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?
Center for BAWB Singapore
Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio (USA) at the research university of Case Western, the Charter for Satellite Centers of the Global Business as an Agent of World Benefit (BAWB) will enable us to better promote the charter of BAWB in Singapore. The World Inquiry is also a call to feature successful stories on how business innovations are making a positive impact in the society & on the environment. The global dialogue that will emerge from these sharing signals a concerted effort to garner support & active engagement towards the potential of business as an agent of world benefit. It is how the private, public and social enterprises can:
• Respond to the needs of the underprivileged and low income families
• Play a part in saving the biosphere
• Build stronger communities and
• Foster societal peace and harmony
About the Case Western Reserve University’s Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit (BAWB):
• 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.
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