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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
A New Mirror
By Shlomo Benartzi
"In the 21st century, human nature has discovered a new mirror. Thanks to the rise of smartphones and wearables, such as the Apple Watch, we can now monitor our body and behavior in exquisite detail, tracking everything from the amount of sleep we get to the number of calories we swallow. We can count our steps and resting pulse, compare our social network and spending habits. (There's even a smartphone app that can tell you how often you check your smartphone.) Only a few years before, quantifying these aspects of life would have required a trained team of professionals. Now we can do it with the slim computer in our pocket. Unfortunately, it's not clear that this new feedback is helping us make better decisions. ... These new digital mirrors are certainly cool. I want to make them useful."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Five Fatal Mistakes of Startups
By Henry Kressel, Norman Winarsky
"It's natural to expect that many young companies fail, but what's remarkable is that in an overwhelming number of times, they fail from avoidable mistakes. Of course sometimes events occur that could never have been predicted—such as the loss of a key founder, or an unexpected government action that eliminates the need for the product—but these events are rare in our experience. This is a manifesto about the company killers that every CEO needs to avoid."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Success. Now What?
By Bob Buford
"Much has been written about the 'graying of America. ' According to a recent CNBC. com article, nearly a third of America's workers are now over 50, and employees over age 65 outnumber teenage workers for the first time since 1948. We are an aging population with all of the implications that brings for our society: Greater demand for health care workers, more senior housing, etc. But what does this development mean for our successful leaders, many of whom are also aging and, in many cases, reluctantly approaching retirement. Every day, men and women who have achieved great things both personally and professionally and reached the very top of the ladder are being put out to pasture to rarely, if ever again, use the significant gifts and talents that helped them for the first 50 or so years of their lives. I would suggest that it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, I would posit that the next part of their lives could cement their legacy and in many ways be their most important years with perhaps their greatest contribution.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Bringing HR to the C-Suite: How Human Resources Can Create Value and Drive Performance
By Porchlight
"HR has been trying to get the proverbial seat at the table for eons, and it doesn't seem that there has been much progress and... there's a credibility gap between HR and the 'C' suite that gets wider every day. The C-Suite still doesn't see or value the role HR can and should play, because we are still mired in the morass of compliance and administration. I have spent my career as one of those HR professionals who have to cajole arrogant operational leaders into doing 'HR work.' I've fought the resistance, and I've learned a lot along the way. I've learned that this can't be 'HR work'—it's leadership, plain and simple."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Fanatical Fans Create the Bedrock for a Successful Brand
By Michael Silverstein
"Your most loyal customers set the stage for continuous volume growth. If you listen to them, they can help you define how far afield you can extend. If you track them and induce them to introduce you to their friends and family, they can be your surest route to growth. If you forsake them at any point, they can, like jilted lovers, go from being fanatical fans to fanatical detractors. They will tell you in clear language what is a sin and what is unacceptable behavior. But don't turn away. You need to listen, question, listen again, and test."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Getting One Second Ahead: 5 Mantras for Mindful Leadership
By Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, Gillian Coutts
"In today's complex, fast-paced, always-on business environment, speed matters. As leaders, you need to be able to rapidly sift through an overload of information and multiple distractions to make the best decisions for your organization. Time is of the essence. Everything is urgent. The most common words for many leaders are 'more' and 'now. ' What if you could enhance your focus and clarity, improve your effectiveness, have more time and less stress. [. . . ] The underlying challenge is that our mind can have a mind of its own making it difficult to manage our attention. Recent scientific studies suggest that our ability to pay attention is getting less and less. If managing attention is key to realizing results, this is a significant issue for all of us not only in terms of ourselves as leaders but also in how we manage and support our teams, colleagues and clients. [. . . ] If managing our attention is at the root of the problem, then training the attentional muscle is the key to addressing it. ".
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Blog / ChangeThis
It's the Experience, Stupid!
By Denise Lee Yohn
"With customer experience, companies don’t simply fulfill functions or execute transactions— they cultivate feelings around their products, services, and brands. As such, customer experiences should resonate emotionally, appealing to the five human senses and expressing a unique brand personality."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The New Consumer Manifesto: Why Old is New, and Young is Old News
By Porchlight
"The majority of today's grandparents are from the baby boomer generation; they appear more youthful, vital and active than grandparents of previous generations. Grandparents are spending thousands on rock concerts, hundreds on hip jeans, stocking up on the best anti-aging formulas and scents, while amassing a shoe closet that Carrie Bradshaw would envy. p> Still, if you do an image search on grandparents in Google, look at what pops up! You will see photos of people 75+ in sedentary environments. Or cartoon caricatures of couples with gray buns, sagging bellies and boobs, and canes. This is far from the reality of the baby boom generation grandparents. In reality only 20% of grandparents are 75 and older. Stereotypes like this keep advertisers and their agencies from realizing the potential of the grandparent market as a viable target consumer."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Why Social Media Doesn't Create Social Intelligence
By Jeremie Kubicek
"They say that if we have more followers in our online, social media world, then we will be deemed more important. They say that the more people you know via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the others, then the more influence you and I will have. They say that if we would connect more then we will be more connected. I say they are wrong. Who 'they' are is one issue. What 'they' say is another. Here is the most important fact: Social media doesn't create social intelligence. In fact, the more socially connected we are virtually online, the greater the risk of creating social dysfunction in our actual lives."
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Blog / ChangeThis
A Big Idea: Big Ideas Don't Work (A Manifesto for Thinking Small)
By Craig Wilson
"What if big ideas don't work. Let's examine the premise. You own a business. That business provides goods and/or services. You try to distinguish those goods and/or services by some means. Your widget is the best, or cheapest, or most coveted because of its uniqueness, or you simply promote your widget with advertising that drowns out the competition. But in a world of near instant commoditization and destructive price promotion, the eventuality is that these approaches wane over time, and so begins the quest for the big idea that you believe is going to save your business. These big ideas typically come in the form of a new campaign tagline or logo, or a new way of talking about an old idea, or they come with a general makeover. Not necessarily lipstick on a pig, but the vast majority of re-branding efforts are simply a new way of looking at the same old thing. Rarely are they grounded in the principles of the organization. Rather, something else that feels all shiny and bright. With time, the veneer rubs off uncovering the fundamental truth that resides beneath.
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.