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
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.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Think Big, Act Bigger, and Do It Your Way—Because You Can!
By Jeffrey Hayzlett
"All my life people have been laying down rules or telling me what I need to do in order to be successful. I choose not to play their game. From my years as a successful small businessman in printing, marketing, and business development in South Dakota, through my time as the CMO of a Fortune 100 company, and into my current work as a speaker, bestselling author, host of a national TV show, and creator of the C-Suite Network, people have asked me one question more than any other: 'Jeff, how did you do it?' My answer is: 'I think big and act bigger.'"
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Blog / ChangeThis
Organizational Sabotage: How to Spot It, and How to Stop It
By Robert M. Galford, Bob Frisch, Cary Greene
"Someone is sabotaging your organization. Not deliberately. But that doesn't matter. The damage that this person is causing is just as bad, and maybe even worse, than it would be if he or she planned it. Day by day, operating under the radar, this person is undermining the work of your company. In effect, he or she is putting sand in your machine. And if you don't identify and redirect that person's destructive behavior (and eliminate its cause), your company's gears may suddenly grind to a halt."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Future You: The Owner's Manual
By Bill Jensen
"Over the next few years, you will experience up to 100 transformative moments every year. 100 moments yearly that may or may not determine the future, but will most certainly reveal your future. Your future reveals itself only after you choose how you will face every disruption and opportunity that comes your way. What goes into your choices—your beliefs, unconscious biases, values and emotions—drives every situation as much as any disruption that is thrown at you. The future is personal."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Give Not Until It Hurts, But Until It Feels Great
By Jenny Santi
"Through my work as a philanthropy advisor, I also had a chance to meet and speak privately with so many men and women from the social sector—social entrepreneurs, nonprofit professionals, young students and volunteers from different walks of life. Not everyone had a lot of money to give away. Many were giving their time, their talents, and a big part of their lives to something that mattered deeply to them, and again I was struck by what I observed. Every time they spoke about their work, regardless of how grim the issues they were addressing—whether it was cancer, global warming, or domestic abuse—and even when what they do for a living barely lets them make a living, they beamed with purpose and radiated with something that I can only call joy."
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.