Our Message on Sustainability

What does Sustainability mean for an OD Practitioner?
Sequoia Consulting understands and appreciates that our sustainability efforts come from helping to create organizations that produce lasting positive impact, not just worthy of commitment for a time, but sustained success over time.

Organizations cannot last, if shareholders and leaders are self-serving. Cynicism will breed and eventually there will be a self-correction through one means or another. This is the balancing-loop in any natural system - nothing in nature grows forever, including greed and self-serving practices.

Eventually there will be a boycott by the stakeholders, subversively or overtly and starting often with internal employees. This self-correction sometimes manifest themselves as “morale problems” internally, and the larger system will eventually purge the business out in order to preserve it’s own health and vitality.

Pledging our support for Sustainability will mean we are committed to helping our clients strengthen their sustainability, both in terms of superior business practices and excellence (Doing Well), and social mission (Doing Good). We surmise that this would include even private enterprises with a clear profit intent. In the first place, businesses thrive only when they add genuine value to people’s quality of life and living, regardless of where they exist in their industry’s value-chain. It is ultimately traced to the production of something that is of a human value. How do we get them to make the leap from doing well to doing good, so that their innovations can help to extend the sustainability of the environment and the world, or at least, not further deplete that which cannot be replicated? How do we get them to see that every day, they impact the lives of tens of thousands of employees, and their quality of life could be worse off or better off, over time, because of their tenure and service in the company? Similarly social organizations and enterprises who exist to Do Good in the first place, need to ask themselves how can they learn to run a professionally run and operationally excellent, sustainable outfit, who is able to generate enough resources and believers (including patrons, believers, donors and high quality professional staff), so that it can sustain it’s social mission over time and continue to do more good.

Finally, we strive to constantly ask ourselves as OD practitioners – what choices are we making today that would have long-term intergenerational consequences? What recommendations are we making that would help enhance the long-term sustainability and internal strength and well-being of our client organizations and partners?

In short, sustainability is a call to asking ourselves deeper questions about the kind of enterprises do we choose to build, how do we want to add value, and what is the legacy we want to sustain, and not just leave behind?

Singapore Compact

This topic on sustainability has gained currency and importance over recent years. The founding of the Singapore Compact for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is one of Singapore’s response to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, targeting at business and social enterprises in Singapore. The United Nations Global Compact is the world’s largest voluntary corporate citizenship initiative that is non-regulatory.

Sequoia Consulting was invited by the Singapore Compact for CSR to join over 3000 organisations worldwide as member of the United Nations Global Compact on Friday, 20 April 2007. Joining the UN Global Compact is an affirmation of Sequoia Consulting’s commitment to make a positive contribution to our society and environment through our corporate social responsibility activities and high standards of corporate governance.

As a member of the UN Global Compact, and Singapore Compact, we now have access to wealth of resources and good practices globally and locally, that will open doors to partnerships, dialogues and sharing of knowledge to improve our operational efficiencies, employee morale and corporate standing.

Find out more about Singapore Compact and UN Global Compact here:
www.csrsingapore.org and www.unglobalcompact.org

Society for BAWB Singapore

We are in the process of formalising the formation of the Society for Business as an Agent of World Benefit (BAWB) in Singapore. The charter of BAWB Singapore is to raise awareness of the role that private, public and social enterprises can play in
• Responding to the needs of the underprivileged and low income families
• Play a part in saving the biosphere
• Building stronger communities and
• Fostering societal peace and harmony

About the Case Western Reserve University’s Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit:
• The Center for BAWB (http://worldbenefit.case.edu) advances extraordinary business innovation and entrepreneurship by turning the global environmental and social issues of our day into core value-creation opportunities.
 
• BAWB provides solutions to the how of sustainable value and social entrepreneurship, helping companies become the leading-edge stars of their industries through applied sustainability, research, and education efforts.

Sustainability Institute (SI)

The mission of the Sustainability Institute (SI) is to help build sustainable enterprises through the four pillars of Great Workplaces, Innovations for Sustainability, Societal and Community Engagement, and Environmental Conscience.

One of the key intent of SI is to raise awareness amongst the business community on the importance of sustainability and sustainable enterprises that exist symbiotically with the community and the environment. We want to do more to support the creation of social enterprises and do a part in propagating business innovations for societal benefits.

Through the Sustainability Institute and the Society for BAWB, we hope to raise awareness of enterprises and entrepreneurs in Singapore that "doing good" is fundamental to "doing well".