Pitfalls in Aligning People, Profits and Planet

What is Triple Bottom Line Leadership and When will it Reach Critical Mass?

Aligning The Three P’s

Triple Bottom Line Leadership is a term for strategic sustainability initiatives that  seek to align people, profits and the planet. While I’m an inherent optimist, I don’t envision the concept reaching critical mass in the near term future.Do profits come easier when you align all three P’s? How do you prove that paradox? That proof provides the WHY. Only if the WHY is strong enough, will we begin to figure out HOW.  As I’ve previously discussed, when there’s no why, there’s no way.To gain critical mass, aligning the 3 P’s needs to achieve “must have” status as opposed to a “nice to have”. Decision makers/leaders first need their WHY (successful examples or case studies) then “the how” (proven methodologies).Significant obstacles prevent a positive prediction for “when” this alignment can occur. Pardon my pessimism. Here’s part of what’s getting in the way.Aligning people, profits and planet will require epiphanies for a lot of unenlightened leaders who struggle connecting just the first two P’s. Southwest Airlines has successfully connected people and profit. But in a copy-cat world, their competition has failed to replicate either their intangible value system or their tangible profits. Would adding a third “P” make it easier or more challenging? What is the common perception?

Who Will Lead and Why?

C-Level positions are predominantly held by Results-Driven leaders. This strong utilitarian value eventually conflicts with altruism and ecology in the decision-making process. For an epiphany to occur within a predominantly utilitarian mindset, leaders must first discover that People and Planet are critical means to their end: Profit. Then they need a (revamped balanced score card type) methodology/strategy to pursue this.

When Will We Want It?

Another obstacle is the focus on short-term results at the expense of the long-term bigger picture. With the quarterly focused time-line of most publicly traded companies, the planet has a difficult time getting to the top of the list. Their shareholders could/should demand more. That institutionally dominated group is far from reaching critical mass.

What’s In A Name?

When addressing a C-Level, utilitarian dominated audience, I’d be careful about using the label “triple bottom line“. Unless you can demonstrate genuine potential for 300% profit improvement it could be easily misconstrued. You risk immediately losing them with the perception of false bravado. Unless you can demonstrate it’s proven to benefit all of your stakeholders.

Update

For a more thorough and feasible approach, I recommend The Successor to Good To Great: Conscious Capitalism.