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ChangeThis
ChangeThis is our weekly series of essays from today's thought leaders that are meant to evoke conversation by bringing forth new and unique ideas.
ChangeThis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Escaping Corporate America: Changing Your Career Can Change Your Life
By Porchlight
You can find meaningful work in corporations, but if the company values are too different from your own or if you are stuck in a job that doesn't tap into your talents, it's probably time to escape. Too often, corporate jobs revolve around meetings and bureaucracy and don't offer you enough opportunities to do work that you can truly feel good about. Over time, the stress of staying in a job you hate can lead to burnout, depression, anxiety, ulcers, chronic back pain, high blood pressure, and even serious heart conditions. You may think that this is the price you have to pay for stability. But make no mistake, whatever job stability you think you enjoy is an illusion. Layoffs are standard operating procedure for corporations these days. No career choice is completely stable and risk free anymore. So if you're going to take a risk anyway, shouldn't you at least do it in pursuit of your passion?
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Business Improvisation: The Diving Catch of the Corporate World
By Porchlight
Recall that moment when you where your most creative, aware, and tuned into the world around you. Imagine how valuable it would be to harness that state of mind and apply it at will to your most stressful and challenging business situations. To shine when others collapse or choke. To take a potentially disastrous circumstance and turn it into a diving catch worthy of any sports show highlight reel. Business Improvisation is the process of accessing and applying creativity to a situation in real time. It is the ability to converge composition, creativity and execution to achieve success. [...] This manifesto is about applying the skill of improvisation to performance in the business world. The skills are taught in several other professions such as music, theatre, medicine, military, and EMS. There is also a growing body of research to support the premise. This is your competitive advantage when comes to thinking quickly on their feet.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Seinfeld on Marketing: 7 Marketing Lessons from the Cast of the Show About Nothing
By Porchlight
All this time we thought Seinfeld was a show about "nothing. " Little did we know that peppered in its nine seasons were hidden, real-world marketing lessons taught from the masters themselves. But, unlike the Soup Nazi's secret soup recipes, these marketing lessons are to be shared freely with everyone. So why did I write this eBook. Anyone who knows me well knows that I watch way too much Seinfeld. So much so that many times during a conversation with someone I'll remark, "Hey, that reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Kramer are. . . " Basically, it's a curse. We'll that's all about to change with this eBook. I have decided to use my Seinfeld powers for the good of marketing-kind. Maybe this will help to quiet the voices in my head (doubtful, but one can hope). Even if you have never watched an episode of Seinfeld in your life (shame on you. ), you can still participate. I'll give you the background of each episode so that you can play along at home. . . . on with the show. .
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Achieving Business Excellence
By Porchlight
"There is no single strategy that will carry your company forever—just ask my buddy Tom Peters, who wrote the fantastic book In Search of Excellence back in 1982, only to watch more than half of the companies he highlighted go out of business! Markets shift, consumer preferences change, new competitors appear, technology advances—and so must you. Even though I can recommend which of today's popular strategies I believe deserve your attention, there is no guarantee that these same strategies will still be as relevant in 20 years. I think they will, but no one can see that far ahead. With all of that said, [these] are the six strategies on which all the great companies I studied were relentlessly focused."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Performance Architecture: A Blueprint to go „Beyond Personal Best„
By Porchlight
"Regardless of our profession or activity, adaptation is what separates peak performers from the rest. The way we think about pressure influences the way we feel and the way we react. Conversely, acting is adapting. If we act confidently and relaxed, our body tells our brain "no problem here" and we start feeling calm and controlled. The better we become at acting out the emotions we need to feel, the better we can adapt to pressure. [...] Peak Performance Thinking is about drawing out high energy when it counts: it's about Responsiveness and it applies to any area of life. Peak performers can reproduce the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that lead to a state of high, positive emotion or the "Ideal Performance State" (IPS), as defined by [Jim] Loehr. We all have the ability to access IPS and cultivate it towards greater achievement.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Performance Architecture: A Blueprint to go "Beyond Personal Best"
By Porchlight
"Regardless of our profession or activity, adaptation is what separates peak performers from the rest. The way we think about pressure influences the way we feel and the way we react. Conversely, acting is adapting. If we act confidently and relaxed, our body tells our brain 'no problem here' and we start feeling calm and controlled. The better we become at acting out the emotions we need to feel, the better we can adapt to pressure. [...] Peak Performance Thinking is about drawing out high energy when it counts: it's about Responsiveness and it applies to any area of life. Peak performers can reproduce the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that lead to a state of high, positive emotion or the "Ideal Performance State" (IPS), as defined by [Jim] Loehr. We all have the ability to access IPS and cultivate it towards greater achievement."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
PR 2.0: A Communicator's Manifesto
By Deirdre Breakenridge
Today, an immense change is happening to PR and it will affect communications professionals around the world from this point forward. The concept of PR 2.0 was born about 10 years ago (although not many people know this). PR 2.0 places a whole new meaning and value on PR and marks the true convergence of PR and the Internet. I believe that with PR 2.0, a new breed of Web savvy PR/marketing professionals has been born. As a result of PR 2.0, brands are able to have conversations directly with their customers in niche Web communities. They are invited to participate in dialogue, in places where they have never been invited to participate before. PR 2.0 puts the "public" back in public relations with the ability to speak to more people. The concept is driven by technology (the Web 2.0 platform and social media applications) and 21st century consumer behavior.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Upside of a Downturn
By Doug Hardy
"A slowing economy has tangible burdens, as employers become cautious in hiring (or even lay off workers). More subtle and insidious is the way even a gentle slowdown in consumption can trigger a well known vicious cycle: Lower corporate revenues lead to job insecurity, which causes consumers to tighten spending, which hurts revenues, which causes more corporate belt-tightening, and so forth until something (government spending, easier credit, unforeseen demand) halts the cycle. This cycle offers a break in the fevered efforts to attract and acquire the most talented employees, a chronic problem that has beset booming economies for the past decade. To take advantage of a temporary lull in the chronic shortage of top talent, managers in HR and executives leading companies must adopt the longer-term practice we call the Engagement Cycle."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The L3 Leadership "State of Being": A Holistic Approach
By John Anderson
"With all the talk about Leadership these days, many managers and executives are frustrated by the myriads of approaches to Leadership Development. The L3 Leadership model assumes a different position than traditional, or even more progressive leadership models. L3 Leadership is more about who you are than it is about what position you hold, what training you have had, or what personality traits you bring to work and other life situations. L3 is based on the fact that personal leadership is a "state of being." It is who you are, what you believe, and how you behave. The L3 model of Leadership explores three critical attributes of effective leaders. These three attributes are: o L1—Leading Self: Total Life Leadership. Achieving personal mastery and work/life integration. o L2—Leading With Others: Creating and sustaining Collaborative Advantage. o L3—Cultivating The Best Place To Work: A culture of high engagement, retention, performance and productivity."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Connected Intelligence: Leveraging Collective Wisdom
By Porchlight
"The World is Flat, declared Thomas Friedman. It is a Long Tail, says Chris Anderson. Everything is Miscellaneous, avers David Weinberger. Seeing it as The Wisdom of Crowds was a profound insight from James Surowiecki. Their perspectives addressed several aspects of business, life and the human condition in general. The truth is that we have reached not one era, but a multitude of eras, all at once and in a time-space compressed fashion. This has caused a shift in our expectations and our practices that impacts how we work, what we consume and how we live life. Currently, the only tool that we have in our hands to combat this phenomenon is Change Management. It is a linear response to the non-linear set of changes happening in this Poly-Era (or Era containing multiple Eras). It is so Newtonian. We need a holistic new paradigm. Complex Systems, on the other hand, has the beautiful notion of Emergent Structures, which are patterns not created by a single event or rule. Instead, the interaction of each part with its immediate surroundings causes a complex chain of processes leading to some new order.
Categories: changethis
The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin, and was built in the summer of 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu, and Michelle Sriwongtong. In the summer of 2005, ChangeThis was turned over to 800-CEO-READ. In addition to selling and writing about books, they kept ChangeThis up and running as a standalone website for 14 years. In 2019, 800-CEO-READ became Porchlight, and we pulled ChangeThis together with the rest of our editorial content under the website you see now. We remain committed to the high-design quality and independent spirit of the original team that brought ChangeThis into the world.