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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
Social Drive: How You Can Create Positive Change, Right Now
By Paul Shoemaker
"I don't want to do anything to deter anyone from believing there is power in the group, in the network. But it also seems like there is a lot of rhetoric the last few years against the power of one person, against 'hero worship.' Don't get me wrong—I'm not a fan of false, egotistical, self-centered 'heroes' either. But I do believe that the positive social impact one person can create has never been clearer, stronger, and more urgent. Let me explain... "
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Do Something YOU Love: Design Your Ideal Life
By Porchlight
"70% of people in the workplace in the United States are either not engaged, or are actively disengaged. This results in $450-$550 billion dollars annually in lost profitability, growth, productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee retention. [...] In spite of the millions of dollars now being spent by companies on improving engagement, and the hoards of consultants who have 'the answer,' whether that is better employee selection or better managers, the reality is that none of those are really making a dent in the problem. There has to be a better way. I believe there is a better way."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How To Be More Valuable Than Machines: Developing Our Most Essential Human Abilities to Survive the Rise of Computers
By Geoff Colvin
"What I urgently want you to understand is that we're entering an era in which the skills that make you valuable are not only changing—they comprise a fundamentally different kind of skills from those that have made people economically valuable up to now. As the economy is transformed, some people will do great, and plenty of others will suffer. The winners will be those who conceive of skills and value in a fundamentally new way, different from what we're used to."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
We Are All a Bit Delusional
By Kieran Flanagan
"Unfortunately, most of us can't be above average—the math just doesn't work. Now clearly, some people are aware that we're below average in some areas of our lives, some may even believe that we're below average on the whole, but overwhelmingly, human beings are a little delusional when it comes to their conception of their own competence. [...] This translates to the expectations we place on other people too. In our experience, every CEO or leader we work with extols the virtues of their team. 'We've got the best team in the industry,' they'll often say. Of course, this is pretty unlikely. What they might have is the best team they could afford given the time and budget they've invested in finding them and developing them. So our delusion is wide spread and for most of us, invisible and unconscious. So what drives this delusion? What does it cost us? And how can we avoid it?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A Manifesto for Planet and Progeny
By Henry Mintzberg
"Marx and Engels wrote in their Communist Manifesto of 1848 that 'A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism,' which 'the Powers of old Europe' were determined to 'exorcise.' This dogma was exorcised in Eastern Europe in 1989, only to be replaced by another one. Today the world is haunted by the spectre of an 'economic man' and his form of capitalism, seen as the be all and end all of human existence. We shall have to stop the be all before it becomes the end all—of our planet and our progeny."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Jars of Clay: Solving the Water Crisis in Guatemala
By Porchlight
"In the high country of Guatemala, you'll find a self-proclaimed 'Social-preneur' CEO with degrees from Notre Dame and Wharton Business School who is on a mission to solve perhaps the biggest problem Guatemalans face in their everyday lives: unsafe drinking water. And, to accomplish that goal, this modern thinking business leader is using technology used by the ancient Romans, Egyptians, and Mayans, who laboriously used large clay water receptacles that were used to store fresh drinking water. These early versions of the modern filter took a terribly long time to manufacture and it was virtually impossible (and certainly impractical) to replicate on a large enough scale to solve a countrywide water filtration problem. But, after a Guatemalan professor discovered how to efficiently build a modern version of those receptacles and turn them into effective and culturally accepted water filters in a fraction of the time, opportunity came knocking for Ecofiltro CEO Philip Wilson and his company.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Transforming Business—Successfully
By Porchlight
"Enterprises everywhere are experiencing the 'business outcome gap. ' The business outcome gap can be defined as the difference between desired business outcomes and realized business outcomes. Desired outcomes are changing in response to rapidly evolving stakeholder needs, whether the stakeholders are employees, customers, or shareholders. Globalization, disruptive technologies, smart devices, and social media have all had a profound effect on how we approach work and get important programs done. While realized outcomes may be improving, for most enterprises the increase in desired outcomes is far outstripping the realized. Not only do enterprises see a business outcome gap, but also the lack of innovation to stay relevant to the dynamic needs of the customer and market. In order to close the business outcome gap, constantly innovate, and get more customer centric, enterprises are increasingly embarking on business transformation programs or large-scale strategic projects. However, according to a recent study, organizations lose an average of a staggering $109 million for every $1 billion spent on projects.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Genius of Teams
By Rich Karlgaard, Michael S. Malone
"More than ever, business success now comes down to teams. Of course, teams have always been vitally important. One hundred thousand years ago, hunting teams were vital to the survival of early man. With the rise of agricultural civilization, teams were the basic operating unit of social hierarchies and communities. But for the last few millennia, while remaining a crucial building block, teams have been largely made subordinate to larger social organizations: armies, governments, bureaucracies, corporations, etc. But the rise of the digital age, the Internet, and the global economy has changed all of that. As with many other cultural institutions, technology is beginning to turn organizations upside down. "
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Blog / ChangeThis
Local Networks, Global Change: Working Locally through the UN Global Compact
By Porchlight
"The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is the world's largest corporate responsibility movement with some 8,000 businesses employing over 50 million people in around 150 countries. [...] Encouraging as it is, 8,000 companies represents only about ten percent of truly international companies in the world and only a tiny fraction of the small and medium enterprises which provide most employment. If we are to achieve real change we need to engage a much wider range of companies."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Customer Room: Grow Your Business by Improving Customers' Lives
By Jeanne Bliss
"The Customer Room is the glue that unites a leadership team to focus and improve customers' lives to earn the right to growth. Building a customer room to step leaders and the organization through your customers' lives and walk in their shoes monthly, quarterly, and annually is one of the most robust actions you can take to align leaders and drive customer-driven action. It engages leaders personally in customers' lives and unites them to make decisions. It establishes an accountability forum that transcends most governance meetings on the subject, where projects are reported but engaging in understanding and improving customers' lives is not always built-in."
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.