.................................................................................
Hi, I am Willie Cheng, from Singapore.
This website contains a collection of my writings. As authors, we write because we want to be read. So, do read, download and pass on the materials to those you think may benefit from them.
I found that I enjoyed writing only after I retired from executive life in 2013. I worked for Accenture (and its predecessor organisations: Arthur Andersen & Co. and Andersen Consulting) for 26 years. During this period, any writing I did was primarily technical – proposals, reports and other business documents.
In my retirement, I became involved with boards in both the commercial and nonprofit space. I wrote my first nonprofit article, “The missing hand of Adam Smith”, in 2004. It was an obligatory piece for SALT, a new nonprofit magazine that the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre produced to connect Singapore’s social sector. That commentary resonated with many. Encouraged, I started expressing my thoughts in more articles and then books on how things worked (or did not, but should) in the “doing good” or nonprofit sector.
Later, when I was with the Singapore Institute of Directors (SID), we created platforms for the thought leadership of what SID stood for as the national association of company directors: good corporate governance and directorships. I contributed my share of articles in this area and thoroughly enjoyed it.them
I hope that it’s all good stuff that you will find here.
In recent years, I have tried my hand at creating fiction. My first story, “The Expialidocious Burger”, was published in The Business Times in December 2019. With the feedback, I intend to expand that into a novelette later. Meanwhile, I have penned more short stories and hope to put them into an anthology eventually.
On this website, I sought to group my writings into three “genres”:
• Social Ecosystem. These “doing good” books and articles examine nonprofit paradigms, including the interdependencies between the social, private and public sectors.
• Corporate. These are mostly SID-related writings on issues of directorship and corporate governance.
• Stories. These are my fiction pieces such as “The Expialidocious Burger” and “Closure”. It is thin now, but I hope to add to them in due course.
These three categories are, of course, not mutually exclusive. For example, good corporate governance is not just necessary for businesses; it is also vital for social organisations. One theme of my writings is the convergence of the social and business sectors. When a book or article qualifies for more than one category, I pick the one I think it most relates to.
Why the name “doinggood.sg”? Originally, this website was meant to be a base for my “Doing Good” series of books about the social ecosystem. When I decided to add the rest of my writings, I reasoned that they are also about “doing good” in a broad but relevant sense. Corporate governance is about rules, practices and systems for the good of organisations, whilst the fiction stories I write will touch on values and morality.
In short, I hope that it’s all good stuff that you will find here.
Happy reading.
WILLIE CHENG