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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
Doing Good Work and Doing Good
By Porchlight
"From childhood I have had it drummed into me by my parents, my life experiences, and my own work: You can do good work and you can do good. I've learned that life is not a zero-sum game that requires that we take everything and leave nothing in order to succeed. I subscribe to the concept that through innovation and creativity we can all add to the global pool of resources. In fact, Peter Diamandis authored one of my favorite quotes in Abundance, 'Make more pies.' I strongly believe that in doing so, one can have a positive impact on the world and make a solid profit while doing so."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Art of Inclusion: Why Service Beats Selfies When it Comes to Business
By Cara Alwill Leyba
"Here's the thing about business. It's not about you. Or me. People create businesses to solve problems. To help their clients get from Point A to Point B. Whether that's helping save them from a toxic relationship, assisting them in designing their dream kitchen, or motivating them to lose fifty pounds, businesses exist to serve. And while many entrepreneurs are the face of their business, there's a thin veil between injecting some personality into your work, and completely overriding your services by being self-serving."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Be Number One in Your Field
By Daniel Milstein
"You should have goals so big that you are uncomfortable telling your friends about them. Everybody has a goal and while you can't do everything (some people can't sing or draw or downhill ski) most of your dreams, like finding a job you love and making a living doing it—are realistic goals that you can attain. I believe you can do what you set your mind out to do."
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Blog / ChangeThis
"Dangerous" Woman: Three Entrepreneurs Who Paved the Road of Women's Business Leadership
By Porchlight
"On 8 August 1959, the Saturday Evening Post published a sensationalized article about the female chief executive of Beech Aircraft titled 'Danger: Boss Lady at Work. ' In it, the 'Boss Lady,' Olive Ann Beech, was caricatured as autocratic and austere, insecure yet self-righteous, and the author warned readers—as the title suggested—to beware. Reportedly, more than one businessman had declared, 'I'm scared of that woman. ' But according to the article, Beech herself was undaunted. 'I never concerned myself with what people thought of me,' she stated. 'If I had, I'd have been pretty mousy. ' The idea that a 'boss lady' at work was dangerous tells us a great deal about the historical context in which female business executives led and the obstacles they faced in the mid-twentieth century. Alarms about a crisis in American masculinity were de rigueur in popular magazines in the 1950s, and social commentators were quick to connect the problem to women. One result was a pronounced current in American popular culture of the 1950s that endeavored to prop up men at the expense of women and to demonize women who in their success appeared to embody an assault on men.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Your Enterprise as Living System: Success Starts with Knowing the Kind of Business You're Really In
By Porchlight
"Profit and non-profit enterprises are living people systems. Embracing this belief (and its implications) will significantly change your leadership for the better. Customers, employees and leaders are not commodities and they are not separate from one another. They are different, but they are not separate. If you take away any one of the three—customers, employees, or leaders—you don't have an enterprise! Enterprises are started by people, led by people, operated by people, improved by people, perpetuated by people, dissolved by people. People create and provide value for people. People are the life of your enterprise. Customers, employees, and leaders are all that is alive in an enterprise and they are inextricably and vitally woven together. The promise that you make to your customer, your culture of employees, and your leadership approach are immutably intertwined."
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Blog / ChangeThis
AREA: A Research and Decision-Making Roadmap
By Cheryl Strauss Einhorn
"In developing AREA, I realized that the process does much more than provide a research and decision-making roadmap, it makes your work work for you. It heightens your awareness of the motivations and incentives of others. It helps you to avoid bias in your work and to engage with people and problems more mindfully. For while decision making is about ideas, ideas aren't enough; there is an important gap between having ideas and making good decisions about what to do with those ideas."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Say It Like You Mean It: And Other Ways to Inspire People Every Day
By Kristi Hedges
"The conversation is first. Then the spark. That's how it happens with all of us, and how it happened to me yet again. In this instance, it was actually hundreds of the same conversation, over and over. Until it hit me. We have some major misconceptions about what causes inspiration."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Thriving Artist Manifesto
By Jeff Goins
"For centuries, the myth of the starving artist has dominated our culture, seeping into the minds of creative people and stifling their pursuits. But the truth is that the world's most successful artists did not starve. In fact, they capitalized on the power of their creative strength. From graphic designers and writers to artists and business professionals, creatives already know that no one is born an artist. Business and art are not mutually exclusive pursuits. In fact, success in business and in life flow from a healthy exercise of creativity. Being creative isn't a disadvantage for success; rather, it is a powerful tool to be harnessed."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Finding Certainty In An Uncertain World
By Jeff Boss
"Of the 200 plus missions I went on as a Navy SEAL, not one went according to plan. Not one. Each mission demanded new information faster than before. A pivot. A new direction. Each mission warranted the collective awareness from each team member as to what that new purpose was so we could make decisions that served: 1) The mission 2) The team 3) Each other 4) Ourselves In order to execute at each level—optimally—we needed three things. We needed to be able to perform as individuals and as a team; we needed to be able to adapt to new information and change on the fly; and we needed to be able to lead—ourselves and each other—through uncertain situations by making decisions and sharing them with the group. Sound familiar? It should, because business is no different."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Are We There Yet?
By Kate Raworth
"Whether our economic airplane can keep on cruising or is about to stall mid-air, one thing is evident: it is currently heading for a destination that we do not want to reach, one that is degenerative and deeply divisive. If we reorient ourselves to the economic destination that we do want—an economy that is regenerative and distributive by design—then new questions about growth come to the fore. What might happen to GDP as we transition towards that destination? And what is GDP likely to do once we get there? It is not possible to predict definitively one way or the other whether GDP will go up or down in high-income countries as they create regenerative and distributive economies that engage the household, market, commons and state alike."
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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.