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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
Inclusive Prosperity through Shared Experiences
By Deepa Prahalad
"Forget Calls to Action and apology tours. There has never been a better time for companies who are serious about 'making the world a better place' to do so. Changing global demographics and megatrends have lowered the cost of learning. Millennial attitudes have made engagement on social issues more urgent and less risky. Companies today can help to reduce inequality and strengthen society through the creation of shared experiences. They can also gain new managerial capabilities in the process. The recent experience of emerging markets offers some critical insights."
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How to Feel Less Busy and Get More Done
By Laura VanderKam
"In years of studying people's schedules, I've talked to plenty of busy people who seem rushed and harried. Yet others, with similar time demands, seem relaxed. I well recall a conversation with an executive I hoped to interview about her astonishing productivity. I began our call with an assurance that I would not take much of her time. She laughed. 'Oh, I have all the time in the world,' she said. Wouldn't it be nice to feel like that? For my new book, Off the Clock, I recruited 900 people with full-time jobs and families to track their time for a day. I asked how they felt about their time. I analyzed the differences between people who felt starved for time, and those who felt time was abundant. These seven strategies came up again and again—and can help anyone feel less busy while getting more done."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Futureproof: 8 Ways to Win the Innovation Long Game
By Alice Mann
"The future is at your doorstep. It's a drone. And it's delivering the 3D printed bespoke shoes you ordered just a few hours earlier from your driverless car. Ok, that exact scenario may only play out in the virtual pages of Wired, but it's also likely to be a totally unremarkable event in three years. What is certain is that the kind of disruptions in supply chain, product design, material sourcing, and online retail that the drone delivery suggests are already happening. The future, it's also clear, doesn't have to arrive in glitzy packaging to have a major impact on how we do business. Technological innovations like intelligent buildings, AI, or robotics will transform energy consumption, leadership, and people practices in innumerable ways. Rapidly changing demographics and cultural norms will transform how we develop talent. Dynamic markets in the developing world and an era of regulatory uncertainty will make investing and planning more complicated. The future always looms large. So how do successful leaders plan for it.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Taming Your Seven Crocodiles: Unlearn Fear & Become True Leader
By Hylke Faber
"Are you about to take on an inspiring new role and are looking for inspiration? Or maybe you are looking for a change? Maybe you feel overwhelmed by your to-do-list? Or maybe you are looking to inspire your team to its next level of excellence? Whatever your question is, if you were to have lived twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient Greece you may have taken it to the oracle in Delphi. You would have learned there to 'Know thyself.' It was written on the entrance gate to the oracle. I believe getting to know who we truly are is the core of effective leadership and a fulfilling life."
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What If Sellers Behaved as Leaders?
By Deb Calvert
"It is time we start making a shift. Research shows you can make more sales by abandoning sales-y behaviors buyers resist and replacing them with leadership behaviors buyers desire. Sellers do extraordinary things when they stop pushing people to buy before they're ready, and start guiding buyers by transforming values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Don't Suck Up, Manage Up: How to Work Well with the Boss You Have, Not Wish You Had
By Mary Abbajay
"As much as we would love to believe that the workplace is (or should be) a meritocracy, where just being great at our job is all we need to succeed, reality tells a different story. The real (and inconvenient) truth is that the workplace is a social system—meaning we have to work with, among, through (and sometimes around) other people. And in a social system, relationships matter—a lot. Our ability to cultivate and manage effective workplace relationships is essential for career success. Positive, respectful, and collaborative relationships create positive workplace experiences and results. Poor relationships produce poor experiences and results. And at the end of the day, just being good at our job is not enough. We must deliver great work while simultaneously being good at relationships—up, down, and across the organization. Developing effective relationships with our colleagues is important for career success, but developing a positive and productive relationship with our boss is absolutely critical to our success.
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The Speed Trap: When Taking Your Time (Really) Matters
By Tom Peters
"Speed-for-speed's-sake is about the most counterproductive* approach imaginable. (*I use counterproductive because it's impolite to use "stupid"—which is what I really believe.) While we must indeed evolve and experiment rapidly, the process of getting things done (especially radical-ish things that upset apple carts) is all about people. And working with people to get those interesting things done effectively, well, takes time, in fact lots of time."
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Finding the Magic in "Tiny" Business
By Porchlight
"Maybe you have an idea, either brewing or formed. Maybe you're tired of selling little bits of yourself in order to buy lattes and avocado toast, or maybe, what you're doing isn't quite enough to pay the rent. Maybe you want to use your voice to make an impact, to 'create the change you want to see in the world.' Whatever your motivation, if you are ready to start something new, bring a new idea to life in the open market or challenge an existing idea, you are starting your entrepreneurial journey. Maybe you've learned some things in school or picked them up on the street. Maybe you're totally green and all you have is your enthusiasm. This is the day when, as Seth Godin says, you decide to 'pick yourself' and put your eggs in your own basket to proceed. Most people will say you have to 'go big or go home,' but why not 'go tiny' and be able to go home when you want?"
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The Six Headwinds Threatening the Global Economy
By Dambisa Moyo
"Yes, years of stimulus and ultra-low interest rates have finally brought the global economy to a point of rising employment and stronger economic growth. IMF and World Bank forecasts for global growth increased in January prompting a fresh wave of optimism. This revival in growth prospects is increasingly synchronized across advanced economies—notably in the US, EU, and Japan, and the leading developing countries, such as China, India, and Brazil. At a more granular level, many economies are seeing increases in capital investment and private consumption, as well as notable declines in unemployment. Yet, 10 years after the crisis, the global economy faces six structural headwinds that, left unchecked, promise to derail economic progress and damage living standards in the years ahead."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Start Imagining a Future of Human + Machine
By Paul R. Daugherty, H. James Wilson
"In the first wave of transformation, businesses standardized processes. Think Henry Ford and the assembly line, where steps in the overall process were broken down, measured, and optimized to achieve gains in efficiency. The second wave of transformation brought automated processes. Think business process reengineering powered by advances in information technology like desktop computers, large databases, and software that automated various tasks. Now, the third wave is bringing adaptive processes. Think of mobile map apps that continuously use real-time data to create living, dynamic, optimized maps that get hundreds of thousands of individual users to their destinations as quickly as possible. And then imagine that principle of adaptability extended to business processes across all industries, organizations, and functions—that's the third wave that is transforming business as we know it."
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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.