- Client's Cash Flow - the Base
- Client's Commitment to Life - the Guide
- A Vibrant, Living Company - the Result
Alternatively, we seek the CEO who goes outdoor for the weekend, skiing, golfing, boating, running. or hunting and fishing, and who returns to work Monday morning wishing s/he could do something to align the company with the need for saving nature that s/he sees out there. We started that way too.
Unique Aspects:
That combination of practical experience and deep knowledge of environmental and social issues forms the foundation for our services. That's how we are different. When we engage with a client, we listen with the attention to business detail that a major-league hitter has for the stitches on the approaching fast ball. Because of our combined business backgrounds combined with our passion for sustainability and the well-being of future generations, we can hear issues that might not grab the attention of others.
We also merge our technical expertise in manufacturing and other industrial activities with a deep and practical understanding of change management and organizational development. We have developed a technology of enterprise change that enables deep and rapid shifts in the purposes and relationships within the organization without conflict. Our books and articles have influenced lean accounting, ERP design, and software development. We have designed and delivered courses in universities and professional organizations, spoken to hundreds of meetings, and managed organizations ranging from very small and entrepreneurial to $100 million. We can predict reactions by financial parties to proposals and advise on their preparation. We are enthusiastic about helping people and companies grow and try new things, tempered by the wisdom of experience.
We have envisioned a long-term goal: the ideal of the living company, inspired by the thinking of William McDonough and other architects, who have written about the ideal of a living building:
- like a tree, it produces more energy than it consumes,
- it takes in CO2 and gives off oxygen,
- it releases water cleaner than it takes in,
- it nourishes life in its branches,
- it enriches the soil in which it grows,
- it heats and cools itself as the weather varies,
- and with its seeds it replicates itself.
We hold out the promise that a great firm can aspire to many of those same actions to the benefit of the earth, its future life, and the firm itself. But we also know that people in normal companies do not know the language required to talk about these things. As you can see from your own reaction to the paragraph above, this kind of talk may seem strange. So part of our work is exploring how your people can talk about sustainability and reinforce one another's commitment right now, starting from where they are. Normally that is the first step toward a whole new stage of profitability and energetic development.
Contact us to join in the quest and find out how your company can grow and contribute the most to the world around us.
FOUNDING PARTNERS
James Newcomer, Ph.D.
Jim has started and managed small businesses from international trade advisory services to printing to reclaimed wood products. More recently he has practiced organizational redesign using whole system technologies such as Open Spaces, Appreciative Inquiry, and Future Search to achieve rapid, thorough and permanent change in companies and non-profits. He guides clients through the value survey and re-envisioning of their missions that enables them to launch swiftly and securely on a new path with optimum certainty of improved performance and profitability.
A former diplomat and professor of politics, as well as Executive Director of the Washington State Recycling Association, Jim earned a BA from Princeton, an MA from Columbia, and a Ph.D. from Stanford in International Politics and Organization Administration. More recently, he earned an MA from University of Seattle's Organization Systems Renewal program. He has also taken Portland State University's Implementing Sustainability course and has been trained in the Natural Step Process. Having formulated the basic design of the Seven Step Approach, he is now at work on a manual for small businesses on How to Transition to Sustainability, Survive and Thrive.
He has been a featured speaker at Dartmouth College, Princeton University, the World Conference on Recycling in Beijing, and many conferences. He has also served as Chair of the Portland-Suzhou Sister City Committee and as a trip leader as well as board member of the local Oregon Ocean Paddlers Society (OOPS), the largest kayaking club in the state.
Gary Langenwalter
Gary has consulted with more than 100 clients, ranging in size from 10 employees to the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy.
An authority on Sustainability, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Accounting and Costing, ERP, Leadership,and Organization Change, Gary shows clients how to bridge the gap from lean to green and sustainable, building on the structures used in continuous improvement.
Gary is a prolific writer of business books, and professional courses for the AMA and the American Institute of CPAs. His latest book, The Squeeze, is a top selling business novel on sustainability. Gary is in demand worldwide as a speaker on Sustainability and Lean. He has held the positions as consulting manager with Coopers & Lybrand and KPMG Peat Marwick.
Gary is certified as a Fellow in Production and Inventory Management, and in Integrated Resources Management by APICS, the Operations Management Association.
Gary is committed to sustainability as a way of operating every organization and as a way of life. He is pastor of the Dundee (Oregon) United Methodist Church and was chair of the Oregon Interfaith Global Warming Campaign. He earned his BA in management from the University of Oregon and his MBA in management from Michigan State. He has just earned MTS degree in Leadership from Boston University.
He also earned a degree in International Management from Nyenrode Business Universiteit in The Netherlands.
ConfluencePoint is a member of the Portland Business Alliance (greater Portland's chamber of commerce), the Oregon Natural Step Network, and the Zero Waste Alliance.
Douglas Rich
Doug Rich is a recovering banker and software executive, whose experience ranges from corporate finance on Wall Street to enterprise account executive for analytic applications technology. Doug’s financial expertise includes risk analysis, tax-driven financing strategies, balance sheet restructuring, and real estate finance. As a technology executive, Doug developed and conducted rapid-prototyping programs to enable major process manufacturing firms to appropriately assign and benchmark costs. Recently, Doug has developed a unique financial market analysis portal for an early-stage media analytics firm.
He has been a proponent of the “triple bottom line” approach for managing businesses for 13 years and has facilitated cultural change at all levels of diverse organizations.
Doug serves on the Natural Resources Advisory Board for the City of Lake Oswego, and the executive committee of the Northwest Earth Institute. Doug’s passion for the environment is exceeded only by the satisfaction derived from inspiring others to take responsibility for Earth and coaching youth sports.
A graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont, with a BA in Economics and Environmental Studies, Doug has completed course-work in finance and economics at Harvard University, New York University and Instituto Moderno de Lenguas Estranjeras in Leon, Mexico. More recent training has included NTL Institute in Organization Development/Human Interaction Lab, The Oregon Natural Step programs, and the Leadership Lake Oswego.
Hal Busch
Hal Busch brings thirty years of marketing and general management experience in heavy equipment manufacturing and distribution. He has served on the management teams of international divisions of Fiat, Paccar, Baker-Hughes, and Oy Tampella, and has managed marketing divisions of two of the largest equipment distributors in the Northwest. He has turned around one international division without losing personnel.
After studying with the founders of the Natural Step in 1997, Hal helped found the Oregon Natural Step Network and served on its initial planning committee. He served on the City of Gladstone (Oregon) Planning Commission for 12 years, the last 6 as chair and has now become a City Councilor for Gladstone and a member of the Clackamas County Sustainability Circle. Hal has done extensive coursework for an MBA at the University of Missouri, and also graduate work in organizational psychology.
Joel Conarton
Founder of vQuation and co-founder of Elements Consulting Group, Joel Conarton has contributed direction in business strategy, re-engineering, and organizational leadership and process design. His philosophy of building a solid foundation based upon lasting organizational values and goals has enabled company after company to redesign themselves as they have grown from one stage to the next, requiring new management structures at each stage to match the potential their markets offered and to become the thriving organizations their founders once envisioned.
He has worked in the Portland, Oregon, area as well as in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he formed a sister company, UAB EMCG (Elements Multinational Consulting Group) to assist companies in this former Soviet State in achieving vigorous growth and successful transition to a free market economy.
