Genevieve Taylor’s Blog

Balancing the Three Legged Stool – What is sustainability?

The purpose of this blog is to explore the question – what is sustainable business, in regards to balancing and building the “triple bottom line” of “people, planet, and profit”.

This blog is meant for organizational change agents – champions inside organizations, whether you are a business, government, or non-profit, whether you are a CEO, an HR manager, or a new supervisor with a lot of big ideas, who want to help their organization become sustainable.

I believe that sustainability can be transformative; it can be used as a vehicle for changing the entire organization for the better. In fact, like teambuilding or visioning of any sort, it is hard to contain it once an organization authentically starts on this path.

In sustainable business, informed change agents are constantly looking for the best way to balance, support, and build three different components: people, planet, and profit (the Three Ps). The search for the “three-legged stool” of the Three Ps is elusive – many times, organizations will get one, or even two, but rarely all three. For those organizations who really want to “do it right”, who wholeheartedly believe that the definition of sustainability is to maintain the ability of future generations to meet their needs while meeting the needs of the current generation, getting one or two of the legs isn’t enough. They don’t want to be just profitable, just environmental, or just socially equitable. They want to be all three.

But nailing all three into place is not easy.

Next time, I will talk about how to get to all three.