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
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."
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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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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."
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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.
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Strive For Minimal Achievement
By Barry J. Moltz
"Failure is valuable only when we realize it is a normal part of the business process even when there always isn't something to learn. So it does not hold us back. The real fear and pressure in this whole process is not brought on by our competitors or other outside people. It mostly originates within us. The biggest fear we have is that someone in our position would have done better than us, made better decisions than us and would have built it faster and more profitably than we did. We believe that that we should be in a different place than where we are right now, and that we would be, if only we had made better decisions. Nonsense. In our business life, in order to move forward, past the fear, past the failure, yes past the success, we actually need to just let go. Letting go is the key to gaining true business confidence. Not by holding onto what people have taught you are the keys to success. Not by looking for the 7 steps. You need to let go of the idea that there is always something to learn from failure or that you can always build and duplicate your success.
Categories: changethis
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The Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness
By Porchlight
"My experience as an individual, consultant, parent and leader indicates that efforts to fix weaknesses are ineffective. Furthermore, I believe that the goal of being well-rounded is both undesirable and impossible to attain. The purpose of this manifesto is to explain why I believe this and to offer a better alternative. [...] These examples from my life illustrate the three primary lessons of this manifesto. 1.There is nothing wrong with you. Weaknesses are important clues to your strengths. 2.You find success when you find the right fit. You need to match your unique characteristics to situations that reward those qualities. 3.Your weaknesses make you different. They make you a freak and it's good to be a freak."
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The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How Word-of-Mouse Spreads Your Ideas for Free
By David Meerman Scott
"You and I are incredibly lucky. For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online—content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues. Word-of-mouse is the single most empowering tool available to marketers today. I wrote this e-book so you can take advantage of the power of viral marketing too. In it, I share ideas that will help you create your own viral marketing strategies and campaigns."
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The New Time Management: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals, and Toss Away the Tips
By Porchlight
"As working professionals across the world, we all want the same things when it comes to time management. We want to feel a certain peace of mind that comes from knowing that our affairs are in order and that we've not forgotten something that might jump up later to give us a nasty surprise. We also want to get as much as we can out of life, and to maximize the time we have to be alive. We share the belief that this time is limited, and we want to spend it in ways that are in line with our values and commitments. And we all face the same problem of having only 24 hours in the day."
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.