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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
Being Heard in a Chaotic World
By Porchlight
"Today, we are connected in a multitude of ways and tethered to our devices 24x7. We have technology that allows instantaneous online delivery of content, including music, books and video. That same technology allows us to generate our own content and share it with the world. We have interactive social media tools that allow us to connect with communities we didn't even know existed a decade ago. And all of this is available from a mobile device that fits in the palm of your hand. New communication techniques and technologies are emerging at a rapid pace, continuously bombarding us with messages and reminders, with no end in sight. In a world where it's hard enough to cut through the noise to get the attention of friends and family members, it's even more difficult for businesses and other organizations to reach prospects and customers. Unfortunately, many organizations try to solve this situation by talking louder and LOUDER until they are shouting at us from across a crowded room. They add to the noise, make us tune out, and continue their way down an unsustainable path.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
BETTER and FASTER: How to Adapt & Change
By Jeremy Gutsche
"Your breakthrough opportunity, your big idea and your team's top tier are much closer than you think. The only problem is, for every opportunity you have hundreds of choices you could make with each one leading you to a slightly different version of your full potential. So, how do you know if you are making the right choices? What if you could make just a handful of better ones faster? You'd be more successful at almost anything."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Connectional Intelligence: How to Get Big Things Done
By Erica Dhawan, Saj-Nicole Joni
"We've been living with the internet now for twenty years and it's not news that we're all connected. Unless a totalitarian government swoops down and takes away our cell phones and our access to social media, that connectivity isn't going anywhere. The question is: How do you and I grab hold of this newfound connectivity to take us to the places we want to go. At a time when old-fashioned routes to power—the schools you went to, the contacts in your address book, the families you were born into—are not the only ways to get ahead, how do we connect intelligently, e. g. better, faster, more efficiently, and use all of our connections to make our ideas happen. Almost everyone has at least the capacity to link up with people, power, ideas, information and resources, but how do we synthesize it all to produce real change and influence people's lives for the better. The key is thinking differently about our connections. We need a shift in perception that empowers us to be the drivers of our digital tools and our new resources.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Reducing the Pressure We Feel Every Day
By Porchlight
"When you experience pressure anxiety—the feeling that you have to produce all the time—your emotional landscape changes for the worse. Small annoyances like picking up your dry-cleaning, for example, begin to interfere with your need to 'produce. ' Going to your daughter's play becomes an intrusion. Going on vacation can increase your anxiety, because it takes you away from what you should be doing: achieving results. Important conversations with your spouse may go south because of the subtle pressure of always being 'on. ' Worse, your decisions may become distorted by your need to produce. And if your focus shifts solely to winning, at any cost, you may find yourself compromising your ethics. Pressure anxiety may seem irrational—a mediocre presentation to a client is not akin to physical death—and probably, in and of itself, will not lead to the end of a professional relationship. Similarly, your daughter being turned down from her first choice college will not end her life, although she may feel that way at the time.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Data Capitalism: Counting and Communications Technologies and How They Have Altered the Structure and Management Of Business
By Steve Lohr
"Since the Industrial Revolution, new counting and communications technologies have altered the structure and management of business. ... Yet the guiding metric of management for decades has remained the same: finance. With improvements in communications and computing, financial performance can be measured faster and in greater detail than before. But it is still a fairly blunt, crude measurement—counting money, one factor of production and output of the enterprise. It is still financial capitalism. But big data promises to usher in a new phase in the practice of management."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Change the Game or Go Home: A Manifesto for Innovation
By Joseph Jaffe
"How is it that the likes of MapMyFitness or Mint end up being purchased by the likes of Under Armor or Intuit for hundreds of millions of dollars instead of being created by these same companies? Isn't it time companies asked the same questions as these entrepreneurs, but instead of articulating this in a creative brief and being satisfied with a jingle, tagline or even real-time tweet as the output, fast tracked and super sized this expectation in the form of a disruptive technology-led solution? Isn't it time to look towards the tens of thousands of viable startups out there for collaboration opportunities? And if the solution doesn't already exist, why wouldn't you start it yourselves?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Is Your Brand Missing the Mark with 60% of U.S. Consumers?
By Paul Jankowski
"There's one part of the country where, I think, many brands are completely missing the mark: it's what I call the New Heartland. It's made up of the Southwest, Midwest, and parts of the Southeast and is home to 60% of all U.S. consumers. It's a massive and influential cultural segment that is largely misunderstood and underserved by advertisers—and a huge opportunity for brands willing to make the effort. So how do brands effectively reach the New Heartland?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Why Technologists Should Work For Themselves
By Mark Beckner
"There are freedoms and opportunities in the technical industry that are not as readily available in other trades and professions. These freedoms and opportunities are left largely untapped by the millions employed in this industry. What are these freedoms? What are these opportunities? [...] Programmers, developers, solution architects, and technical consultants—all of you have the basic skills necessary to become highly successful outside the confines of traditional employment. You have to take on the activities of a businessperson. This is easier than it may seem; it is a natural progression from where you are today, and one which will pay immense dividends."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Sprinkles: An Antidote To The Demise of Customer Surprise
By Chip R. Bell
"What has made customer surprise in such a scarcity? At least three culprits have robbed the glee of service. First, many organizations have been forced to apply austere expense cutting in the face of ever-diminishing profit margins; value-added amazement has gotten pricey. Second, rising customer expectations have elevated what it takes to be judged as enchanting. Customers live in a highly stimulated daily lives. Stores have become sensory theater; TV and the Internet as vibrant as Broadway after dark. To paraphrase an old song, "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Zappos." There is a third reason...one subtler and far more challenging."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Out for Brains! (Why Customer Service Will Drive the Economy of the Next Fifty Years and Beyond)
By Peter Shankman
"The age of 'buy from us because we say we're awesome' is over, and has been replaced by an age of 'I'll buy from them because someone I trust says they're awesome.' We commissioned a survey on customer service, and the results will shock you. ... 25% of customers report an instance of poor customer service in the past two months alone! Each instance is estimated at resulting in over $700 in lost sales from that customer—and then spreading the word to an estimated 700 additional people on social media! However, the overwhelming majority of businesses think that their customer service is superior. There is a huge disconnect."
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.