It's always been tough to start a new business, even when the bottom line was just making a profit to stay alive. A few years ago, a second focus of sustainability ("green") was added as a requirement for respectability. Now I often hear a third mandate of social responsibility. Entrepreneurs are now measured against the "triple bottom line" (TBL or 3BL) of people, planet, and profit.
The real challenge with the triple bottom line is that these three separate accounts cannot be easily added up. It's difficult to measure the planet and people accounts in any quantifiable terms, compared to profits. How does any entrepreneur define the right balance, and then measure their performance against real metrics?
Lots of people are trying to help, with new twists on the age-old model of free-market capitalism that has driven businesses for the last 500 years. Current examples include the Conscious Capitalism® movement led by John Mackey, The B Team, led by Sir Richard Branson, the 1% for the Planet organization, and the Benefit Corporation (B Corp) now available in 20 States.
In the interest of helping first-time entrepreneurs, as well as existing business executives, keep their sanity as well as their focus, I offer the following pragmatic suggestions for dealing with the triple bottom line requirements:
It's a lot more productive and a lot less risky to start early in building your record of the positives on social, environmental, and people responsibility, rather than wait and hope never to be caught in an excessive profits scandal, child labor issue, or poor sustainability practice.
So while the bar for business success continues to go up, because we all now operate on a world stage, the entrepreneur "best practices" haven't changed. Every entrepreneur needs to start with a strong vision, think long-term, communicate effectively, and always lead with responsibility and integrity. The days of success measured only by monetary returns are over. How does your business stack up against the triple bottom line?