Purpose should be your first priority in your triple bottom line.
Many will be familiar with the “three Ps” of the concept of the triple bottom line:
Profit, People, Planet
My career dates back over thirty years, focussed very much on growing businesses, which does mean making profits to enable them to scale.
Sometimes growing profits is really hard work, making scaling hard work.
Over time I worked out that it is far easier to scale if you put Purpose at the heart of your business, hence a while ago I came up with a new triple bottom line, of:
Purpose, People, Planet
Purpose is the WHY, then Profit becomes the driver to scale your impact
As illustrated above in my graphic, where you put Purpose first, Profit can be the outcome and then the “righteous flywheel” driver that sets your business spinning to scale the impact you can have.
Yesterday I wrote about how: “Doing the right thing can make you more money”.
Tomorrow I will curate a post from Laurie Bennett of Within People on “why purposeful businesses create value for all they serve”, an article containing loads of real-life examples of scaled businesses making an impact by putting purpose first, then giving lessons from Laurie and his colleagues on how to make that happen for you.
I hope I’m getting you thinking about how Purpose can be more and more at the heart of your business, and not only as a “feel good”, but as the rocket fuel that drives your profits and so your impact for all.
Tomorrow’s article will give lots of links to show this as a studied and empirical truth.
Your humble scribe simply reads and researches, then links this to my own first-hand experience of first building businesses and now supporting leaders around the world with their own business change and growth.
It is my consistent experience that the more you focus on Purpose, the easier it is to make a Profit.
Funny that.