Doing More with Less: The New Way to Wealth

by Bruce Piasecki

Praise for Doing More with Less

Bruce Piasecki redefines what winning looks like for all of us.

—GERALD BRESNICK, Vice President of Environment, Health & Safety and Social Responsibility, Hess

Bruce Piasecki has created a book about discovering and maintaining wealth that, in fact, redefines wealth itself to include much more than mere numbers in a bank account.

—JAY PARINI, bestselling author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M.

Bruce Piasecki is one of the few thinkers really upping the ante for leaders in business and society.

—JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER, bestselling author of The Long Emergency and The Geography of Nowhere

Bruce Piasecki offers new grounds for hope in this century, as he elevates the roles of competition, innovation, and stewardship in our lives.

—BARBARA KASS, author and teacher

Bruce Piasecki's latest work artfully blends the practical with the profound. Piasecki teaches us now that frugality is not only a personal virtue but a dire necessity in a world filled with 7 billion souls.

—DEMETRI CHRISS, Senior Development Officer–North America, Anatolia College

Bruce Piasecki has a unique global perspective. He weaves powerful anecdotes and adroit business analysis to explain how our modern times work at its very core.

—EROL USER, President and CEO, User Corporation, Istanbul, Turkey

Piasecki is a prose master who inspires with information, persuasion, and delight, giving us informed glimpses of a poetry in our near future.

—HADASSAH BROSCOVA, founder and Editor in Chief of Carpe Articulum Journal and Foundation

This new book captures the humility and moral insights of Bruce Piasecki, whose life has been shaped by up-close encounters with an amazing range of governments and corporations. I have posted numerous radio shows on the life and work of Bruce Piasecki. They all are inspirational like this must-read book.

—DAVID WILLIAM GIBBONS, broadcaster of In Discussion, syndicated worldwide at DG Networks

Read this book and grow.

—GORDON LAMBERT, Vice President of Sustainability, Suncor Energy

Genres: Business, Self Help

158 pages, Hardcover

First published March 6, 2012

About the author

NYT bestselling author, speaker, advisor on shared value and social response capitalism. For more thoughts find me on Medium at http://brucepiasecki.medium.com

Reviews

[Corine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm passionate about frugality but this book gives no concrete suggestion as to how to inch toward it, in life or business.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The main theme of this book is an obvious one that is generally overlooked, the larger the organization the more it is passed over. It is all about waste that can be eliminated with no negative consequences and lower costs with increased profits. Despite the new sources of fossil fuels that are being opened up there is still a limit to how much can reasonably be extracted from the Earth.
Oil is not the only natural resource that is limited and will run out at some point in the foreseeable future. There are projections that many essential raw materials will also be exhausted in a timeframe that is within the lifetime of a baby born this year.
The solution is twofold, the first is to use less in an intelligent manner and much of that is simple to execute and will save rather than cost money. For example, most energy saving devices pay for themselves within a few years, so it is smart to swap out that old microwave and refrigerator in the company kitchen. Safely archiving an email and only printing it out when necessary is another.
One of the most effective increases in organizational productivity is to simplify email messages that are now the most common form of communication. Surveys have indicated that the modern office worker spends a significant amount of each day processing email messages. Shaving an average of a few seconds off the handling of each message will significantly increase overall productivity. Towards that end I recommend the book “NAKED WORDS: The Effective 157-Word Email” by Gisela Hausmann. Her findings are consistent and complementary with what Piasecki has discovered and states in this book, “there are many ways to do more with less and some of those tactics improve the work environment as well.
The two forces of a rising population and diminishing resources will force organizations to reduce their levels of consumption and doing so is some of the best public and community relations actions that can be done. Therefore Piasecki’s point is one of the first that needs to be made about the future success of business, the raising of awareness. Furthermore, as he states so clearly, the savings compound in two ways. The money saved now can be considered to be earning interest in the future and the frugal mindset leads to an active search for further savings. Some executives understand this and have reaped benefits while others have not and may find their organizations squeezed in the future.

This book was made available for free for review purposes and this review appears on Amazon.

[Wildwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NPR for recommending this book! I thought this was a great read. Not only was it tempered with personal anecdotes, making it much lighter and breezier than the average business book, it contained practical advice based on the wisdom of Ben Franklin. I read World Inc., and was inspired by Dr. Piasecki's concept of Social Response Capitalism b/c it presented us with a way where everyone wins and everyone enjoys a piece of the pie. Doing More WIth Less was an awesome follow up. I propose that business students everywhere read this and his follow up book - Doing More With Teams. I've seen Dr. Piasecki speak - thought provoking, influential and definitely intriguing. I found his reel here: http://premierespeakers.com/bruce_pia...

[Cathy Hawkes · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a book recommended by NPR so I thought I would give it a try based on that recommendation. It was disappointing. Much of the content was a hodge podge of facts and the author's personal stories. No new information or insights were offered.

[Amber Myers]

The author has a great point to make but the delivery was hard to follow. I hate when an author refers to something he's going to tell you later in the book. His premise is to live frugal like Benjamin Franklin. Might be better just to read the works of Franklin if that's a philosophy you value.

[Bree · Rating 2 out of 5]

Notes:
written to business owners, not everyday joes
good info I guess, but not for me

[Derek · Rating 1 out of 5]

A quick read, but disappointing. Very few thoughtful insights were offered in this book. Almost no actionable or predictive information was provided. The author keeps coming back to a vague point that companies that succeed in the future will have to be more frugal. No great insights related to this are offered. They are fairly mundane and disorganized thoughts that repeatedly fail to go into enough detail because before moving on. I was not a fan of the writing style which often consisted of personal anecdotes which do a sub-par job of illustrating the authors point. Also, these personal stories are too short to allow the reader to get invested before being ripped back to another seemingly unrelated point. I assume that I was not the intended audience for this book but have trouble picturing who that might be.

[Romany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was weird. The main point seemed to be that being frugal, and not wasting anything (time, money, choosing the right people, etc.) will make a business more competitive. The author really stressed the need for frugality given the population of the world, and the need for renewable energy. All great. But the entire thing just seemed so vague. Why would this work? How can this be compatible with capitalism? How can more be done with less in business when it leads to people working in factories... for less... in order to make stuff... for less... for people who are determined to buy more? There were some terribly optimistic predictions included that seem sad and odd given Trump and Brexit. Oh well.

[Mark Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce has done a great job laying out the ways in which we must involve in the future through competitive frugality and megacities which he has formed through his life experiences and professional experiences as a professor and business management consultant. I had not really been introduced to those concepts prior to reading this book and look forward to learning more about them and reading some of his other books. Thank you for helping to pay it forward through your writing and working with organizations who do business and strive to be successful. I also appreciate the term - doing more with less is success and hope I can do this from now on and teach it to those I interact on a daily basis.

[Steve Gillette · Rating 5 out of 5]

These days the disparate threads of climate action are snarled and tangled with confusion, misinformation and complacency. Bruce Piasecki rends the Gordion Knot of immobilization and procrastination with logic, common sense and good old 'can do'.

[Hayley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the mention of frugality as the 'new way to wealth' on the blurb, but the concept became so repetitive that I couldn't keep reading any more.

[Jonathan Gulley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great principles for life and financial examples of how the frugal flourish and the excessive eat dirt. He cites great examples of Benjamin Franklin,one of the great polymathic heroes of all time.

[Kristen Stiegler · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was not well-written so I didn't finish.

[Russell Kruse · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am glad that I checked this out from the library (free :)), but sad I spent time reading something that amounted to a diatribe lacking in any real substance. Steer clear.