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 thirty 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 both respond to and 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 the Warren Buffett firm Shaw Industries 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. Often the assumption is that the person simply “does 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 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 casual society, providing an optimistic yet grounded vision of the future along the way.

A Trusted Advisor in the Corporate Mansion

Piasecki is the president and founder of the AHC Group, Inc., a top energy and environmental strategy consultancy to 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 near-term leaders for some of the world’s leading organizations.

A Spotlight on Fair Competition in Teams

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 (alleged) Aristotle quote: “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 are destined to be just another failed initiative? What is it about teams that succeed, that 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.

A Universal Way Forward

In his latest 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.

A 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 coins “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. One 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.