Recently I was delivering a guest lecture at one of the Australian universities, and I had to stop my lecture because I had lost the audience. I was able to get them back, but only by abandoning my prepared talk and instead speaking “off the top of my head”.
The reason I had lost my audience … I assumed they understood the three components of the triple bottom line. They did not fully grasp the original member … the financial bottom line.
They recognised the triple bottom line. According to Wikipedia as of this writing, the triple bottom lines are People, Planet and Profit, and they knew all three. They had no problem understanding the issues with People capital and Planet capital, but they did not firmly grasp Profit capital. This could be because our young tend to be more socially conscience, and profit for the sake of profit can be seen as approaching “evil”.
If we have successfully educated our future job holders and tax payers of the importance of the other two bottom lines but not the financial bottom line, what does this mean?
And especially what does it mean to entrepreneurs?
Our universities are doing an excellent job of teaching our future society the basics of what is needed. As with any university at any time, the ability to convert “book learning” into “life learning” is called life experience, and our ability to apply what we learn is what makes and defines us.
It got me thinking … how do we teach profit, without making it evil? Profit is so fundamental that it has been taken for granted, and has become cold, harsh, and “not good”. The recent recession was created by the desire to create more profit, and we saw the consequences. We have labour laws to prevent the exploitation of people capital (and ethical labels to help promote fair working conditions in developing societies). We also have environmental laws to help promote and protect planet capital, and minimise its waste. The entire carbon debate is part of planet capital, and while I am not going to provide an opinion, it is definitely discussed, with the potential to be understood.
But how do we teach profit?
In my lecture, I was using profit as the motive for why the students would get a job (because someone will give them money, and the money has to come from someplace). While 100% correct, it did not work because I lost the audience. I tried a couple of other methods, before giving the students an exercise. I asked them to write down their definition of profit, and they had to use only positive definitions (neutral was not allowed). We then exchanged papers, and discussed other people’s answers.
I found it quite insightful and beneficial. Some of the outcomes:
+ The university students do understand the issues of pay now and pay later
+ The university students can comprehend future monetary requirements, as distinct and separate from instant gratification. The example we used was a smart phone, and they clearly understood that they needed to save for a smart phone, but the credit to use it was more of an instant. Credit required money now, the smart phone required money later. They also understood that if the money for the smart phone came too much later, the next technology would be developed making the smart phone obsolete.
+ The university students did understand the need to save
+ The university students did understand the need to create, manage, and follow a budget
I left convinced that more needs to be done, and our education system needs to once again focus on the need to create profit. I also left confident that the current group of university students will do just fine in the business world of tomorrow.
By the way … this month’s article is late. I can give you several excuses (in my opinion, all of them valid) but that does not change the fact that this article is late. I am responsible, I am at fault, no one else is at fault, and I apologise for any inconvenience caused.