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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
Get Off the Couch!
By Roger Connors, Tom Smith
"Because we all hold on pretty tight to what we know, even if it ain't so, we tend to push back on the notion of feedback—solicited or not. How do you work up the courage to admit your reality may not actually be the reality and seek out the opinions of others? As with everything related to change, it all starts with making a personal choice—taking accountability for seeing things as they really are."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Debunking the Myths, Lies, and Misconceptions of Word of Mouth Marketing
By Ted Wright
"If you have ever tried to discuss word-of-mouth marketing, you've likely confronted the many myths and misconceptions that surround it. It may be statements like "Oh, that costs too much" or "There's technology that does that for you already," or it may be a question like "Isn't that just social media?" All of these people come from a place of wanting the best for your company. In the many years that I've been doing this, I've heard every single one of them. By now, I've gotten pretty good at responding. Maybe I can help you do it too."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Fight Through the Ambush: How to Thrive When Shit Hits the Fan
By Jake Wood
"Getting ambushed sucks, no doubt about it. The ability to fight your way through to the other side, however, is what sets great leaders apart."
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Blog / ChangeThis
A Consistent Personal Narrative is the Key to Leading in the Social Age
By Sudhanshu Palsule
"In the new world of deep interconnectivity, what we call the Social Age, leaders are confronted with challenges that constantly test 'who they are' while making each of these tests public with everyone able to comment. ... Social Age leadership challenges ... five areas of 'who we are' as leaders that most impact our leadership narrative. ... There is no one right way to lead in these five areas. Rather, they are aspects of who you are as a person. Thriving as a leader in the Social Age means taking a good look at your self and understanding how you are most productive in each of these five areas."
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Blog / ChangeThis
A New Superpower: Building Habit-Forming Products
By Nir Eyal
"A 2011 university study suggested people check their phones 34 times per day. However, industry insiders believe that number is closer to an astounding 150 daily sessions. Face it, we're hooked. The technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions. . . . How do companies, producing little more than bits of code displayed on a screen, seemingly control users' minds. What makes some products so habit-forming. For many products, forming habits is an imperative for survival. As infinite distractions compete for our attention, companies are learning to master novel tactics to stay relevant in users' minds. Today, amassing millions of users is no longer good enough. Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create. In order to win the loyalty of their users and create a product that's regularly used, companies must learn not only what compels users to click, but also what makes them tick. ".
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Welcome to the Conscience Economy
By Porchlight
"Something extraordinary is happening. Humankind's increasing interconnectedness is causing a global transformation of values and expectations, at both the individual and societal level. The shift is reaching a tipping point that will transform business forever. You don't have to be an economic detective or business futurist to see myriad signs of the unstoppable rise of a new set of economic prerogatives that prioritize proactive positive impact on people and planet. Consider this short list: the emergence of universally available virtual education, the mainstreaming of environmental consciousness on the political and business agenda, the accelerating growth of the organic and Fairtrade foods industry, the growth of impact investing as a sector, the innovation in biosensor-enabled mobile healthcare solutions—these phenomena and more herald a mass movement for good that's great for humanity. And for business."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Choose Your Impact, Change the World
By Mindy Hall
"Who do you want to be as a leader. What impact do you want to have. How do you want people to experience you. No matter where you fall in the organizational structure, your ability to shape both the organizational culture and how others perceive you is a direct result of the level of intention with which you operate. What does it mean to operate with intention. It is consciously deciding to lead by design rather than by default; being mindful of who it is you want to be and then living into that picture twenty-four hours a day. It is about seeing opportunities every day, in every interaction, to shape the tone, the experience, and the outcome of those interactions. It is being aware that everything you do sends a message: what you say and how you say it, what you do and how you do it, even what you choose not to say or do. It is realizing that the system you work in does not tell you who you get to be; you decide who you get to be. Seeing your 'self' as the primary tool for achieving high-level results is a concept that may seem like common sense, but it is far less commonly practiced and even less often developed in professionals as they grow in their careers.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Entrepreneur's Journey
By Kevin Kruse
"My call to entrepreneurship happened in an unusual manner, when I was just 12 years old. A mysterious one-armed man approached me and set me off on a journey that would eventually include the launch of several companies—some successful, some not. This manifesto both celebrates and encourages entrepreneurship because we need entrepreneurs to fight the dragons that roam the globe. Yes, dragons. They sit in plain sight: civil wars, extreme poverty, disease, water scarcity, domestic violence, illiteracy, and so many others. While the work of relief agencies and social welfare groups is vital—especially in response to acute crises—for lasting change we need modern-day heroes who courageously take personal risks as they build new companies."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Growth Hacker Wake Up Call: How Growth Hacking Rewrote Marketing's Best Practices
By Ryan Holiday
"The term 'growth hacker' has many different meanings for different people, here's my definition: A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are emails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money. While their marketing brethren chase vague notions like "branding" and "mind share," growth hackers relentlessly pursue users and growth—and when they do it right, those users beget more users, who beget more users. They are the inventors, operators, and mechanics of their own self-sustaining and self-propagating growth machine that can take a startup from nothing to something."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Conquering the Seven Summits: High Achievement, From Mount Everest to Every Business
By Susan Ershler, John Waechter
"Perseverance is the singular quality that Everest summiteers and the business elite have in common. We don't believe that perseverance is an intrinsic quality possessed by the fortunate few. On the contrary, we're convinced that anyone can accomplish great feats if they summon the will required to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Successful individuals know how to motivate themselves to achieve peak performance. They know what internal levers to pull when their engines of determination start to flag."
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.