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Something Worth SharingDon’t Tick The Box A few weeks ago I was delighted to be a panel speaker at the Construction Plant-Hire Association (CPA) annual conference. The theme was ‘ESG’. When I was first told this, I wondered what on earth the ESG acronym stood for - so for clarity if you’re thinking the same, it stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. All three of these areas are vital and ones that I truly believe in - with one big caveat: they are often covered in businesses to simply tick a box. Diversity, equality, culture, gender, quality, vision - and a fair few more focus areas, can also fall into this trap, all because at some point, they didn’t exist at all. But now many of us are overcompensating and seeking to tick various boxes rather than understand the true value of implementing and embedding strong practices. I quite often roll my eyes when a client talks about their mission statement or values - and then can’t simply explain any of them to me, let along understand how they support and align to a compelling future. The world has slipped into a ‘should’ mentality of blindly drifting into a lane often occupied by ‘middle-lane’ drivers - also blindly travelling along. Filling quotas is not a strategic exercise and can even have the opposite impact to the one desired. As a businesswomen that spent a good while of my time in a male-dominated environment, I was often used to tick a box. The only way to correct this was to prove myself time and time again as credible and valuable in my own right. Whatever decisions you make, albeit in your professional or personal life, make them deliberately and not to tick a box. Don’t do things because you feel you should or have to, but because you want to and know why it matters.
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