Our Vision is that enterprises are the engine room of global sustainability.

Companies, markets and governments work to create vibrant, sustainable communities. They are percieved as powerful social structures for fulfiling on communally valuable goals.

Enterprises are vehicles for people to live satisfying, honorable and productive lives.

Original Intent takes an integral approach to your business and to sustainability. This means that if you want your enterprise to be authentically sustainable; environmentally, socially and economically, then you need it to become both a vehicle and a catalyst for the need to make a difference of every person in your enterprise - from the cleaner to the ceo.

To remain a relevant and successful organisation, your enterprise needs to fill a broader social and environmental goal than the narrow interests of a few, and allow itself to become embedded in the aspirations and concerns of it's own employees and the needs of the community as a whole.

This might sound difficult to do and it does take work - but it is not hard. Human beings love being engaged, challenged and listened to as if their contribution makes a difference, and the structures that keep this passion and enthusiasm alive over time are easy to implemant. What's more, doing this real work at one level of an enterprise will invariable influence the approach and practices in other areas also.

The transformation from a'compliance' driven to a 'innovation' driven organisation is often expressed in the term 'corporate culture change'. Shifting the attitudes and perspectives of your staff, managers and critically, of you, will show up in the kinds of organisational and decision-making structures and business practices your enterprise evolves, as well as the respect shown the organisation by its employees, peers and the community or market.

Ultimately, a transformation of your corporate culture will show up in your enterprises bottom line, in it's approach to innovation, risk and creativity, and in your ability to attract and retain good people.

The work we do

Original Intent works with clients to provide a comprensive approach to transforming an enterprises capacity to be a leader in it's chosen field, define the kind of work it does and do that work well. We focus specifically on sustainability issues, and that is what usually brings clients to us, but sustainability has become such an all-encompassing ethic that we now find ourselves working with clients to transform their business-practices, ethics and ultimately their market in all areas of their operations.

A whole-of-enterprise view is usually required to make a comprehensive and long-lasting change to your business paradigm and you'r staff's engagment with your vision for the future.

Most clients approach us with a particular need in mind - in our initial conversations we will often work with you to clarify the breakdown you are experiencing (This breakdown can be as simple as "I'd like to do better.").  The breakdown is often embedded in attitudes and practises that occur as 'normal' but actually are specific to the culture of your enterprise, and they are not always productive conversations.  Depending on the nature of your goal and the breakdown we have identified, we will create a program with you to take your enterprise to the next level. The simple process of developing this program will offer you insights into the workings of your business, it's position in the global or local marketplace, and the role you, it and your staff can start to fill that will shift the way you think about your enterprise and the people you work with.

A new perspective opens up new possibilities for action and new roles for you and your organisation to fulfil. If required, we will also help you to develop and source the skills, people, experience, and resources you will need to start coloring in those new roles and bring your enterprise into alignment with your new vision for it and for the future of the planet.

This is an exciting and sometimes challenging process and, as our testimonials attest, it always produces extraordinary results .

Working with you

At Original Intent we sometimes struggle to define the work we do. The traditional categories we have identified that are included in our approach are: strategic planning, leadership coaching, team/staff training/development and seminars, facilitation, corporate culture change and the transformation of work-practises.

Working with us can take many forms, from individual coaching to enterprise-wide training programs; whatever we determine is best going to get your enterprise where you want it to be.

We will help you manage a change program that will positively engage all of the people involved and will influence the role your enterprise gets to play in the world. We will encourage you to look beyond the normal parameters of business or government to include the people and communities who are impacted by your enterprise, to see how you can best serve their needs as well as your own. This can include the obvious such as the families of your staff, your clients and customers and their familes, but also the schools, local communities, up-stream and down-stream procedural workers as well as future generations as well as the plants, animals and eco-systems that can be influenced by the existence of your enterprise.

The broader the range of the impacts we can identify, the bigger the base upon which you can build an enterprise that serves a useful function in life, and the more relevant, exciting, and long-term viable your enterprise will be.

If you can effectively tap into the future, into the need your organisation can fill, then you will have an unlimited source of energy and vitality that will continue to inform and inspire your enterprise in the months, years and decades to come.

Over the years, Deborah an I have become part of large network of organisations and individuals who see the role of enterprises and the future in this way. They all bring a very special set of skills and capacites to the table. We will draw on them and their networks in the work we do with you to ensure that you get the very best possible level of service and skill available - and have the opportunity to invent and unfold an enterprise that fulfils on the best of your dreams for the future, and the real needs of individuals and communities the world-over.

Our approach at Oi

The work we do with your enterprise will be developed according to your needs and the broader perspective we can bring to the discussions. Nonetheless, there are a number of well-recognised disciplines or approaches that we use in assessing a clients needs and developing an wholistic sustainability program.

These approaches are:

Strategic Foresight

Integral Thinking

A Strategic Foresight aproach takes you from managing change based on the past to crafting change based on a clear vision of the future .

Strategic Foresight is a business and academic discipline that includes the work of hundreds of theorists and and practitioners in business, government, education, the medical and legal professions and, increasingly, the environmental community. The discipline has a solid reputation in America and Europe and the number of tools, programs, approaches, games, workshops etc. that have been developed in this field is staggering.

The discipline is based on the idea that attempts to predict or prepare for the future based upon extrapolations from the past have limited validity. Just like predicting the weather, it is good for a few days but you will never be able to include all the data you need to make a good long-term plan.

The Strategic Foresight approach is predicated upon looking inward at what is driving your business, your actions and obviously your plans and suggests that shifting those drivers and building a solid plan from there is more effective then not uncovering those assumptions and hoping something will shift just because you say you want it to. The clearer you can be about the fundamental goals you are aiming for the more resilient, solid and inclusive your planing and thinking can be.

An Integral Thinking approach allows you to mobilise the full gamut of your organisational resources in service of your enterprise and the function it exists in the world to serve.

An Integral Thinking Approach is has been largely encapsulated by the thinking of one of the contemporary world's preeminent philosphers; Ken Wilber. This approach also has a large and rapidly growing following in all sectors of society from the formation of formal Integral Insitutes of Law, Medicine, Politics and others, to broader Integral approaches to ecology, business, health care, public transport etc.

'Integral' in this context means including and stepping beyond whatever level you are operating at to allow you to see the links and relationships between what you want or what you are doing and an ever greater range of people, things and experiences. It is an approach that draws together the thinking of all the great wisdom traditions and includes and goes beyond the best of the world's thinkers -both religious and secular - to provide a map of human motivation and relationships with the world that has never before been available.

It is an incredibly powerful tool for creating programs and practices that value, respect and mobilise both the external aspects of your enterprise (eg. structures, finances, assets and business practices) as well as the internal aspects of your business (people's feelings, thoughts, motivations, mentals states and capacities). If this approach is used effectively it allows you to mobilise the full gamut of your enterprise's resources in the most effective and sustainable way possible. Your key resource - your people - will become the drivers of your enterprise and the function it exists in the world to serve.