reliability”, and “Climate Change Risk and Adaptation” critically contribute the most to other pillars in the model.

This demonstrates that achieving the objectives of these pillars subsequently supports the rest of the pillars, since the other pillars are highly dependent on them.

Without the existence of the secondary dependencies in the system model, the program would still be intact; however, there would be less opportunity for further improvements of user’s environmental obligations.

As can be seen in the DSM, most of the secondary dependencies are located well outside the diagonal region, as well as the two pillar grouping areas (as indicated by the black outlines). This indicates that as the dependency locations travel further from the diagonal, the less they critically support the “Golden Thread”, instead offering additional reinforcements to the model.

However, there are several exceptions where the secondary dependencies are located adjacent to the DSM's diagonal where the presence of these dependencies adds a layer of depth to the system that allows organizations the option to tailor the model to their unique needs and to understand the possible combinations of the pillar inter-dependencies more fully.

The secondary dependencies, if considered by an organization, connect the loose ends of the primary dependencies, and necessitate organization's to implement a more holistic approach to the Environmental Golden Thread through systems thinking and active management techniques.

In the final partitioned DSM, several primary dependencies were observed that did not directly follow the line of the diagonal axis, including:

Such dependencies remain primary, despite their location in the DSM, since they serve as connectors between the different subgroups in the DSM. For example, the dependency between the pillars “Climate Change Risk and Adaptation” and “Adaptive Management for Service Reliability” connects the subgroup of three pillars together from the main Golden Thread loop. Similarly, the dependency connecting “Active and Green Transportation” and “Community Sustainability” is located far from the diagonal axis; however, the presence of this connection is vital to the structure of the model since it connects the main upper loop to the lower loop of the model (see dependency map below).

Overall, these off-axis primary dependencies portray locations of possible redundancy in the pillar dependencies, without them the program still functions; however, the critical chain among the 12 pillars is weakened.

There are a number of insights that we be derived from using a DSM on the 12 program pillars:

Connecting each pillar together using this information will create a golden thread that ensures each pillar performance is combined to maximize overall program effectiveness. This will save costs, realize outcomes sooner, and create a virtuous cycle of improvement over time.

In Part 2, we will combine this analysis with a balanced scorecard to provide a mechanism to monitor pillar and program performance to help decision makers know how best to invest and make improvements.