At the moment many agendas of the world leaders and also within EU, are set to discuss climate change and pollution. The subject of environment is indeed climbing the priority ladder but the question is, is it climbing fast enough?

Scrolling through the Internet feed for climate change and EU, I found several politicians who challenged the way the targets are set and followed up on in the majority of the member states.

I come from a customer support environment with strict targets and have worked within this area for more than two decades. The targets set for employees are set high, not for the sake of them failing while trying to reach them but for the employees to be creative and aim for the moon and reach the stars. If you set targets that you know you will reach with very little effort or possibly find an easy way of cheating the system to do so, the workforce will not develop even with set targets reached.

I have always seen Malta’s small size as an advantage. Implementing a change for 450 000 citizens is in many ways easier than doing the same for 15 millions. With quite small resources, if the project is planned in an effective way, you can reach most people of the country very fast. Instead of using this amazing advantage, we seem to think of ourselves as the little brother of EU and the world and we wait for them to make the first move. I never really understood why we wait, it should be the other way around. When a small member state make a change that wows the bigger ones. It creates a ripple effect, an “If they can do it, so can we!” kind of effect.

Most people heard that EU was about to discuss the ban of plastic straws and the reaction on social media was that people couldn’t wait for the legislation to get in place so that Malta could ban them. Shouldn’t we instead say “that’s amazing, let’s beat EU and be the first ones to achieve this and let’s add plastic bags ban while we’re at it!”? I of course think it’s amazing that we take advice from EU and friends, but let’s not forget the part where we up the game to show that we are accountable. The targets set by EU are adapted to fit all the member states and not adapted after Malta, let’s not forget that!

Another issue is the loop holes, either not meant to be or on purpose left there to cheat the system. How can we, after years of knowing an issue, leave the loopholes there just with the aim of reaching the target easier? This would only benefit us in the short-term, hence a waste of money and time long-term.

I would compare this situation with the following scenario. A support agent has a goal set to have 1000 contacts per month. Instead of understanding the purpose of the target, which is to make sure agents work effectively, the agent do as many contacts as possible and don’t take notice of the bad quality delivered. At the end of the month, the agent indeed reaches the 1000 contacts and gets a well done by the manager. However, after checking the quality of the contacts the manager realises that if the agent would have given a proper service, he would only have reached half of the contacts.

Reaching much lower than a set target, triggers a discussion about what more can be done to reach the final target, with a consistent high quality. If we always reach our targets on the first try, it means that something is very wrong. So for long term benefits we need to set high targets that creates a creative environment where all people strive towards getting better at what they do, be it customer support or creating an environment friendly Malta.

One of the worst loopholes we have had for years in Malta is the fact that very light weight plastic bags, the ones for fruit, are exempted from the EU directive for reduction of plastic bags. It’s however mentioned that their use is limited to hygienic purposes only. You can use them when you buy minced meat for example, but it’s very questionable if you can use it to buy five yoghurts. This is indeed on EU side to correct, but on the Maltese side we decided on purpose to put, in comparison to the bag with handle, a tiny amount of tax on the useless very light weight bag. This opened up for cashiers not to charge for them, hence promoting the use.

So let’s aim higher going forward, let’s not be fine with being mediocre when we instead can shine!