1. 1. A world where business no longer only attempts to do less harm,
      but instead sets as its goal the flourishing of human and other life.

   
   

John Ehrenfeld’s defines sustainability as: “The possibility that human and other life will flourish on this planet forever”. 

Our clients are leaders who want to make a difference for themselves, their families, communities, all humanity and other life, rising to this audacious challenge.  By setting high but achievable goals, our vision is to help our clients to proactively create conditions for current and future generations to flourish.

Our belief is that achieving sustainability is the moral and ethical imperative of our time: we know much about how to achieve flourishing, now together we must act to change for the better ourselves, our organizations and our world.

Together with our clients we want to be the generation about whom future historians will say:   “In the early 21st Century C.E. there lived a generation of humans who humbly chose as their goal, the flourishing of themselves and all other life, forever”.

Our Mission

Enabling business to achieve this audacious vision fulfills our commitment to
ourselves and future generations

Approach

We help organizations locally, nationally and internationally change to become strongly sustainable.  We:

1. •Help our clients, as individuals with leadership roles, play their part in changing their organizations to create conditions that enable the flourishing of their organizations, the individuals within them, their stakeholders, society and the natural world.
   

2. •Work with our clients, using the lenses of business models, business process, organization and technology, to help them build plans to successfully enable sustainable outcomes.
   

Values

Our work is challenging – for our clients and their organizations and stakeholders.  Every person and organization, at this time and place, understands what success can be.  We seek to co-create these visions of success – empathizing gracefully with the real human challenges our clients face in all their many roles – then together bring our client’s vision of success into being.

In this work we are bound by the internationally recognized Certified Management Consultant’s Uniform Code of Professional Conduct.

Our Ideal Client

We like to collaborate with individuals, in firms and their diverse community of stakeholders, who are motivated to:

1. Learn together
   

2. Lead – irrespective of their formal position in the organization
   

3. Trust one another – as the default approach
   

4. Co-create a better future
   

5. Make a difference for everyone around them
   

Continuous Improvement & Radical Transparency

As we work towards our vision, we are committed to constant improvement, and being transparent with all our stakeholders. We constantly strive to improve our own business model and operations so that we can maximize our social, environmental and financial impact – doing good to do well.

Our latest improvement initiative is to improve a number of aspects of our enterprise to become a Certified B Corp – a global standard adopted by over 2,200 for-profit businesses world wide that is  audited by the independent 3rd party B Lab. 

After we have successfully reached this standard we will publish on this website both a summary of our social and environmental performance contained in our B Impact Assessment, and the complete answers to our 2017 assessment (this will form the based for a 3rd party certified social and environmental performance report).  To complement this we already publish on this website our financial performance as prepared by our accountant (profit and loss statements, balance sheet, cash flow, tax return YE2016).

Some of the highlights that demonstrate our commitment to tri-profitability are detailed below.  We hope by sharing we may provide ideas on how your company can strive to improve your tri-impact. If you have praise, ideas or concerns, please contact us via our feedback page.

History and Governance

Edward James Consulting Ltd. opened for business in January 2010 as the Sustainability Business Architecture management consulting practice of Antony Upward, a Certified Management Consultant with more than thirty years of consulting experience.  Learn more about the history of our founder here.

In a nod to the intergenerational nature of sustainability the firm is named after the founder’s paternal and maternal grandfathers (Edward F. Upward and James A. Hitchin).  Our logo is the shape formed at the intersection of the nested systems of sustainability:  the environment that wholly contains society, that wholly contains the monetary economy, overlaid with stylized letters e and j.   The colours blue, green, and yellow for water/sky, plants/life and the sun.

Edward James Consulting Ltd. is a privately owed incorporated for-profit company registered in the province of Ontario, Canada.  It is owned equally by Antony Upward and Lyanne Upward.  Once we are B Corp certified we will publish here our articles of Incorporation (including the required B Corp language), By Laws, Shareholders Resolutions, and Directors Resolutions.

In 2017 we started to establish a diverse multi-stakeholder advisory board and to consider how this board can be given strong oversight over our social, environmental and financial performance (given our ownership and legal structure).  

We have started by appointing to our unpaid Advisory Board our two most significant collaborators, partners and subcontractors.  First, Ondine Hogeboom (@OndineHB, Ondine Hogeboom Consulting, Montreal), and second Harvey Weisfeld (@WiserSol, Wiser Solutions, Toronto).  We expect to appoint 2-3 other members in 2018.  Please contact us via our feedback page if you are interested in becoming a member.

We will publish here the agenda and minutes of our advisory board meetings.

Impact Through Our Supply Chain

In our interactions with customers, suppliers, employees and all other stakeholders we proactively share our transparency, financing reporting, governance, social, and environmental, practices and encourage them to adopt similar practices and to suggest improvements to us.

When looking for suppliers for necessary products and services we use a screening process to give preference to companies that are aligned with our mission, vision and values. We look for enterprises that are locally owned and operated small or medium sized enterprises that share our commitment to their social, environmental and economic tri-impact. Preference is given to enterprise that are certified B Corps, hold other similar certifications, or that operate using a cooperative model.

When seeking subcontractor partners to undertake work with our clients, we also seek values-aligned practitioners who are based locally to the client. During the course of our work with them we provide them with suggestions on how they can implement our practices, encouraging and supporting them to becoming B Corp certified. Over time we will make it mandatory that our sub-contractor partners demonstrate they are adopting similar practices.

Minimizing Our Environmental Footprint

Our home office is 100% powered by renewably generated electricity (from wind, solar, no nuclear) and renewably sources gas (from bio-digestion and other sources), from Certified B Corp BullFrogPower.

We off-set the CO2e emissions from all business airline travel using high quality and affordable carbon credits from less.ca (a BullFrogPower company). 

We choose to take public transport when ever feasible, and use cabs and car-sharing rather than own / operate a car. We track our business car mileage / vehicle use, calculate the tonnes of CO2e emitted using this Car Carbon Footprint Calculator and purchase the required carbon credits from less.ca. 

When possible, we will ask our clients to consider reimbursing us for the cost of these carbon offsets but if not, we will absorb them: we consider this a normal cost of conducting business responsibly.

For office suppliers and printing we strive to choose the most environmentally friendly options available.  We buy office supplies with the environment in mind, FSC Certified 100% recycled paper, sticky notes made with 100% recycled paper and a plant-based glue, and for all our printing we use locally owned and operated environmental leader Warrens Waterless Printing Inc.

We do not use bottled water in our offices nor when offsite, carrying and using our own reusable metal water bottle.  We do not use disposable coffee or other drink containers, instead carrying and using own own insulated metal mug.

More generally we already follow most of the environmental guidance provided here by Founding Canadian and “Best for the World” award wining B Corp Sustainability Advantage, and have added a few ideas of our own.  We will publish our definitive list in the next 12 months.

Supporting our Global Community and Movement

Striving to help all enterprises work towards flourishing, our Principal and Founder Antony Upward, volunteers significant time to supporting the animation and growth of the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG). 

The SSBMGroup is a community of innovation practice and a knowledge mobilization initiative created by thought leaders from around the world: business leaders, entrepreneurs, designers, researchers and graduate students.  The objective of the group is to drive and research the adoption of strongly sustainable business models in Small and Medium Enterprises. The group is hosted by the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) at OCAD University

Through the SSBMGroup and other efforts, we are committed to radical transparency when it comes to research and the development of practical frameworks, methods and tools for flourishing/strongly sustainable/future-fit business models. For example, through the free First Explorer licensing program for the Flourishing Enterprise Innovation Toolkit, a central tool in our work, we aim to make resources and tools to enable flourishing enterprises to be as accessible as possible.  In the medium term we plan to make this tool available under a Creative Commons license, without commercial restriction (CC-BY-SA).

About This Web Site: Monetarily, Environmentally, Technically

As a detailed example of our commitment to acting responsibly: Building this website has been an exercise in total financial and on-going environmental cost control minimization (upfront and on-going), a learning experience.  We wanted to share - see this page.

1. This website © Antony Upward / Edward James Consulting Ltd. 2020