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
The Sweet Spot of Purpose: A Three-Legged Stool for Productivity and Success
By Dan Pontefract
"Far too many corporate social responsibility statements and annual reports claim, 'Our employees are our most important asset.' Is that what we are? Assets? No, we are not assets. We are not human capital. We are not headcount. You cannot count me. We are the individuals who make up our organizations. We are team members. We are co-workers. We are colleagues. We are individuals. We are both leaders and followers. We strive for purpose in our lives, and in the organizations that we work for. It matters not what level we reside on in the corporate hierarchy. We are all on the same team in defining and enacting that purpose. Team members are not an asset, but rather the key link to improving society. The importance of purpose on the lives of employees, and for the betterment of society, has become table stakes. Indeed, the individuals that make up the organization are its most important advantage."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Social Business Mandate
By Clara Shih
"As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has said, 'Software is eating the world. ' We live in an age in which every aspect of our lives from physical devices to offline services is being digitized; the impact of social media on consumers and business alike today is as profound as the rise of Google 15 years ago. Yet, many business leaders and CEOs are thinking about what I call Social Business in exactly the WRONG ways. The mistake leaders make is over-delegating social and digital efforts to fairly entry-level marketing and customer service teams. Senior executives then confuse having a social media team with having a social business, and have a detrimental misconception that these efforts are far from the business's core initiatives. In reality, business leaders need to personally own and drive these digital and social initiatives. To fully become a Social Business, an organization must truly embrace digital opportunities on every platform; and this transformation must be led by C-Suite Executives.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
It's Time to Fix It!
By Roger Connors, Tom Smith, Craig Hickman
"When you get accountability wrong, don't expect anything else to go right in your job, on your team, or in the organization as a whole. Treating only the symptoms of dysfunction that stem from poor accountability practices will cause you to lose time and miss opportunities to get real traction towards the results you want. When you get accountability right, everything else will go right as you execute, overcome obstacles, and work to get results."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
KNOW YOUR EVERYDATA: How To Avoid Being Misled By the "Little Data" You Consume Every Day
By Porchlight
"Status reports. Emails. Weather reports. From the moment your alarm jolts you awake, you're bombarded with data. Here's an eye-opening fact for you: the amount of data you likely consume in a day—34 gigabytes—would fill dozens of pickup trucks if you printed it all out. So what's the problem with all this data? This: the majority of numbers you read in newspapers, hear on TV, and see at work are either wrong or misleading—or both."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
STOP Branding and START Activating (Part II of "A Manifesto for Thinking Small")
By Craig Wilson
"Part 1 of this series explored the inefficacy of 'Big Idea' campaign marketing and noted the success of brands practicing the contrary, described as a process of nurturing the character of an organization. Part 2 is presented as a manifesto to marketers and brand strategists to STOP Branding, to stop trying to create demand, to adopt a different frame of mind, to think in terms of relationship activation by being true to a set of principles that will connect them to existing, latent demand. Marketers don't generate demand. Great companies spend their time understanding what and where latent demand exists and build the products, services, and user experiences that connect to that demand. They delve into their founding principles and develop, invent, or innovate goods and services specifically driven and defined by those principles. Don't misinterpret this effort. It's not a matter of chasing market opportunity. It's as much an inward journey as it is recognition of the current state of any given market.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
CAUSE! A Business Strategy for Standing Out!
By Porchlight
"There is an undeniable wave cresting. The wave is a new breed of companies that are purpose-driven and cause-oriented. They are forward-thinking and intentional about doing good, connecting dreams to opportunities, and launching movements that make the world better. Their success and confidence come from defining their business as a cause. Their confidence attracts and unleashes talent, accelerates innovation, strengthens brand reputation, moves markets, allows the organization to move with speed and agility, stimulates investments, and creates long-term growth."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Five Pivotal Moments of Every Sales Transformation
By Porchlight
"Whatever the cause, the moment will come, and you will find your company in a shift from selling a lot of your current offering – let's call it X – and a little bit of something new called Y. Eventually, if your change strategy works, your company will sell a lot of Y and much less of the X legacy offering. X and Y can be what you sell or how you sell. What you sell may be shifting to radically new products or to radically new services. How you sell may involve new types of customers, new types of buyers within existing customer organizations, or new, fundamentally different selling approaches. Whatever your company's X and Y might be, how you respond to the need to shift will determine your personal success, that of your customers, and to a great extent that of your company. Five key moments determine whether your sales transformation will be successful."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Goldilocks Dilemma: Why Career Advancement Is So Much Harder for Women Than Men and What Women Can Do to Change That
By Andrea S. Kramer, Alton B. Harris
"America's workplaces, even in our best-intentioned organizations, are riddled with bias against women leaders. As a result, women seeking to advance in careers—particularly careers in traditionally male fields—face both negative and agentic biases. The intersection of negative and agentic biases creates a double bind we call the 'Goldilocks Dilemma.'"
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Blog / ChangeThis
Wealth Creation is about Better Decisions, not Financial Products
By Douglas P. McCormick
"Simple goal-setting without tools to promote good decision making will not create wealth, and getting into the weeds of buying specific stocks is a diversion best avoided given your limited chances of beating the market. Creating wealth and financial security for yourself and your family is not derived from purchasing specific financial products, but by employing a holistic framework that results in good, consistent decision-making throughout your lifecycle of financial needs. As a professional investor and young professional trying to make sense of my own financial decision making, I realized along the way that many of the financial principles employed by successful companies are also relevant to personal financial planning and management."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Be Bold: Risks and Rewards of Betting On Yourself
By Fauzia Burke
"People often tell me that I take a lot of chances, and I keep taking them because they keep paying off. As I swap stories with colleagues and friends, everyone comes away from risk with one similar takeaway: When you push through fear, there is exhilaration on the other side. Worrying about an outcome or feeling a loss of control about a decision is normal. I've discovered that you can't let the fear of uncertainty stop you. Dreaming, as a wise woman said, is a form of planning. [...] The chances I have taken have not always gone as planned or expected. Successful or not, every risk also has the reward of a great learning experience. Change happens to all of us. I've realized that being bold and pushing through fear, we grow and gain some control over the changes that happen to us. Every change helps us to realize our full potential."
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.