"Narratives for the Discerning Connoisseur of Deep Dialogue"

Commencing December 10, 2014 New series “Missing persons” Featuring Dr. Bruce Piasecki

Images Courtesy AHC Group, Inc/Bruce Piasecki © 2014

Life, Books, and Work

Dr. Bruce Piasecki—speaker, best-selling author, and classic management consultant—has worked as an active facilitator and a change agent in many complex settings. For 30 years he has built a general management consulting firm, the AHC Group, based on principles of frugality, global competitiveness, and competing on sustainability. The environment of global business is ever changing, and Piasecki is an intrepid forecaster of things that must change in firms, governments, and the NGO community.

One of the world’s leading corporate strategists and governance advisors who bases his practice on environmental and business needs, Piasecki has built his reputation through helping corporations move beyond compliance to align their operations to respond to as well as capitalize on society’s rising expectations of business.

Piasecki has helped the global car giant Toyota, for example, pursue the hybrid power train family of more fuel-efficient cars. His firm has helped Shaw Industries, a Warren Buffett firm, create a growth and sustainability leadership council in its move to bring recycled content and energy savings to the world’s largest maker of carpet and flooring. He is now helping FMC move its growth and sustainability council in the direction of more seaweed- and bio-based chemical feedstocks. Piasecki understands that global companies are subject to increasing demands from governments and civil society to operate in a manner that is respectful of various—and often competing—demands. The problems facing companies today span the gamut of financial, operational, and social concerns. Navigating these issues requires leaders skilled in both hard and soft sciences. Yet even with these skill sets, people often fail to achieve the vision set by the organization. Frequently, the assumption is that they simply “do not have what it takes” to be a real leader.

Piasecki believes that leadership can be found in people who have the courage and capacity to accept challenges that exceed their previous experience. This capacity can be developed through coaching and mentoring, as well as through a willingness of current leaders to share their histories of success and failure. His message is applicable to a far broader audience than the men and women in executive suites and boardrooms. Piasecki is able to relate the new realities of the swift and severe world of the twenty-first century to both business leaders and everyday society, providing an optimistic yet grounded vision of the future along the way.

A Trusted Advisor in the Corporate Mansion

As president and founder of AHC Group, Inc., a top energy and environmental strategy consultancy, Piasecki has served world-renowned companies such as Toyota, Suncor Energy, Hess, FMC, and Dow Chemical. The firm has specialized in energy, materials, and environmental corporate matters since 1981. Piasecki and his staff have run hundreds of benchmarking workshops for numerous multinational corporate affiliates since 1990, involving key executives in site remediation, power markets, emerging issues, and governance concerns in the evolving global marketplace. He and his team of senior associates provide critical training to leaders and leaders-to-be for some of the world’s most successful and influential organizations.

Shining a Spotlight on the Value in Teamwork

In his latest book, Doing More with Teams: The New Way to Winning (Wiley, March 2013), Piasecki debunked the myth of the superiority of the fierce individualist. While our culture will always be inspired by the concept of the lone entrepreneur blazing a path through the metaphorical wilderness, he says we must acknowledge the truth behind the famous quote attributed to Aristotle: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Teams matter more than ever, says Piasecki, especially now that the global economy has changed the way we work. Standing out in a crowded marketplace takes constant innovation and the ability to get fast results. With the complexity of today’s workplace, even the most brilliant individual is not likely to have the skill set to take projects from start to finish. The ability to collaborate is everything—and that requires high-functioning teams. Yet all too often teams come and go, and nothing seems to change. Why do some teams achieve greatness while others become just another failed initiative? What is it about teams that succeed, and what is the mythical “it” that defines success? Piasecki weaves a lifetime of the study of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the ages together with insights from the most hard-nosed pragmatic business and military leaders to help us understand the dynamics, the DNA, of team success.

Finding a Universal Way Forward

In his earlier bestseller, Doing More with Less: The New Way to Wealth (Wiley, March 2012), Piasecki introduced a new framework to build competitive advantage in the swift and severe world of the twenty-first century—innovation and growth through frugality. In a world of seven billion souls, where we all need to compete for value in the marketplace and in the court of public opinion, we must become like Benjamin Franklin, says Piasecki: frugal in our competitiveness, innovative in our use of teams, and diplomatic in how we discover and use social value. He deftly explains how this approach to competition is applicable not only to business leaders but individuals as well. In combination with his previous seven works on business strategy and corporate change, Piasecki has laid out a complete and compelling vision of how we all can thrive in a world that presents both endless opportunity for innovation and harsh repercussions for inaction and failure to adapt.

Redrawing the Map of the Business World

With his previous books, World Inc. (2007) and The Surprising Solution (2009), Piasecki examines a striking new phenomenon in what he calls “social response capitalism.” The concept took off, translating his work into numerous languages and settings.

As power moves increasingly into the hands of business, the world is looking to corporations instead of governments to solve its problems. Gone are the days of focusing solely on technical quality and price. Companies must center their competitiveness now on “social response,” and product positioning is an entirely new ball game in the practice areas of Bruce Piasecki and his firm.

Colette Piasecki inspired the opening chapters of Missing Persons “The Discovery of Colette” – image Courtesy AHC Group, Inc/Bruce Piasecki © 2014

Missing Persons: A Life of Unexpected Influences – image Courtesy AHC Group, Inc/Bruce Piasecki © 2014

Link to Front Matter and Vignettes from Missing Persons (lower page – under related articles)

Those who helped and shaped Dr. Piasecki are the focus of his latest work Missing Persons: A Life of Unexpected Influences. In this set of masterfully written vignettes, Piasecki channels his poetic side—a side that was first recognized at Cornell, when his little-known book of poems was published under the title Stray Prayers in 1973. The memoir, one part autobiography, one part creative non-fiction, recounts the author’s formative relationships and experiences with intimacy and longing. Meet his mother and father, his interracial brothers and sisters, his early and late business partners, his muses, his daughter, and his wife. The story is told in a unique third-person narrative that provides intrigue for readers as they follow the protagonist through loss, passion, self-invention, and a litany of fears and dreams—each revealed in eloquent prose. In the process, Bruce allows us to understand the power of memory and how it influences us. The simplicity that made Doing More With Less a bestseller makes this new work not only compelling, but also life-affirming.
Missing Persons explores the meaning and power of memory, and offers an opportunity for readers to pause, reflect, and recount the myriad influences in their own lives.

AHC Group, Inc

Since 1981, the AHC Group has been active in assisting organizations and individuals in the field of environmental and management strategy. As management consultants, we serve as trusted advisors to middle and upper management staff in organizations whose responsibilities include environmental health and safety, public relations, governmental affairs, corporate governance, social responsibility, communications, and investor relations. (Read a more complete history of our firm here.)
We focus on helping companies realize the business potential in environmental strategy and public issues, enhance stakeholder and investor relations, improve corporate governance and position themselves in the marketplace. As researchers, the AHC Group strives to discover what is actionable by linking the needs of corporate business strategy with external demands for new products and environmental leadership. This includes research reflected in the seven books written by Bruce Piasecki, including Corporate Environmental Strategy: The Avalanche of Change Since Bhopal (John Wiley, 1995); Environmental Management & Business Strategy: Leadership skills for the 21st Century (John Wiley, 1999), and World Inc (Sourcebooks, 2007).

Past publications

Doing more with teams 2013

Doing more with less 2012

The surprising solution 2009

World inc 2007

Environmental management and business strategy 1999

Corporate environmental strategy 1995

In search of environmental excellence 1990