The Importance of the Process

So recently as I have started this new adventure of mine at ABB, I've had a perspective of my sustainability approach refined and wanted to share that out here as well so that you all can grow your perspective as well. What I am about to share might seem super obvious, but it wasn't for me up till about a few weeks ago, and I am just happy that I was able to pick it up and start implementing it as well.

The Process

There is a saying, " Trust the Process", which is used for a variety of reasons and for a variety of contexts as well, whether it be a sports team undergoing a rebuild or a student going through exams. But at least for me, my outlook on sustainability has always been result oriented. I would tweak around with a couple of things but my eyes were always looking at the effect on the result, and never at the process itself.

The learning that hit me like a brick was as follows - Look at the process and then make a decision, do you want to examine a part of the process and make a marginal improvement that will become significant when placed within the economies of scale? Or, are you going to look at working on the process in its entirety?

Up until recently, every tweak I was making whilst having my eye on the results, was me just randomly transitioning between both of these questions and not fully exploiting the potential each approach.

The Decision

When making decision of which approach to deploy, I believe it is worth noting that the right approach is heavily based on context. In some situations re-evaluating the entire process might work better, whilst in some cases focusing on marginal improvements within the lens of scale would make more sense.

But I believe in order to see the true potential of either option to be fully experienced, one should completely commit to it (or as the Gen Z quote goes," You have to Full Send it"). And this is coming from my own experience, because trying to get the 'Best of Both Worlds', gets you an aggregated solution that would not be as optimal as compared to 'Full Sending It' with one approach.

Another prerequisite at least the way I see it, should be that your objectives need to be crystal clear as well, because then I believe it would be easier to commit fully to an approach. I used to wonder why on earth people used to spend so much time establishing targets and objectives, when I was like there should be less talk of that and more action. But after entering the corporate world I did understand through interactions that businesses are business and need to make money at the end of the day, and are not necessarily welfare organizations. I will admit that I did have a little bit of naivety in my sustainability approach but I now I know better, and I am glad that I have learned the importance of grasping the full context - better late than never.

Conclusion

I have intentionally kept this article free from any specific examples as I believe the idea can be translated across domains irrespective. This is just my learning, feel free to agree, disagree or do neither, but I hope this helps your perspective in one way or another.