The Professional Sustainability Adventure

So now the thing is, I have been into the world of sustainability for a few years now, however, I am relatively new to the professional world of sustainability. However, being 5 months in, I thought I could do a quick check point and catch up for you to help you see what I saw and experience what I experienced.

Let's make this a journey shall we? Essentially we have 3 stops on this tour of sorts through Gideons Professional Sustainability Adventure. Let's call Stop 1 "Take a Look Inside", Stop 2 "The Real World Wide Web", and Stop 3 "Following the Money Trail". Each stop will hopefully give you an inside scoop into all that I have seen and how I went about to make sense of it. That being said, shall we?

Take a Look Inside (T-a-L-I)

Welcome to TaLI, the place in my created world that deals with the importance of understanding processes. If there is one thing that is crystal clear for me, it is the fact that Sustainability is a servant and not an enforcer. What do I mean by that? Sustainability cannot just simply be enforced onto things and people. You can't just be like, "Oh you know what lets be sustainable, flip a switch and blunt force a sustainability strategy into a company." For sustainability to be truly effective, time and I mean a lot of time has to be invested in understanding the processes that run the system. Taking time to explore the system and understand the various roles, flows and interconnections is just as vital as breathing is to humans. One of the best pieces of advice my manager K?ken Duman Tezcan gave me was, "Jeremy learn about EL Service, talk to people, talk to the local team, and just learn what it is we do. Don't limit it to I need to learn this or that, just learn." Our entire Make it Happen team echo the same sentiment because I got very similar advice from Vipin Panicker and Parvathi Mohan , and they were always ready to provide guidance.

Once time is invested into understanding processes, then points in the system that can be leveraged start becoming evident. Believe me when I say that these points cannot and will not be uncovered by just getting a high level understanding of the system or by just focusing on one singular part of the system. I am not advocating for you to go an become an expert in every single one of the processes that go on in the company and what not, but take time to dive into them and learn from the different people who handle the different processes. Then once it comes to implementing sustainability initiatives, you know which part(s) will benefit from 'serving.' Sustainability is a servant in the sense that it should be viewed as an enabler or facilitator that is there to help you on your own journey.

The Real World Wide Web

And now if you look to your left and right, you will start seeing a lot of webs, and that means we have reached the Real World Wide Web. This region exemplifies the absolute beauty of networking and collaborating, showcasing how important these 2 things are when it comes to real world sustainability. The Web is created by every single interaction you have with the different people, and the uniqueness of every person creates this wonderfully weaved web of information that is yours and yours alone.

One lesson that has sunk in for me is that there is always gonna be someone who is better than you at something, there is no escaping this. The sooner people come to understand this, the more easier and fun life gets. As you would have noticed in our previous stop TaLI, I mentioned the importance of talking to different people who are involved in different parts of the process. I realized that many people know a lot of different things, but there is a special place for people who know how to connect and bring these people together. Limiting your strategic implementation to your ideas and thought processes alone is not exactly a smart move - okay I was being kind, it's a terrible move.

The more conversations you have with different people across your organization, the more you keep molding your sustainability perspective. Don't go into conversations looking for where and how you can insert yourself and your sustainability ideas, but just take time to hear out processes and issues. This lesson got reiterated for me recently during the Summit I attended where I got the chance to observe René Wuertele and how he approached problem solving. During the meetings, he would just come and open the floor to hear what people had to say. He would not jump to give solutions and he made sure the rest of his team did the same. It was such a pleasant change of pace from what I am used to people doing which is immediately trying to defend, argue or give solutions.

As I mentioned earlier, my perspective can only be my perspective, and every single interaction makes my world wide web that much more valuable and truly unique. The same goes for every single one of you reading this article as well. It would be a loss if you miss out on the opportunity to create a truly holistic sustainability strategy because you missed out on connecting with people who could have provided valuable insights on some of the parts that might have escaped your grasp.

Following the Money Trail

And as we are approaching the final stop on our small little journey, you will start noticing a trail of money. Too many times I have heard the argument that sustainability is always more expensive and not financially viable. I am not going to refute that statement in its entirety and say that is not the case at all, but I believe that there is a balance that can be struck. It is true that in some cases like Electric Vehicles, Organic foods, etc, there are more instances where they are more expensive than the alternatives, and I partially agree. I partially agree because in terms of EVs, there is the concept of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) which in many cases beats traditional petrol cars quite comfortably. But this is a concept and debate for another article. However, there are also cases where sustainability proves to make more financial sense than the alternatives present - for example utilizing the concept of circular economy to reduce material costs and improving the resiliency of your own supply chain.

In many cases, going for more sustainable options can prove to be more of a competitive advantage as providing certain services for customers can ensure lower material costs and prevent the customer from seeking services from a competitor as only you can provide that particular service.

In Conclusion

I hope you all enjoyed this short and sweet little journey through what I have noticed and seen during the past 5 months of me being in the professional world of sustainability. As I always say, I am not too bothered if you agree or disagree with me, but as long as you were able to grow your perspective a bit that in and of itself is a win for me.