Bruce Piasecki's Blog
July 9, 2025
Join 200 plus leaders from 22 nations for a FREE global webinar with Bruce Piasecki on Competition…
Synobsis by Forum Host Below:
Are you concerned about the near future?
Are you curious about why we must all become — in this resource constrained world of more and more people — like Ben Franklin all over again? Do you and your teams wish to become more competitive and more frugal?
ENROLL NOW BELOW to join us September 17.
Competitive frugality for the high-stakes decade ahead
Check out the free security and sustainaiblty education on www.ssfworld.org
View this email in your browser
Doing More With Less, The Ben Franklin Way
Live online with Bruce Piasecki
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
1:15 to 2:15 PM EDT
Register to get the recording if you can’t attend.
Please alert colleagues.
Dear <>,
“In this smaller world we must all become like Ben Franklin — frugal, inventive, diplomatic.” — Bruce Piasecki, IndustryWeek.
Ben Franklin is having a cultural comeback. Ken Burns devoted a two-part documentary to him.
PBS is now filming a prime-time special, Doing More with Less: The Ben Franklin Way, built around the life’s work of Bruce Piasecki, a strategist corporations call when resources tighten and stakes soar.
The program airs in early 2026, but on September 17 you can hear the source material live in this exclusive SSF webinar with Bruce.
Bruce founded AHC Group in 1981 and has spent four decades inside corporate leadership at Toyota, bp, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Merck, S&P Global, Shaw Industries, and more, teaching leaders how to translate scarcity into innovation and profit.
His 2012 book Doing More with Less became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and coined the term “competitive frugality.” That mantra earned him Worth Magazine’s “Worthy 100” honor for 2024, joining luminaries such as Messi and Jane Fonda.
Bruce earned his PhD at Cornell, launched one of the first graduate programs in environmental management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and pioneered hazardous-waste research that won him a German Marshall Fund fellowship to study twelve European nations. These achievements earned Bruce a seat on Vice President Al Gore’s White House environmental council and shaped his lifelong mission to turn environmental constraints into strategic advantage.
Why Attend
Preview the PBS storyline. Get Piasecki’s newest insights before they hit national television.Learn Franklin-style tactics you can apply tomorrow. From supply-chain resilience to product R&D, “competitive frugality” reframes constraints as launchpads.See how security, business, and community now overlap. Piasecki maps the concentric circles shaping policy and corporate risk in the next decade.Ask the hard questions. We close with a candid Q&A moderated by SSF Executive Director Edward Saltzberg.What Others Say
“Piasecki redefines what winning looks like for all of us.” — Gerald Bresnick, former VP EHS & Social Responsibility, Hess Corp.
“One of the few thinkers really upping the ante for leaders in business and society.” — James Howard Kunstler, bestselling author
“Unlock the Power of Competitive Frugality: Bruce’s journey from boardrooms to bestsellers reveals how turning scarcity into innovation revolutionizes leadership and profitability.” Mia Funk, Artist, Podcaster, founderoif the Creative Process.
Who Should Be in the Room
C-suite executives, board members, ESG and risk officers, national-security analysts, investors, decision makers. And anyone wrestling with scarcity of every kind; materials, money, and patience, and from stakeholders who are always watching
An invitation from:
Edward Saltzberg, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Security and Sustainability Forum
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-saltzberg-23604010/
Security and Sustainability Forum
Falls Church, Virginia 22046
You received this email because you subscribed to the Security and Sustainiabilty Forum webinar alerts by opting in through a webinar registraiton or on the SSF website.. You can unsubscribe at any time.
1006 N Tuckahoe Street
Falls Church, VA 22046
USA
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July 6, 2025
Are you concerned about the near future?
REGISTER FOR FREE NOW TO GLOBAL PODCAST ON OUR NEAR FUTURE BY BRUCE PIASECKIAre you concerned about the near future?
Are you curious about why we must all become — in this resource constrained world of more and more people — like Ben Franklin all over again? Do you and your teams wish to become more competitive and more frugal?
ENROLL NOW FOR FREE BELOW 😎😎😎👀👀👀👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Competitive frugality for the high-stakes decade ahead….
Check out the free security and sustainaiblty education on www.ssfworld.org
View this email in your browser
Doing More With Less, The Ben Franklin Way
Live online with Bruce Piasecki
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
1:15 to 2:15 PM EDT
Register to get the recording if you can’t attend.
Please alert colleagues.
Dear READER of MEDIUM.COM
“In this smaller world we must all become like Ben Franklin — frugal, inventive, diplomatic.” — Bruce Piasecki, IndustryWeek.
Ben Franklin is having a cultural comeback. Ken Burns devoted a two-part documentary to him.
PBS is now filming a prime-time special, Doing More with Less: The Ben Franklin Way, built around the life’s work of Bruce Piasecki, a strategist corporations call when resources tighten and stakes soar.
The program airs in early 2026, but on September 17 you can hear the source material live in this exclusive SSF webinar with Bruce.
Bruce founded AHC Group in 1981 and has spent four decades inside corporate leadership at Toyota, bp, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Merck, S&P Global, Shaw Industries, and more, teaching leaders how to translate scarcity into innovation and profit.
His 2012 book Doing More with Less became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and coined the term “competitive frugality.” That mantra earned him Worth Magazine’s “Worthy 100” honor for 2024, joining luminaries such as Messi and Jane Fonda.
Bruce earned his PhD at Cornell, launched one of the first graduate programs in environmental management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and pioneered hazardous-waste research that won him a German Marshall Fund fellowship to study twelve European nations. These achievements earned Bruce a seat on Vice President Al Gore’s White House environmental council and shaped his lifelong mission to turn environmental constraints into strategic advantage.
Why Attend
Preview the PBS storyline. Get Piasecki’s newest insights before they hit national television.Learn Franklin-style tactics you can apply tomorrow. From supply-chain resilience to product R&D, “competitive frugality” reframes constraints as launchpads.See how security, business, and community now overlap. Piasecki maps the concentric circles shaping policy and corporate risk in the next decade.Ask the hard questions. We close with a candid Q&A moderated by SSF Executive Director Edward Saltzberg.What Others Say
“Piasecki redefines what winning looks like for all of us.” — Gerald Bresnick, former VP EHS & Social Responsibility, Hess Corp.
“One of the few thinkers really upping the ante for leaders in business and society.” — James Howard Kunstler, bestselling author
“Unlock the Power of Competitive Frugality: Bruce’s journey from boardrooms to bestsellers reveals how turning scarcity into innovation revolutionizes leadership and profitability.” Mia Funk, Artist, Podcaster, founderoif the Creative Process.
Who Should Be in the Room
C-suite executives, board members, ESG and risk officers, national-security analysts, investors, decision makers. And anyone wrestling with scarcity of every kind; materials, money, and patience, and from stakeholders who are always watching
An invitation from:
Edward Saltzberg, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Security and Sustainability Forum
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-saltzberg-23604010/
Security and Sustainability Forum
Falls Church, Virginia 22046
You received this email because you subscribed to the Security and Sustainiabilty Forum webinar alerts by opting in through a webinar registraiton or on the SSF website.. You can unsubscribe at any time.
1006 N Tuckahoe Street
Falls Church, VA 22046
USA
To learn more about the work of Bruce Piasecki visit the PBS teaser at www.brucepiasecki.com. Or to learn how the new generation views his last dozen books visit the cartoon www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com
December 15, 2024
Onomatopoeia
Buzz
Crash like motorbikes in the night
Hiss like the whisper of snake speech
Clang
Whisper
It can go on. Certain names become so known they sound like Onomatopoeia
Lady Gaga
Tony Bennett
Madonna
I feel this special sound now in the names of famous authors that have shaped my writing
Walt Whitman
Abe Lincoln
Ernest Hemingway
This week, on December 11, in the second floor office of Ernest Hemingway in Key West I was interviewed and filmed by two producers retained for a PBS show about my books and work.
This whole affair has proven intimidating, surprised, and fortunate — like when words sound like what they say.
Expect to read about me in Worth magazine as one of their Wirth 100 this year
Why is this recognition happening? I do not know. But it sounds right.
More at www.brucepiasecki.com and my expand g Wikipedia pages
[image error]October 29, 2024
ENROLL with 55 World Leaders on Achieving Results in Business and Society
by Bruce Piasecki, Chris Carr, and Ira Feldman
Here is a one page sample of 55 leaders you meet by enrolling for January 15 and 16 in Phoenix, Az.Innovation. Sustainability. Change Management. You are now invited to join us this January 15 and 16 in Phoenix, for our 43rd annual.
These two days at the Squaw Peak Hilton in Phoenix Arizona will surround you with leaders that achieve results in business and society. Please examine the links and attachments to JOIN NOW, at www.achievingresults25.com. Click here to enroll www.achievingresults25.com
For over 40 years, change management guru Bruce Piasecki’s AHC Group Inc. has hosted biannual workshops on these interconnected themes. His books have often drawn on case leadership examples drawn from the leaders in these twice a year workshops. Drawing on our collective consulting expertise, the organizers (Piasecki/Carr and Feldman) of these workshops bring you access to the pragmatic and accomplished leaders like Scott Tew of Trane, Julie Pierce of Minnesota Power and former CEO and board members like Bill Novelli.
This way the workshops, in a disciplined interactive leader to leader fashion, address your firm’s immediate challenges while positioning your businesses for long-term success by embedding sustainability, climate competitiveness, and innovation into your remaining weeks in 2025.
😎😎😎😎😎👀👀👀👀👀👀😎😎😎😎😎😎👀👀👀✨✨✨😁
While Bruce remains actively involved in these workshops, he has enlisted leading experts Chris Carr, a climate change and energy transition lawyer from C2E2 Strategies, LLC, and Adaptation Leader’s Ira Feldman to co-lead the workshops. Come enroll now or email Bruce at Bruce@ahcgroup.com if you want to be invited to an orientation sessions this November or early December.
This invitation-only workshop series serves as a Chatham House-style forum for corporate leaders. Attendees include C-suite executives, VPs of EH&S, sustainability heads, and leaders in finance and strategic planning. Participants network with corporate peers, representatives from key NGOs, former federal officials, and financial sector organizations. Each workshop is structured to optimize relevant content and networking, fostering knowledge exchange, cross-sector benchmarking, and growth opportunities.
The next workshop will take place at the Hilton Phoenix Resort at the Peak on January 15–16, 2025 — the perfect winter escape! A follow-up event will be held in June in New York, most likely again at our host S&P in Wall Street.
Confirmed speakers for Phoenix include:
The AES Corporation
Enbridge
Georgetown University McDonough School of Business
Minnesota Power/ALLETE
Pacific Gas and Electric Company
S&P Global
Trane Technologies
World Resources Institute
Ducks Unlimited
New York Times bestselling author, Bruce Piasecki
Please visit our registration page where you will find the latest agenda and venue information (linked below). Space is limited to 55 leaders. To request an invitation please contact us at: ira@adaptationleader.org.
Share news of this workshop thru the following hastags. Thank you.
Some of these books dervied from teh workshops we are now inviting you to join us at Phoenixhashtag#Sustainability hashtag#Leadership hashtag#Innovation hashtag#CorporateSustainability hashtag#ChangeManagement hashtag#LeadershipDevelopment hashtag#CorporateNetworking hashtag#ClimateInnovation hashtag#ClimateStrategy
Sustainability. Innovation. Change Management.
Enroll now at www.achievingresults25.com
For new generation cartoon on Piasecki’s competitive principles, visit
www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com
[image error]September 11, 2024
Presidential Debates: Harris Over Trump
by Bruce Piasecki, author of World Inc, Doing More with Less, and Wealth and Climate Competitiveness: The New Narrative on Business and Society
While my feelings are still young, please enjoy this set of impressions regarding last night’s Presidential debate. I hope you reply by filing your reactions to the debate, and to these five points.
While I am no expert, and a mere social historian writing books for a living and running a corporation for four decades, here are my five initial impressions:
For the first time in almost a decade (since 2014), the TV hosts were smart fast fact checkers, noting when Trump lied about immigrants eating neighbor’s dogs. Both the male host and the female host were prepared, alert, and corrective whenever the aspiring politicians on either side fibbed or straight out lied. TV becamse post Trump last night.This is refreshening to see again.
The hosting TV station, and the subsequent coverage thru the night, kept the debate on race, the January 6 assault, Trump’s former lies, the promise of America, and the strength in our standing in the world.
They caught Harris in a few exaggerations, exactly like we find in historic leaders like Churchill, Lincoln and Reagan when we look close. There was no warmth nor vision in Trump. When I ask the smart women and staffers in my firm about these above American and global issues, and the larger set of sources to my books on globalization and competition, they quietly look out the window, and say: “Harris and Tim, they are about family, the future, and our children.”
2. For the first time since 2020, when the big lie shattered the history of the Republican party I once served and embraced, Trump looked very old, dated, and without policies. All he was able to do is deny the Heritage foundations 2025 report. He seemed stunned, and inflexible before the hand-shaking, and free, Kamala Harris. A new TV world got to see her in action. She was fresh, proud, presidential and alert to nuance.
3. While the New York Times this morning featured their Weds September 11 left column on how “Trump Embraces Tariffs As a Cure for Wider Needs”, they actually fact-checked his claims by recreating the trade experts that question the value in Trump’s keep America isolated tariffs. No foreign country pays a tariff; Americans pay as consumers the higher 20 percent. In recent months, even the New York Times became passive in the shadow of the assault on facts and economic expertise. But today’s Times is right on regarding the debate, and the weakness in the RNC’s embrace of tariffs. Again, the press is showing its chops in taking on Trump TV.
4. It is known and still evident that aggressive “tarriffs”, thru history, cause a backlash that backfires on the American consumer.
In today’s more globalized economy, Trump’s isolationist claims give key foreign governments like China and Russia and Asia a chance to retaliate against US interests in the world global economy. From cars and computers, to innovation and the fate of energy, this is not only weak and wrong but dumb. As a social historian I have reason to believe that the great middle and voting public voting public will see thru the claims on tariffs, and how weak he and R.D Vance appear when talking about tariffs. She got him off message by calling it what she did. A cost to the middle class.
Our immigrant Americans and our new generation children align with Harris points5. Finally, the Wall Street Journal punts the story about the debate by saying see coverage on WSJ.com. It was a late night, for sure, but they could have drafted something in advance, that the WSJ could have filed like the New York Times. We will have to wait to see how the BBC, the Guardian, and the other great outlets of our world report the results. Yet over all, in posture and substance, Harris stood over Trump.
As a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal book bestseller, I see TV now — and such debates — as useful but not critical moments in social history. TV sums up the candidates trends, reveals their underlying personalities and tendencies. Trump sides with hate, and Harris with democracy, joy and turning the page into a global future.
For example, in the summary minute, Trump was so rattled by Harris that he did not sum up, said nothing again about climate change, and was left hanging on his hateful harangue. Look over the 90 minutes again, he raged in a repetitive and inconsequential manner against ever punch she landed in the prior minutes. He spent a third of the time attacking Bidden.
You can think of the feeling as Trump fighting from the gutter, but Harris kicking high. As a social historian, I sense where the female and youth vote is heading. The others need to vote their conscience.
Kamala Harris had the best line of the night: “When it comes to foreign affairs, Sir, you are both wrong and weak.” Of course, she was well prepared, citing what he had said about Putin thru the yeras, the Korean and other dictators, as strong men. Is America willing to embrace a strong women in power? I am wedded to the idea that we are. The choice is clear.
Author speaking about Daughter and Son in Law at their Wedding in Saratoga Springs Casino[image error]
August 26, 2024
KAMALA IS CURIOUS, TIM IS NOT TIMID
By Bruce Piasecki, former appointee in Clinton White House, and now Book Writer and Business Owner, from Doing More with Less (2013) to Wealth and Climate Competitiveness (2024)
KAMALA IS CURIOUS, TIM IS NOT TIMID/
Give me a K! K stands for Kick.
Give me a A! A stands for Analytical.
Give me a M! M stands for Meaningful.
Give me another A: This A stands for Amiable.
Give me a L: L stands for Litigator.
Give me a third A: This A stands for Aggitator.
And what do you got? KAMALA. What? KAMALA.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz wear a very wide inclusive hat, their is Salsa in their SwayI’ve been around the block so many times with Presidential elections that I want to go on record saying this high voltage campaign is special. Reagan had an actor’s gifts; Obama had a smart laywers oratory skills. Everyone that makes it that far is exceptional. Then to team with TIM WALZ. Brilliant.
Tim Walz’s record is solid like a Stone Home: self sustaining, inclusive, the COACHGive me a T! T sands for Talented.
Give me an I! I stands for Informative
Give me an M! M again stands for meaningful.
I leave it to many voters in November to verify these observations.
More at
Web Link — https://magnateview.com/top-5-leaders-redefining-success-in-2024-aug24/
Article Link — https://magnateview.com/an-interview-with-bruce-piasecki-best-selling-author-on-business-and-society-elected-life-member-of-manhattans-literary-lotos-club/
Digital Link — https://online.fliphtml5.com/bgtkc/ytbu/#p=1
For a sense of my work in social history and sportive seriousness, please enjoy www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com.
Look at the links above; and share them please to illustrate my work as social historian. Thanks.[image error]
August 18, 2024
WHAT IS CHANGE MANAGEMENT, ITS SKILLS, IN A TIME OF CONSTANT CHANGE
by Bruce Piasecki, Author of 22 books on change management
(World Inc, the bestseller DOING MORE WITH LESS, and recently Wealth and Climate Competitiveness…..Piasecki, with associates, has been in the change mangagement practice area for 44 years since his phd from Cornell in cultural history and natural resource management)
When the co-founder of Porter Novelli reflected, before hundreds, at his co-founder’s memorial, Bill Novelli said this about his Partner Jack Porter. It is important to note that Jack was 49 and Bill 40 at time of inventing this remarkable firm. Again, this is what Bill Novelli said about his partner:
“He was a friend, a tough guy, a positive guy, always in the action, and the senior statesmen of the firm. Let’s remember Jack Porter.”
Both Jack Porter and Bill Novelli were shiny swimming change weekly GREAT GUYS like this Whale outlisde my office window. They were like Herman Melville at Seas of corporates and public healthThis sentence says three things at the center of change management:
First, it shows respect of an kindred soul and action based executive. The setting of change management surrounds you among people of consequence in business, government and society.Second, Novelli notes how you can and must befriend tough guys. In short, that means the folks tough enough to close deals, run them for profit, and be comfortable to the hiring people in power. A tough guy.Finally, with Bill Novelli’s classic smart brevity, it reveals your suspicion that the co-founder, namely Bill Novelli, himself was different in important ways. Novelli is a social impact captalist; Jack Porter was the more classical financial literacy market capitalist. Jack was a tough guy.
Change management requires social wisdom like this owl on a book shelf, and some beauty like his mate: Porter Novelli, look up the name of that firm for social marketingThis short essay, an excerpt from the larger biography THE GOOD BOSS, will reveal you also need “sweet hearts” like Bill Novelli to be creative and a change management legend.
Here are the code words: Profitabily (the Jack Porter imperative), Creativity (the client requirement of the full team) and Change Management Interpersonal Skills (the essence of Bill Novelli’s good heart management style.) You learn this from good training, but also constant battle between business and social needs.
Some call this “managing with a heart” or having the emotional intelligence it takes to balance profit with purpose.
I am writing, and near finishing this summer, my 8th biography.
It will be called THE GOOD BOSS, and it about the life of William Novelli.
Am I up to the task of capturing Novelli’s remarkable character and make lasting his personality in a short biography called THE GOOD BOSS?I use his story here for the title of this Medium.com entry. Why?
Because Novelli remains a working man in his prime (at 82) cleaning the windows of change. He does it for the Medical Consoritum on Climate and Public Health he chairs with a doctor. He does it for his Georgetown business school associates. He does it for me. Change management is far more than training or practice in corporate strategy or government policy. Change management depends on a tone of knowing the direction that needs to be taken. While I said to Bill, I think you are a master of cleaning windows, getting the grim off of special interests and limited contributor needs, and he said: “But dont’ forget Bruce I also like breaking windows.”
He learned something from Jack Porter.
Change management is about changing the frame by which people of consequence think of themselves it the dual terms of business and society. Novelli is a living legend in this space, look at his Wikipedia for example.There are many naive folks, different from Novelli and Porter, who think change management is “appreciative inquiry”, a softer academic psychological attribute based approach to these people of consequence. I doubt it. (Sorry Case Western, and all you professional corporate shrinks).
Some thing change management is a science. Guess again. It is people based and people led. It is like this game outside my corporate office, during my daughter’s high school graduation! Novelli was the person at the net, and Porter was the person making sure all the players were doing there job, and being paid right. Porter trimmed the firm twice in it years of success. I see this a change management: financial alignment with creative purpose. Like the games we played in youth. Teamwork is essential.
WHY WRITE ABOUT SOME UNKNOWN INSIDERS
I remember when my lit agent thought me insane when I refused an $100,00 advance from a biography about Michael Bloomberg. It is the unknown insider, not those giving 75 million to Trump, that fascinate me. They are usually about both business and society, not just about being tough men and women in business. The GOOD BOSS Bill Novelli is not a bully.
Change management requires the visit by two bagman: the strong man, and the creative personYou can see a walkway to Novelli, and a pattern, from my 7 other biographies listed on Amazon about Giants in Social Investing, about female CEOs like Eileen Fisher, and about select CEOs like Percy and Loy that I worked with in my firm. It also took me as years to write about female international energy executives like Linda Coady that were reluctant to be written about, and that I did not know well at the start of the biography.
Why did I do all these “subjects” as friends? To figure out what is a change managemenet executive? For in writing about how they changed their firms, and how they changed consumers, I was in a way looking in a mirror, asking myself” “how the hell did all this happen to me? How did my books get known for hire in change management?
You may nave never heard of these people before. Correction: You may be sitting near a female executive that is wearing Eileen Fisher’s clothes, without you knowing the Fashion queen of design Eileen Fisher. You may be taking a discounted insulin shot, without knowing that Novelli when CEO of AARP laid the internal tracks for this bipartisan result?
But what my chosen subjects share is “exceptional change management skills”. Let’s list three of the core skills:
PEOPLE BASED SKILLS. Not like a Jack Porter.FINANCIAL LITERACY that meets a sense of changes in social and consumer behavior. Eileen Fisher was a master of that.And COMMUNICATION SKILLS based in LISTENING, not dictating orders.You see all this when Bill Novelli writes about his founding partner: “He was a friend, a tough guy, a positive guy, always in the action and the senior stateman of the firm. Let’s remember Jack Porter.”
The rest of the ten page funeral commemorative, a celebration of his life on November 14, 2023, will be addressed again in the full biography. For now, I wanted you to task from a man who encountered change, and lead it, in his Tabacco Free Kids campaign. Read Novelli’s book GOOD BUSINESS if you need 330 pages of evidence, beyond this snippet. Bruce
More on the tone of change management, requiring a tone of sportive seriousness, the great WHAT IF tone; see. www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com
[image error]WHAT IS CHANGE MANAGEMENT, ITS SKILLS, IN A TIME OF CONSTANT CHANGE was originally published in Climate Competitiveness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
August 11, 2024
READ BOOKS After Each Set Back, and More Immediately LISTEN TO INSPIRING SONG
by Bruce Piasecki
I reread a recent Question and Answer interview with me on my Memoir, DOING MORE WITH ONE LIFE, where the editor selected this as the pull quote:
“Read books after each set back, talk with friends as if they are your teamates, and most importantly BE PERSISTENT.”
Friends reading my MEDIUM.COM posts: I guess I get worked up in live interviews. It took me 17 years of writing to let that Autobiography go to the publisher. Yet, now in restrospect, I am very glad I summed that interview up with the essence of my life work and new Memoir. Books. Friends. Teamates, and Persistence.
Forgive me for wanting to share what worked to help me complerte 25 books, of which 22 became commercially published.Well, below my webmaster of 25 years Frank Weaver, the owner of Aplomb Communications, sent me this the other day by the songwriter and guitarist Prine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVBMNFap8Wc
It must be the morning again
The sun through the window felt good on my skin
So, it must be leaving soon as it should
And I saw the bluebird again
She pointed it out in the yard on our fence
So it must be leaving soon as it should
When I’m standing by the water, it’s harder and harder
It’s why I get sad when there’s ships in the harbor
’Cause they must be leaving soon as they should
And I got to see an old friend
We laughed and stayed up ’til it came to an end
’Cause he must be leaving soon as he should
I tend to get lost in the stars
I waste every night wondering where we all are
And how we must be leaving soon as we should
When I’m standing by the water, it’s harder and harder
It’s why I get sad when there’s ships in the harbor
’Cause they must be leaving soon as they should
Takes time to know when you’re wrong
It takes even longer to put it all in a song
And I wish it was easy too like he did
When I’m by peaceful waters, it’s harder and harder
I’d do anything just to talk to my father
But I guess he was leaving soon as we do
And yeah, I guess he was passing through, and I am too
Frank
— — — — — —
Frank Weaver
Aplomb Communications
518–793–3857
We created this Family Foundation to support those writing anew below 45 in the space of Business and Social needs. You can see that in the webpge at bottom of this page designed for me by Christine CanavanGo to Frank if you need an affordable friend. Listen to Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan if you need a writer’s daily inspiration.
The devotion to daily writing comes with song, especially protest songs. See my YOUTUBE shows on that from Caffe Lena, where Dylan began. But most importantly READ BOOKS and BE PERSISTENT.
[image error]August 9, 2024
Archie Ammons and Mike Abrams at Cornell
By Bruce Piasecki, student, thankful 🥹 student 🧑🎓 about a newly discovered kindness in Abrams and Ammons long after their deaths.
This is a true story. It suggests that as recently as 1977, when I was 22, it pays both to write, write often, share your writing, and to keep printed paper files.
When you compare the biographies on Archie Ammons with those of other famous University faculty there are immense gaps and surprises in Archie’s ascent into profound creativity.
He died in 2001, yet his reputation continues to expand.
Ammons Letters
I have evidence of this from 1977. This Monday in August of 2024, I was given by Archie’s biographer an inch thick folder Archie kept on me.
Why me?
Now that is a vivid example of his remarkable generosity in fostering the growth of young writers at Cornell.
Archie collected the early poems, essays, and letters I gave him as I searched Cornell for a surrogate father — and without telling me became my advocate and patron.
While I never took a class with Archie, it turns out he wrote three wonderful endorsement letters in 1977 to have me write my dissertation at Cornell under the watch of both the legend Mike Abrams, Archie, and a set of distinguished History profs at the school.
Link up our three Wikipedia pages and you can begin to see how I emerged under the long shadows of these two writers of consequence.
1977 was several years before Ammons wins big prizes like the National Book award, the Bolligen Prize.
And years before Helen Vendler said — in her introduction to the Norton collection of Archie’s poems writes— ”From poems like “Corson’s Inlet”, we suggest Ammons is the greatest American poet of the 20th Century.”
Yet 1977 was the year he wrote three letters of support in my file.
And these letters, plus the rest of the folder, shows Ammon shared with Abrams a budding fascination in sportive seriousness, American poets like Walt Whitman, and the geologies of time.
These were pivotal years in Ammons and his explosion into greatness — And my wife and I witnessed week in and out this boom in Archie.
Archie had a formal relationship as her academic advisor.
I considered them both father figures.
There is a short presumptuous essay I write for Archie in 1976 in the folder on the “ecology of poetry” where Ammons is writing brilliant marginal comments on — then offering connective tissue in conversations I now recall about his experimental poems like “Cascadilla Falls” and other localized masterpieces.
This all out of class, with no formal enrollment before Archie or Ammons at the time.
They both helped me get funding to stay another five years at Cornell.
How many others did these two great minds support?
We know of Harold Bloom meeting Archie in Ithaca as an early visitor under Abrams.
The Wikipedia page on Abrams documents a weekly humorous ongoing scribbling exchange between these two greats.
You can see why Professor Gilbert has a mountain to mine thru, gold dust getting in his eyes even from student folders!
I can not imagine this happening in less isolated Ivys. Something about Cornell high about Cayuga Lake made them both excellent. With time to be generous.
Roger Gilbert is finishing a new biography and Ammons for Princeton University Press. I look forward to that.
There will be a full account of this Abrams Ammons creative connection in that Gilbert book.📚
See some sportive seriousness at www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com
[image error]August 6, 2024
Bill Novelli on Youth and Older Age
Here are his lecture notes —
“What do today’s MBA students and recent graduates want in a job and a company? Five Important Things.By Bill Novelli, a professor in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and author, Good Business: The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Change the World.
Tomorrow’s leaders are in our classrooms today. The students and recent alumni of today’s top MBA programs have different world views than older generations. And yet some of their goals are the same. I have the good fortune to teach many of these young people, and I stay in touch with them after they graduate.
Here is what many of them are looking for:
Purpose. Or as they often describe it, “purpose as well as a paycheck.” Yes, they have lots of obligations, but as one of them put it, “I have student debt. I want to pay if off and make a good living. But I also want to stay engaged. I don’t want to lose my sense of purpose.” They are capitalists, to be sure. But many of them believe a company can do well by doing good, that is, improving its bottom line (shareholder value) as a consequence of creating positive results for other stakeholders and for society.Coaching: We’ve all heard the adage that people leave supervisors, not companies. Gallup found that 70 % of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. In Gallup’s 2019 book, It’s the Manager, it reported that what Millennials (indeed, many of today’s workers) want and value is not a boss, but a coach. A young alumna of our program recently said to me, “I’m so lucky. I have a great job and a great supervisor!”A Decent Salary: This hasn’t changed. But it isn’t enough to recruit and retain many of today’s young stars. One of my best (and favorite) recent grads said that a paycheck will always be a way to value your work and pay the bills, but “purpose is what makes the effort really worth it.”A Healthy Work Culture: How’s this for a goal? “I want a career that is so awesome that you feel like you’re not even working.” Of course work is work, and Millennials get that. But they want a company that values them, that invests in its talent and provides meaning, growth and personal development. This isn’t pie in the sky. Many companies do it this way, and they benefit and gain a competitive edge as a result.Work/Life Balance: We often hear today that young people don’t have the work ethic their parents did, and that they’re more focused on the “life” side of the scale. I find that they are often misjudged. They do work hard, and they care. Their idea is, “I’ll get the work done; I’ll work when and where I want, but I will produce results.” To them, work is a thing, not a place. However, the life side is very important. As one alum put it, Truly living, being happy, and feeling intellectually and emotionally safe are what we’re searching for.” That’s not too much to ask.Talented people are expensive to recruit and retain. And they represent an asset that simply can’t be duplicated or ignored.
So to compete and succeed, companies need to understand and respond to what these young professionals want and need.” End of short lecture by Novelli
While Bill Novelli founded Porter Novelli before he was ceo of AARP for ten years, he lives on in generous Board work….I share this because he wrote another brilliant seven pages to end my 2024 book Wealth and Climate Competitiveness. Read more Novelli.
I find him knowing about the needs of youth and the needs of the elderly. Stunning words from a stunning thinker
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