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
Closing the Decision Quality Gap
By Carl Spetzler, Hannah Winter, Jennifer Meyer
"One of the virtues of DQ is that it allows us to know if we've made a good decision at the time we are making it. If we've correctly followed the process, we can confidently state that 'We made the best possible choice given our alternatives, the available information, future uncertainties, and the things we can control. ' That's contrary to conventional thinking, which confuses a good decision with a good outcome. Most will say, 'We cannot know how good a decision is until we've seen the results. " That makes no sense in a world of uncertainty and unforeseeable events that decision makers cannot control. A good decision, for example, might be undermined by poor implementation. Or events on the far side of the world may foil a decision maker's best-made plans. The reverse is also true: a poor-quality decision may have a good outcome thanks to good luck. Imagine someone driving home after too many drinks. Does the fact that he arrived home without causing an accident make his decision to get behind the wheel a good one.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Ending Pay Secrecy: Why Keeping Salaries a Secret Leads to Disengagement and Decreased Performance, and How Revealing Pay Information Can Actually Increase Performance
By David Burkus
"Do you know how your pay compares to your peers? Probably not. You probably don't talk about it much. Most Americans are more comfortable talking about their sex lives than their salary lives. And most employers are happy to keep that secrecy going. According to a 2011 report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, about half of American workers said that discussing salary information is either discouraged or outright prohibited. The assumed reason behind these prohibitions is that if everybody knew what everybody got paid, then all hell would break loose. There would be complaints. There would be arguments. There might even be a few people who quit. But what if secrecy is actually the reason for the strife, and what would happen if we removed that secrecy?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The New Way to Get Noticed
By Barbara Cave Henricks, Rusty Shelton
"In a sense, the new media environment feels like the Wild West. On television, many of today's highest rated programs are reality-based and feature families who do things like procreate excessively or become famous when their patriarch represents OJ Simpson in court. Twitter helped Paris Hilton become a household name after a sex tape first put her in the public eye. And what about the concept of going viral. Few of us can forget the moment in 2015 when frenzy erupted over whether a particular dress was blue and black or white and gold, a "story" that temporarily pushed aside substantive news. It's easy to be cynical, we get it. On the flip side, this new environment has given us access we wouldn't otherwise have to many of the world's most influential minds. From Reddit's 'Ask Me Anything' to the TED talks featured on YouTube, new media tools have helped create and given us access to an unprecedented number of experts. Further, they have whetted our collective appetite for more. Not only is there opportunity to create content and display it on the virtual billboard that exists online, but there is a chance to create a strategy for capturing even more value from your messages.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Ignite Change: How Empathetic Communication Helps You Illuminate a Path that People Will Want to Follow
By Nancy Duarte, Patti Sanchez
"Change is inevitable. Whether we're talking about business, society, politics, or life, we all know that trying to stay still is a recipe for stagnation. Since Duarte, Inc. , was founded twenty-five years ago as a small design firm in Silicon Valley, the company has undergone numerous transformations. But none has been more challenging than the internal reinvention we began three years ago. As we worked to motivate our employees and align our organization around a new vision for our collective future, we were simultaneously studying how other leaders—in business and society, at companies large and small and different as Apple and Starbucks, IBM, and Market Basket—have successfully helped others embrace change and sparked movements. This is our manifesto for change communications and, more specifically, for leaders who want to inspire others to understand and follow their vision for change, over and over again. It's a tricky road to navigate. Most people are more comfortable with what they know than with the unknown future.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Culturally Intelligent Innovation: Diversity CQ = Better Solutions
By David Livermore
"Everyone seems to be talking about diversity these days. Tech companies have pulled back the curtain to reveal how white and male they are. Indian firms are scrambling to appoint female board members in order to abide by new laws. European and North American multinationals are hiring executives from emerging markets. And even Hollywood is admitting that you're more likely to see an alien on screen than an Asian or Latina female. Diversity has moved from a nice-to-have to a must-have. And innovation is one of the benefits most consistently lauded to sell people on diversity. It sounds promising. Rather than approaching a problem from one perspective, you gain the opportunity to see things more broadly. The problem is, diversity rarely works out that way. [. . . ] Diversity is undoubtedly one of the best sources of innovation. But it's not automatic. Diversity by itself does not lead to better solutions. Cultural intelligence, or CQ, is the differentiating factor. CQ is a research-based way of measuring and improving effectiveness for working across cultures.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Make People Love Your Brand Instantly: The Powerful Attraction of Love-At-First-Sight Names
By Alexandra Watkins
"Most ... fear that if their name is unconventional, they won't be taken seriously. Listen scaredy cats, you need to let go of that old school way of thinking. Why should you believe me? I run a B2B firm with a playful name, Eat My Words. For more than a decade, our name has been a magnet for attracting clients, employees, and reporters. A clever business name is your welcome mat. It suggests, 'We're lots of fun and you're going to love working with us!'"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Kill Your Darlings: How High Performers Achieve Extraordinary Growth
By Porchlight
"Unfortunately, human beings are driven to maintain a favorable self-concept more than they are an accurate one. We have the tendency to see ourselves as exceedingly moral, attractive, smart, funny, athletic etc., and we don't want to disturb that vision. For many of us, ignorance is bliss. But not all of us. ... many of the world's top performers prioritize an accurate self-concept over a favorable one. They strive to treat beliefs that they don't like in the same way they treat beliefs that they do. They want to know when 'all is not well' because, then, they can do something about it. But these high performers are not only receptive to information that might threaten their favored beliefs, they go out of their way to seek it out themselves. In doing so, they kill their darlings."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
There is Nothing Wrong with You: The Entrepreneurial Personality Type (EPT) and the Future of Everything
By Porchlight
"From the very beginning of human society, a part of the population has consistently driven our positive evolution. They were the first to discover new territories. The first to explore tools and language. The first to form culture and government and technologies. The have made enormous contributions to the world, and yet today they are often the first to be medicated, jailed, or put in rehab. They are the Entrepreneurial Personality Type (EPT), and until now this subpopulation has been overlooked by society. In order for us to maximize their potential—and that of humanity—we have to better understand these unique individuals, learn how best to protect and support them, and even come to the realization that we may be looking at them in the mirror."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Consumer Engagement: Holy Grail or Fool's Gold?
By Bob Nease
"We all dream of the perfect customer: the fiercely loyal, energetic word-of-mouth advocate for the brand, who's willing to let our service mistakes roll off their back, and who comes back time after time to buy what our company offers. These consumers are willing to invest their time, energy and money in our products and services and do so with glee. Do such amazing customers actually exist? ... Moving the needle on consumer engagement is exceptionally difficult, and a bit of neuroscience explains why. The human brain processes about 10 million bits of information per second. That's roughly the throughput of the original Ethernet cable. Our conscious minds, however, use only 50 bits per second. This means that most of what we do happens automatically, under the radar, and beyond our conscious grasp. We point our attention at things that are either pressing or pleasurable, and the rest of the time we let things ride. In short, we are wired for inattention and inertia."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
It's Time To Drive "Customer Obsession" From The Top
By Joseph Michelli
"Companies know that their end result—a consistently great (actually, greater and greater) customer experience—needs to drive everything they do. Just as all roads lead to Rome, all strategies must lead to the delighted customer, and the fewer twists and turns along the way, the better. That's the directive handed down by the gods of globalization and cyberspace, who've decreed that customers can jump from one company to another on a whim (often armed with reams of research on your product). The problem is that most big corporations were forged in different fires, the fires of an era where competition was less intense and issues like product quality trumped service. Customers were more like to simply accept what you had to offer. As a result, many players (even market leaders) are fundamentally unsuited for the new marketplace. What's more, they're painfully aware of it."
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.