Dr. Bruce Piasecki, President and Founder of AHC Group
Health begins with foundational skills that cultivate a proactive mindset. How can we offer people the ladder of self-actualization to develop wellness within? Dr. Bruce Piasecki, President and Founder of AHC Group, best selling author, academic and thought leader, shares an economic viewpoint of health care that shows the impact we have on each other. Using real world examples, he looks at medical wellness climate change, social response capitalism, and how design thinking can solve health care challenges.
Dr. Bruce Piasecki has served as the president and founder of AHC Group Inc. since 1981, a general management consulting firm specializing in growth, energy, environment, and sustainability. Additionally, he has chaired the working group for reinventing the Environmental Protection Agency, served on the EPA’s Executive Advisory Council, and was appointed to the White House Council on Environmental Technology.
Over the years, Dr. Piasecki has run tenured professional educational programs and degree programs at Cornell University, Clarkson University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At RPI, he was one of the first to develop a Master’s of Science degree in Environmental Management and Policy, with award-winning students from around the world.
Backed by his Premiere Speakers agency, Dr. Piasecki speaks on select topics, such as “Going Global, Going Green”; “To Master the Task of Tomorrow, Manage the Challenge of Today”; and “Money Doesn’t Manage Itself.” Throughout his career, he has also authored a dozen books to date, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Doing More with Less: A New Way to Wealth. Recently, Dr. Piasecki penned New World Companies: The Future of Capitalism, along with Missing Persons, a creative autobiography published by Square One.
Dr. Piasecki earned a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell in 1976; and a Doctor of Philosophy from Cornell in 1981. Dedicated to his environment and community, Dr. Piasecki contributes through a family-based community trust called “Creative Force Fund.” Recently, his book on globalization, World Inc, has appeared in ten foreign editions, including Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Greek.
He sits on the Board of Advisors of The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, an organization representing over 600,000 clinical practitioners. He also serves as a Board Member for Osiris Labs, a virtual reality immersive learning organization.
Due to his outstanding efforts in the field, Dr. Piasecki was honored for his lifelong achievement by being elected to the Lotos Club in Manhattan, as well as the National Press Club. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and MIT’s Technology Review. He has also completed Conquering Today Tomorrow, with advanced excerpts in the Times Union and Trolley (NYS Writers Institute), with a chapbook called The Quiet Genius of Eileen Fisher, all due out in 2020. Dr. Piasecki is currently working on an update of World Inc called Wealth and the Commonwealth, expected in 2021.
Show Notes
Almost half of American women don't receive the preventative medicine that they need. [04:19]
Wellness is a condition of self-actualization and social value that welcomes change.[07:17]
What are medical wellness climate change issues? [12:27]
What are the three interacting, yet different economic circles that need to align? [16:56]
What’s an ugly truth about hospitals? [21:03]
How can we use design thinking to come up with a holistic solution? [24:17]
How does the global battle between speculative short term capitalism and social response capitalism affect health? [29:44]
What is social response capitalism? [33:40]
Transcript
Bisi Williams 0:04
I'm Bisi Williams, you're listening to Health2049.
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 0:07
Wellness as a condition that you develop within yourself is a condition of self-actualization and social value that welcomes change. And when you study as I have throughout my management career, what frustrates people or what causes anxiety in children or what shortens the life, I think those things are because society is not offering everybody the ladder of self-actualization. And I want to start by saying that when that has to do with health inherent in the ailing intensities of our 24/7, swift and severe world is the need to develop a set of mental skills that can help people of all ages and evolve social class, leverage their creative fervor for positive families and positive jobs
Bisi Williams 1:05
It's not how much you have, but what you do with it, so they say. In 2020, US healthcare spending reached $4.1 trillion. That's about $12,000 per person, and accounts for 19.7% of the GDP. And yet, frustration abounds on all sides of our healthcare system and waste is a word heard all too often. So a simple question is, can we do a better job with the tools we already have?
My guest today says yes. Dr. Bruce Piasecki has had an illustrious career as a renowned consultant, best selling author, academic and thought leader. He tackles complex system level issues with clear philosophies. Since 1981, he served as the president and founder of AHC Group, a general management consulting firm, specializing in growth, energy, environment and sustainability. He has chaired the working group for reinventing the Environmental Protection Agency, served on the EPA's Executive Advisory Council, and was appointed to the White House Council on Environmental Technology.
Over the years Dr. Piasecki has also run tenured professional and degree programs at Cornell, Clarkson University and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has a new book out called "Doing More With Less: The New Way to Wealth," and as if he wasn't busy enough, he's also currently a board member of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, an organization representing over 600,000 clinical practitioners.
My name is Bisi Williams and you're listening to Health2049. I'm honored to have Dr. Bruce Piasecki on our show today. Bruce, welcome. And by the way, Bruce, congratulations on your new book "A New Way to Wealth."
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 4:02
Thanks, Bisi that was fun to write.
Bisi Williams 4:05
I love when someone says it's fun to write something, that's amazing,
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 4:09
It's painful, but it's also fun.
Bisi Williams 4:12
That's fair. Now, would you please tell our audience a bit about your background and how we find ourselves here today?
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 4:19
Sure. So I've been lucky in life because I was born poor, and I could dribble and shoot a basketball. So although I didn't have a father when I was growing up, he died early at age 39. I did have a super abundant mother who cared for Puerto Rican foster brothers and a Chinese sister Sue Ying Chang as a way of getting the food stamps and the food income plus the veteran benefits.
I start with that because by the time I accepted the Cornell University full scholarship, I was stunned at the wealth of learning and the depth of the people who were to teach me at Cornell. I had played for the legendary coach Lefty Driesell at University of Maryland, but as soon as I saw those Big Ten players, I realized I was just a small piece in a cog and that I had to start investing in my mind.
So after that, my wife who I met at Cornell, Andrea Carol Masters, an editor and a publisher, who has been with me, I should say, I've been with her for more than four decades and I decided to create a company, which was called AHC Group, American Hazard Control Group, where we were interested in leaders learning from leaders, it was a type of fantasy that paid off over the last four years because we now advise the top 40 at Merck and the top 30 at Walgreens. So we see the COVID crisis as a management challenge, both from the large pharma perspective, and also from the world's largest pharmacy, Walgreens Boots Alliance.
I guess because I was raised by a mother, the first fact I'd like to start talking about that I think has future consequence, even though it's a horrible fact now is that almost half of the American women don't receive the preventative medicine that they need. And so I think that having been raised by women, a Polish grandmother and a Polish immigrant mother, I believe that there was a wisdom and a common sense in what they taught me about how to survive without much medicines. We didn't have health insurance, we were factory workers and so I start at that rung in the ladder. But I still think after 40 years, it's a treacherous downward slope if we don't reach those women like my mother and grandmother, in the preventative side of medicine, because that's where the real pain relief is. That's where the real solution sets are Bisi.
Bisi Williams 7:04
I couldn't agree more, Dr. Piasecki couldn't agree more. Now, tell me with that, what is your vision for health and wellness in the year 2049?
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 7:18
If you look at how much changed since I was a pre med student at Cornell, I eventually got my degrees in Natural Resource Management because I realized I didn't have the stomach to be a surgeon, even though that was my fantasy then, just like I didn't have the competitiveness to be a professional basketball player. So I'd like to start this discussion of 2049 with the notion that wellness is a condition of self-actualization and social value that welcomes change. And when you study, as I have throughout my management career, what frustrates people or what causes anxiety in children, or what shortens a life, I think those things are because society is not offering everybody the ladder of self-actualization. And I want to start by saying that when that has to do with health inherent in the ailing intensities of our 24/7, swift and severe world is the need to develop a set of mental skills that can help people of all ages and evolve social class, leverage their creative fervor for positive families and positive jobs.
I think one of the things you learn in looking at the latest precision medical technology, and then extrapolated to the year 2040, or 2049, is that, one, technology cannot override the vulnerabilities embedded in the human DNA, but two, you learn that the malleability of the human self, the soul, the souls that are well, the souls that are healthy, the souls that contribute to society, have found a set of skills that I write about in my books.
So for example, the new book "A New Way to Wealth," is really, I think part of wealth is discovering how to ask what is enough, and then how to start giving back. So I think that to sum it all up, I think that wellness is a condition that you develop within yourself, but it's not the same as self-determination, all those, how to books and all those willful books about self-actualization.
I'd like to share a story with you about how I discovered that in watching my daughter at age 10, if you would. So I had written this book that somehow became a best seller and I was pleased and my daughter was moved up in ninth grade like I had been to be a varsity player and a setter in volleyball. So to celebrate, Colette at this point is I think 14, not even yet 15, and she's on the varsity team. And so to celebrate, we go north a little bit towards the Adirondack Park to a place where she had been swimming since a child called Moreau State Park. It's a lake at the cusp of the beginning of the Adirondack Mountains. And I took a set of stones and started flinging them into the lake. And we were both in a celebratory mood. So she picked up a stone and threw it much farther than her father, into the lake. So my first moment of sudden rightness was to realize that thank God, my daughter was competitive, and that she would live a life of probable wellness, because she could ask for what she needed and she could, in a sense, fight for what she deserved. But in addition, I realized that the stones we had thrown out started out as a little individual drop in the water, but that concentric circles were coming out. So I first thought of self-determination and competitiveness, but then I thought of my daughter, and my family. And then the bigger ring was my firm. And then the bigger ring have that moment of sudden rightness was the largest ring, which are the firms that my firm tries to help. And I came to the realization that wealth and social success should be the same that those who suffer greediness or a narrowing due to wealth, haven't yet discovered that whole concentric circle. And so I tried to make that a mantra, from age 14, she's now 25 in her third year of medical school, and is really loving medicine far better than I naturally did.
Bisi Williams 12:12
That's an amazing story. And I'd love for you to expand a little bit about this integrating the health and equity with one of your passions, which is climate policy, how does that factor into our lives 30 years hence?
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 12:27
Well, this one is easier for me to talk about because I was on the White House Counsel 30 years ago when Al Gore had not yet written "Earth in the Balance." I had met him when he was a senator visiting my client, Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York and stayed in touch with Gore. So Gore appointed me to the White House Counsel that first tried to come up with a client policy, and the best way to describe it is we failed because we didn't understand how many people had access to the vehicle we were trying to park. We were trying to go up a 45 degree road, Al was fond of always talking about the superhighway, but what it really was was a side road in a ghetto of Washington, DC, and that others had access to the brake, like the big oil people, or other powerful interests.
And so what I've come to conclude is that climate change in the next 30 years will be sufficiently addressed because we managed to learn collectively from our last 30 years of mistakes. We first focused on the polar bear and the ecosystem animal, which emotionally is difficult for the wide spectrum of children or adults to bond with. It's a select demographic.
I think what we now are doing with climate change is the military and the doctor community have come in, in an apolitical way. And so, I think that these four issues will be seen as medical wellness climate change issues. First is urban asthma is worsened due to the heat island effect of climate change. Second, the elderly's respiratory air problems, which you see as the world moves from two-thirds urban to four-fifths urban in the next 30 years, that huge concentration of mega cities is going to be putting stress both on youth and the elderly.
And when it comes to the everyday person, I find it very encouraging that my client, Walgreens Boots Alliance has formed a strategic alliance with, right before COP26, with Procter and Gamble and also with the new woman who runs GlaxoSmithKline, to start anticipating what these climate ailment issues are. What will be the chronic pathways to pharmacy in a time of climate change? So that only addresses the ailment side, the kind of pain side.
What is beginning to address the positive side is the capital markets are awakening, it's not that they believe in climate change, they just see it as an enterprise risk, they can see the writing on the wall if you're at BlackRock, or at a Vanguard, or a State Street, or the 77 other asset managers I write about in my book, "New World Companies," they're understanding in a more precise way than ever, that they cannot override with greed, and over investment into petrochemicals, they need in fact, to sequester enough capital to transition for this climate change.
But what I'm willing to say at this point, and having served them with this very preeminent counsel, that these companies want to learn how to answer. Now here's the challenge, it took 100 years to create the petrochemical treadmill infrastructure that gives us plastic intravenous, that gives us hypodermic needles, that gives us all the medical products that extend our lives in times of challenge. We're going to have to make these changes in 30 years. So what took 100 to build is going to have to be shifted in 30.
Bisi Williams 16:44
I think that's quite remarkable, and I want to know why are you confident that your idea or your vision can be achieved in 30 years?
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 16:56
Well, I think it has to do with the nature of the corporation. Milton Friedman, started us down the wrong path 50 years ago, or so did Calvin Coolidge when he said the business of business is business. It's no longer true due to IT technology, the government in many nations creates the politics of social needs, it defines what is legitimate longevity, what is legitimate health care, what is Medicare, etc. And so the way I think of it, my confidence is based on having experienced trust, that the interaction of three circles will continue.
Now, these three circles are not fed equally, but in the center of the circle is the market and to me the market is vivacious and vivid and voracious. I say those three V's intentionally because they lead to velocity. Now, to the left of that velocity, this growing sphere, that influences everybody's life is the governments of the world. Right now, that circle is not as big as the market circle, but it certainly interacts and has osmotic influence on the cell of the market every day.
So Build Back Better is an example, or the things that go on in Europe regarding climate change called Fit for 55. These are elaborate European Union policies that are going to change the nature of the animals in the market, the cellular activity within the market. Well, what's really wonderful about our century and why we're lucky we were born, when we were born, all your listeners is that there's a third circle, which is the realm of science and technology where the whole premise is that, sure there's lots of people who have to operate for a profit, and sure, there are lots of people that have to operate for the rules of government. But there's also a budding number of people who can try things to make them work, like an Apple handheld.
So I believe in the world of science technology, and that is going to grow. I have a lot of hope that although you can politicize things like masks or vaccination, or you could politicize anything because of the power of the marketplace, you can have people invest wrongheaded money in things that don't lead to social good, but overall, the realm of science and technology has an underlining and steady and steadfastness that once something is achieved, it will dominate the world.
Case in point, when my grandmother the Polish immigrant died in my home on Long Island, it was found that she had TB on her lungs, which was not uncommon in poor households. And so thank God that they were public health officials, my basketball coach put me in touch with the health official in my school, who came and gave my Uncle Steve and I little packages of TB medication that we could take for six months to eradicate the possibility of infection. And so I never had any symptoms of TB, nor did anyone in my family. So if that could be done 50 years ago, imagine what can be done by technology and science in the year 2049.
Bisi Williams 20:46
Yeah, that's very grounding and when you think about the strategic plan, among all the different businesses that you work with, how does the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health factor in on all of this?
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 21:03
First off, it's chaired by two wonderful living legends, It's chaired by Dr. Steven Schroeder. It's also co-chaired by a living legend called Bill Novelli, who perhaps any of your listeners may want to read his book, "Good Business." Every six weeks, the nine board members of the Medical Consortium get together, we have a very active agenda of influencing Congress on climate change. And we also sent representatives to COP26.
So an example of the product of the Medical Consortium, and anyone could look at what we do, it's all open disclosure. It's not lobbying in any formal sense. It's advocacy for public good. And you can see it at the George Mason Medical Consortium on Public Health and Climate. And one of the things that we worked on for the last two years up to COP26 is an ugly truth about hospitals. And interestingly enough, hospitals have extended our lives and our functionality and our value in society, but hospitals are very much a product of what I call the petrochemical treadmill.
And so we got together by working with the United Kingdom's Ministry of Health, a 404 page document written by some of our legendary staff at the Medical Consortium like Edward Maybach, who was listed recently by Reuters is one of the top seven scientists in the world on climate. Maybach is a social scientist, and he was the only one listed in the top 10. And what he did is he wrote this report with the UK Ministry and then we started negotiating a plan on how to reduce the over dependence on oil and gas in hospitals, that 102 companies signed up for.
Now, 50 of them agreed to a very aggressive short term set of policies that will influence all hospitals in their nation, the other 52, we're trying, week by week to get them to sign up by COP27, but we did get 50. On the rapid deacceleration of coal, there's 102 countries that have signed agreements. And they've also signed massive agreements at COP26 regarding methane. So our Medical Consortium studies those agreements, and now we're trying to apply them to hospitals as well.
Bisi Williams 23:47
That's been one of the biggest areas that I've looked at from a design perspective, in terms of energy and material, and the design of these institutions. Any thoughts in terms of how the scientists and the engineers and the financiers would think about incorporating design into the mix to get a holistic view of what we dream, imagine and build and do?
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 24:17
Well said, what I believe is that design thinking is the most productive thinking, because you can ask questions, the two fundamental questions of management science. The first is, how do I do more with less? In other words, how do I make a car like the hybrid powertrain with less environmental impact with less energy waste with more mileage?
The second fundamental management science imperative is how do you align money, people and rules? How do you align the different logics and the different compelling narratives of those three different circles of politics, marketplace, and the world of science and technology, they're not easily aligned.
So let me give you a couple of cases in point, when you look at the scale and suffering of the 900,000, that have died already in America from COVID-19, if you look at the numbers, it's astonishing. Our neighbor up north, Canada, if you look at their population, and their densities and cities like Toronto, and Vancouver, they have died at half the rate of Americans. So obviously, there was some slippage of policy and massive slippage of inflammation in America, so that the scale of our suffering was twice as bad as our neighbors.
Now, the evidence is not completely in about how this relates to, say, China, or India, or the place I'll be spending a month in soon, Australia, but I'd like to say that when I saw that number, I went back and I read a book about disease through the ages, I want to tell you some of my reflections on how design can help. Because if you just think of design from a medical perspective, like you're saying, what you want to do is decrease the duration of suffering, and decrease the rate of the death toll. And that's what combines science, medicine and public works.
So there were in human history, essentially, three different types of challenges that caused suffering of a long duration and the death toll. There's the plague, pandemics, which were global diseases caused by bacteria, there were the pandemics that we now are surrounded by which it's epidemic spreading from a medical point of view that goes through air transfer to multiple regions or countries rapidly. And then there's the epidemic, which is excessive numbers of a case in a given geographical area.
You look at those three different things, you factor in the third plague pandemic that went from 1892 to 1922, and killed 10 million people, due to our ignorance of rats and fleas. It started in southwest China, traveled to Hong Kong, spread to other parts like India and Indonesia. And I mean, compared to the fact that we're now getting out of this pandemic, which seems like an interminable three years, it's not the 28 years of that third plague, so science and technology has helped us.
If you look at things like the Asian Flu, that during the years of my early life, '57 to '58, reading about that one from a medical perspective, was really fascinating to me, because it went so global so fast. It was the beginning in the sense of globalization after World War II, and the youth suffered more than those 65 or over, in our case with this new COVID-19, it's those that are 60 or over that have the largest rate of fatality 2.97, I think, per 100,000 people. So what I'm trying to say here is that, due to IT and due to big data, we can study the scale and the rate of suffering and change both the duration of illness and the death toll in terms of millions.
Bisi Williams 29:00
Well said, you've put the whole pandemic in perspective, I think that's fascinating and it's actually very heartwarming to turn this very hard story we're living in right now in present day, even though people are suffering, to look at it with perspective, and just marvel with gratitude, where we are. And so I want to pivot a tiny bit, your last six books articulate how there's a global battle between speculative short term capitalism and social response capitalism. How does this battle that you describe, affect health and wellness and the world in general?
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 29:44
As a pragmatist, my supercharged superhero is Ben Franklin and then his buddy, that he never talked to, George Orwell. So I come from having grown up with reading their books. I think that the first thing you have to say is that I don't think anyone, any government will ever succeed in stopping speculative capitalists. So speculative capitalists are those that strive for self-aggrandizement and do not care how they get it, as long as it's within the rules.
So I came upon an Albert Einstein quote, which made me think that there are other types of capitalists, just like there are other types of competitors. And Einstein said, strive not to be a success, but to be of value. When you make that mind shift and you start thinking about the future, the next 30 years, I think it's possible that, just as we're accelerating our attempt to develop renewable and alternative energy and cleaner companies, because of climate change, I think I see a pattern in development where there are more companies that begin to be run on social response capitalism.
I'd like to define that for you. It's from my book called "World, Inc," which I'm happy to say does better in it's 10 foreign editions, it won a Japanese book of the year, it's in Portuguese, it's selling in China even though illegally. So "World, Inc" is an interesting argument where, back in the day, I looked out at globalization, and I knew Friedman was writing his book, "The World is Flat," so I wanted to look at it from not a popularization or celebration point of view, but trying to describe, will globalization change the nature of capitalism? Or will it become even more speculative because you were hearing about companies like from my neighborhood, GE, that was suddenly closing down New York offices to build massive, lower paying jobs in India.
So there was this tension I was looking at. And I came to the realization that there are companies like Unilever, or Trane Technologies, or Merck, or others, that I write about in my books that compete like a normal speculative capitalist does on human talent and distribution and price parameters, but also compete on social needs. So they actually ask questions in the boardroom, and to their top executives about, how do we provide a new form of mobility to the aging? Toyota's doing that now, or Merck. How do we provide solutions to climate change before climate a tax? So these are firms that are fighting for social solutions, sometimes before regulators even know how to ask them to fight for those solutions.
Bisi Williams 33:17
I think that that's really what a leader is today. I think a leader has forward thinking and they look to step by step design solutions for problems that they see. And that they could mitigate and be of value and of service, to their customers and the planet.
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 33:40
Oh, here's the good news, two weeks ago in Tucson, I had 57 companies enrolled in our workshops and the living legend Bill Novelli came out to speak. And I came to realize in conversation with Bill over those four days, that what I call social response capitalism is a highfalutin way of what he calls good business. He's essentially saying that there are some businesses that are good and his books render that. So I went back and I looked at my members who finance our leader to leader workshops and I realized that many of them are good businesses. So for example, the CEO of Calvert, John Stewart was a presenter, and to my shocking discovery, even though he has been a member for seven years, when I first met Calvert and him they were worth 17 billion in AUM investment money. They're now over 40 billion. So they're a good company in every sense of the world. They invest in environmental, social and governance concerns. They invest in diversity inclusion, they invest in good governance of corporations, and they're profitable. So obviously, I'm just one little hand clapping In the wilderness, but I see this stuff happen.
Bisi Williams 35:04
I love your optimism and I also love that it's based in evidence, in fact, and it's not rose-colored glasses. I mean, it is hard work.
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 35:14
Yes, it's a competitor's pragmatism. And I want to mention that there's been many failures to be able to point to some of these successes.
Bisi Williams 35:24
I don't want this conversation to end. It's been fascinating learning from you about your vision for the world and how it works in such a positive and productive fashion. Thank you for joining us today on Health2049. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Dr. Bruce Piasecki 35:45
So did I, thank you for your time.
Bisi Williams 35:48
That wraps our show for today. Thank you Dr. Piasecki for sharing your vision for health and wellness in the year 2049. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, rate, review and tell one friend about it. Thank you for listening. I'm your host, Bisi Williams. Take care and be well.
