In 2007 I was hired as an external consultant in the role of project manager/solution architect, by Peter van Minderhout, Group Director Communications and Social Responsibility, to be part of the TNT Planet Me movement.

In my role I had the responsibility to bring all the elements together in a web platform.

The TNT Planet Me scope

Fighting climate change: Planet Me

It is our ambition to become the first zero emission transport company.

• We will measure and manage our CO2 footprint in a transparent manner through our Count Carbon initiative
• We will continuously increase the CO2 efficiency of our operations through our Code Orange initiative
  (aviation, buildings, lease fleet, customer collaboration, company cars, purchasing, investments)
• Choose Orange will engage our employees to participate at work and at home with their families
  ( One of these initiatives is a global contest to reduce fuel consumption: the Drive Me challenge)

My Role within the scope

This is just a simple listing of the key tasks within my role.

• Design the web architecture for the tnt planet me platform
• Lead the development team building the platform
• Align with the design agency on the UX
• Align with the carbon accounting team on the way to display their reports on the platform
• Align with all daughter companies on their contribution to the platform
• Design the choose orange community platform
• Lead the development team building the community platform
• Coordinate the roll-out of the video conferencing solution
• Stakeholder management of all parties required to fulfill the tasks above

My Takeaways

When I left the project in 2009, I left with two takeaways on top of my mind:

• Working for Peter van Minderhout really made me grow fast. For me it was a person who gave you absolute trust. Allowing you to make the choices to “make things happen”.
  TNT Planet Me was my fast track to global stakeholder management.
  I still remember my first conference call where I had to explain the benefits of the beautiful new video conferencing solution to the CEOs of the 38 daughter companies across the globe (who did not really see a benefit in making less trips around the world) and get them to start using it. You learn to deal with hostility quickly. His advice was simple whether it was internal or external, keep haunting them until they give you what you want, sometimes you need to be a respectful “pain in the ass”.
• It is here that I got infected with the passion Peter Baker has for sustainable development. It is the main reason that one of my pet subjects is Zero Emission Logistics.