Swallowing the Earth Whole: The Lives of Frank Loy and Steve Percy (eBook)

Bruce Piasecki (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
96 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-9695-1 (ISBN)

Infos

What constitutes a reliable corporate executive? What characteristics establish a productive Board member, or a model Public Servant? Bruce Piasecki has written a book that explores these questions thru the lives of two exemplar executives Frank Loy and Steve Percy. Steve Percy sat on six Corporate Boards, both as Audit Chair, and as key change agent after rising to become the CEO of BP Americas, the wholly owned giant in oil and gas. After he left BP, he came to serve the author's management company for a decade as a Senior Associate, serving the top executives at a Warren Buffett firm for several years, and working as the Chair of the AHC Group's Governance workshop series. Frank Loy is a living legend in good governance, having chaired the Board of Directors of over a dozen organizations, including the Environmental Defense Fund. The author met Frank Loy whe Loy was the CEO of the German Marshall Fund, that financed the first two books by this author. Loy went on to become a top ranking member of the State Department, heading up all coverage of Oceans, Environment, and Climate matters. This book is a homage to these two great advisors and public servants, written from the author's first hand experiences of these leaders over several decades. While the Wikipedia coverage on Loy and Piasecki is visible, much of what Percy contributed is invisible. Come learn more.

Dr. Bruce Piasecki has served as the president and founder of AHC Group Inc. since 1981, a general management 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 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. Dr. Piasecki speaks on competitive frugality, his work within firms like bp, Merck, and Walgreens on change and competitiveness. Topic range includes 'Going Global, Going Green'; 'To Master the Task of Tomorrow, Manage the Challenge of Today'; and 'Money Doesn't Manage Itself.' Throughout his four decade career, he has also authored books- 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. During Covid, he wrote a 2040: A Fable on the power of family and friends. 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 and his wife Andrea Masters sponsor annual Writer's Awards thru the New York State Writer's Institute. They contribute through a family-based community trust called 'Creative Force Fund.' His book on competition, frugality, and globalization, World Inc., has appeared in ten foreign editions, including Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Greek, winning a book of the year in Business in Japanese. His book Doing More with Less is now out in Spanish, Polish, and Mandarin. 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. Dr. Piasecki was honored for his lifelong achievement by being elected to the Lotus Club in Manhattan by Tom Wolfe, 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. His six part biography series explores six exemplar lives for their attributes of adding social value and social cohesion in this swift and severe world. His book 'Giants of Social Investing' has been an assigned reading at board of directors of global firms exploring the new realm of ESG investing. Dr. Piasecki is currently working on 'A New Way to Wealth' and a remake of World Inc. called 'Wealth and the Commonwealth', both expected in 2021 or 2022. Piasecki celebrates his family and influences in Missing Persons. www.doingmorewithlessbook.com

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What constitutes a reliable corporate executive? What characteristics establish a productive Board member, or a model Public Servant? Bruce Piasecki has written a book that explores these questions thru the lives of two exemplar executives Frank Loy and Steve Percy. Steve Percy sat on six Corporate Boards, both as Audit Chair, and as key change agent after rising to become the CEO of BP Americas, the wholly owned giant in oil and gas. After he left BP, he came to serve the author's management company for a decade as a Senior Associate, serving the top executives at a Warren Buffett firm for several years, and working as the Chair of the AHC Group's Governance workshop series. Frank Loy is a living legend in good governance, having chaired the Board of Directors of over a dozen organizations, including the Environmental Defense Fund. The author met Frank Loy whe Loy was the CEO of the German Marshall Fund, that financed the first two books by this author. Loy went on to become a top ranking member of the State Department, heading up all coverage of Oceans, Environment, and Climate matters. This book is a homage to these two great advisors and public servants, written from the author's first hand experiences of these leaders over several decades. While the Wikipedia coverage on Loy and Piasecki is visible, much of what Percy contributed is invisible. Come learn more. The CEO of Globe Scan says of this biography: "e;Piasecki has offered us a priviledge access to englightened, inspired and thoughtful leadership."e; The executive director of the New York State Writer's Institute, Paul Grondahl, notes "e;Bruce Piasecki's new book can be a force for healing and understanding. Piasecki writes these biographies in a compelling style."e; The executive coach veteran Darryl Vernon Poole writes the afterword, comparing this work to a host of big impact books on The Supreme Court Judges, on social history leaders, and on the best business books. Piasecki things of their exemplar lives as masterful responses to growing complexities between business and society.

Textauszug

Why Some Are Noble: FRANK LOY

When thinking about Eileen Fisher’s question about “What’s enough”, the first name that came to mind was my old friend and colleague, Frank Loy. In the four decades of my observation of this great man, I have watched him work the questions “What is Enough” many times. He does it in a noble, adventurous, way.

Frank Loy probably does not think of himself as an explorer. But he has spent his whole life exploring, in his own unique way. Neither boldly altruistic, nor naked malicious or self-interested, Frank has roamed the world for our State Department and for his clients making friends, allies, and important partnerships. This kind of skill base strikes me as critical to compete in a carbon and capital constrained world, where 7 billion people will become 9 billion people by the time the pages of this book age. To me, this important new form of exploration is centered in something he said not long ago:

“I asked myself once, what can I do with my life—as neither a scientist nor an extremely wealthy person—if I am to have a positive impact on our growing social needs regarding the climate, our oceans, and our government?”

Looking through the six feet of folders I’ve collected of Frank Loy’s presentations and observations through the years, I think this particular slide gives you a good solid image of the scope of his last eight decades:

Source: Frank Loy, AHC Group Corporate Affiliates Workshop www.ahcgroup.com

... a person can combine their skills to flourish both in personal initiative and the social cohesion necessary for group survival. You have many paths open to you, sometimes as many as seven in a given life-time. What matters is how you involve yourself with others.

It is now a half decade since Frank revealed this approach to my top sixty clients. And he is still at it. Frank is a person whose biography reveals not only dogged ambition but also extensive cultural curiosity and concern. You can think, accurately, of Frank Loy as being the first real discoverer of the value of thinking about carbon and climate and business intelligently. From his graduation from Harvard Law School, Frank rapidly spread out to occupy a space of influence in many different parts of the world—from securities attorney, to self-made man, to a State Department official, to chair of many public interest groups.

I see in Frank a place to start in our exploration of how personal success, if lasting, relates to social cohesion. His case, and the cases that are to follow, will exemplify how a person can combine their skills to flourish both in personal initiative and the social cohesion necessary for group survival. You have many paths open to you, sometimes as many as seven in a given lifetime. What matters is how you involve yourself with others.

I have worked within this community of leaders for nearly ten years and have experienced the exchange between Bruce Piasecki, Frank Loy and Steve Percy. Bruce has said both Frank and Steve are “friends for life, but more importantly, generous guardians and keepers of advice for the growth of companies.”

As you read this book, note these highlighted blocks of text on the careers of Frank Loy and Steve Percy. You will find value in these select key takeaways.

—Marti Simmons, former Vice President, AHC Group, Inc

Mr. Chairman

Steve Percy, the former CEO of BP Americas (and later subject of this book), writes this about Frank Loy:

“I think of Frank as Mr. Chairman. He is the perfect Board chair—insightful, measured, always cutting through the chaff to essences. He gets to the real issues before the committee with a smile on his face, respectful of others. I have chaired many boards, and the example of Frank Loy, both in style and substance, has always been at the top of mind.”

So, we start this book’s “board of directors” at the top, with a Mr. Chairman. You will find that this book will be about six different kinds of social and corporate leaders. What they share is that their character and conduct enabled them to be great contributors to social value as they were significant agents in moving their organizations into the 21st Century.

We start with Frank because he has moved and taught so many of us, one of the first to set out on the paths these leaders would explore in their lives, too.

Background in Nazi Germany

Frank Loy is known as an all-American statesman, having served the U.S. State Department under four administrations, including President Obama. To be more precise, he served five consecutive Democratic Presidencies after leaving Harvard Law School and his private law practice. Over the thirty-five years I’ve known him, most I’ve encountered assumed Frank was born in the states. But Frank was born in Nazi Germany.

To understand the world into which Loy was born, and emerged, let’s look to a passage from his unpublished memoir about the early death of his mother in Nazi Germany:

“Neither my father nor my mother’s parents, Carola and Julius, ever discussed the death of my mother, Lisel. The circumstances of her death are unclear to this date. She died in 1936, when I was seven. My brother Herbert came to Amden, Switzerland, where I was in boarding school, to tell me that she had died.”

“Of pneumonia,” he said, “in a hospital in Jena in the eastern part of Germany…Dale heard another story: that my grandparents received a call from my mother, asking them to get her, but when they arrived, they were told that she would not see them, and they should come back the next day. When they came back, they were told that she was dead…”

“When I was perhaps 50, Uncle Heinz, in a rather casual conversation with Dale and me, provided yet another version: Mother had committed suicide while in a jail in Munich. She was in jail because she had violated Nazi law that forbade Jews and non-Jews to be together in public places, and she had been lunching with our lawyer, a gentile, in Munich.”

This gives you a sense of the founding trauma of Frank Loy’s origins. Yet as you get to know him in this sketch, please fill in your mind how he grew past this trauma. He made a difference starting out in a complicated and difficult situation; and found an appealing way to work a number of paths forward. That is more important than if I itemized how he worked each of the seven channels.

Getting Frank Loy to Say Yes

Writing about Frank Loy is an intensely personal matter for me. For thirty-five years he has given me and my firm, and our group of Corporate Affiliates, solid advice on strategy and direction. He resisted for nearly a decade my desire to explore in writing his life. He said, politely, that he “had other chapters to live.”

After some persistence, he said the topic is covered in his own memoir. “Why repeat such an effort?”, he asked more than once.

After another few years, he gave me a copy of his well-written untitled memoir—it is over a hundred pages of astonishing details meant for his son, daughter, and extended family. I reminded him that Ben Franklin’s Autobiography was also written for his son and became of use to many. He said: “Now there is somebody worth remembering.” From my look, though, he knew I was not about to give up on chasing some of his adventures.

“Frank has only gear in his service to society and corporations and government, and that is forward.”

In the end, Frank Loy gave me his blessing, saying “Bruce this is your project, not mine. You have my blessing, and I can see you have a sustained will to understand some of the things I experienced. I will help you where I can. But do not expect much time from me.”

I understood this as confirmation.

I thought of a Chinese proverb when he finally said yes: “Genuine gold fears no fire.” Frank moved fearlessly into each of his inflamed areas of work, with lasting contributions to each. He does not shy from the flames, knowing they help us collect the gold in the end.

A very private life-long friend who knows Frank Loy told me: “Frank has only one gear in his service to society and corporations and government, and that is forward.” This case looks at the source and patterns of this kind of success. Once again Frank’s life testifies to the wisdom of a Chinese proverb: “Water can drip through a stone.” His persistence on climate change is the eventual path we all must take.

After leaving Germany, then California and UCLA, he came East for Harvard Law School, and then he became for six decades a strong and steady Washington man. Part of our respect for someone like Frank Loy is their endurance, the sheer readiness to continue. At 92, he continues as I write this, out of his home...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.3.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-9695-1 / 9798350996951