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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
Improvise Your Way to Success
By Porchlight
"Consider the last time a hard sell worked on you—or when you were last 'convinced' to do something. Having a hard time coming up with an instance? While a common sales practice, an overt sales pitch is more likely to cause a customer to run rather than to buy. [...] The bottom line is that no one wants to be assaulted by one-way communication (a sales pitch). Rather, customers need to be invited into two-way conversations where we can be heard and understood. Whether you're selling a product, your services, or yourself—you must learn to persuade differently in order to close more deals. You must learn to ditch the pitch."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Beyond Keeping Afloat: How Established Business Can Get Breakthroughs
By Marc J. Epstein
"There is a common myth, told and retold, from the boardrooms of industry-dominating behemoths to the opinion columns and business pages of newspapers and magazines. It's a myth that litters the internet, and strikes fear in the heart of many an established executive. While it may seem like reality to many, this myth is actually more like a distortion of reality, often caused by a kind of inadvertent, self-imposed blindness—a willful, if unintentional, shoe gaze of sorts. The myth goes like this: large, established organizations can't get breakthrough innovations on their own. Breakthrough innovations, it says, are the domain of feisty, scrappy, nimble startups. Companies that once graced headlines as models of homegrown innovation, once they reach a certain point, it seems, often believe themselves incapable of developing the types of innovations that disrupt markets or even create entire new ones—the kinds of innovations that can radically change the outlook of a company, or even the world, when successful.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Sell Yourself First
By Tom Hopkins
"People buy you first. It doesn't matter if you're meeting people for the first time in a social or business situation, you won't get far unless you sell yourself first. This comes as a surprise to many people who just show up without thinking about the impression they make on others. In the case of sales professionals, they may prepare their presentations well, but not pay as much attention to preparing themselves as to how they, personally, come across to potential clients. The basic premise of this article is that 'it matters. ' It matters if you show up 20 minutes early (awkward in social situations), 10 minutes early (usually appropriate for business), on time (okay in social situations, maybe not for business) or 10 minutes late (never acceptable). It matters if you're dressed and groomed appropriately—including whether or not you're wearing the right shoes (and that they're in good condition). When you want to capture the attention of others and have them view you as a competent individual, dress and act like one—appropriately for the situation in which you're meeting them.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Generation We: Why Me Doesn't Work for One and Everyone, and What We Can Do to Change It
By Steven Smith
"Why does society tend to work in opposition to we if we is clearly a superior strategy? Why don't human beings make stronger moves to get past me ... ? Because psychologically and historically, me is a durable way to survive and succeed. Politics and business are competitive and capitalistic. Head-to-head, me appears to be the most viable strategy. But perception isn't reality. Social science and history expose me as a less steady way to survive, and a fragile way to thrive. And when me leaves work and goes home, stakes can get even higher. Emotions are closer to the surface. Love is deeper. Commitments are stronger. Me collapses entirely as a carryover strategy from boardrooms to living rooms."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Road (to Reinvention) Is Calling
By Josh Linkner
"Companies, communities, and individuals fall for many reasons, but one of the most common—and easily avoidable—is the failure to reinvent. Those who feel the most secure in the status quo are in fact the most vulnerable. Many organizations, once great, wither and die as a direct result of their deep entrenchment in the past. They discover too late that success isn't about cracking the code once and then enjoying the spoils forever. Instead, it's a moving target that we have to hit again and again. The disruption of ongoing innovation eventually topples any organization that fails to keep moving—to reinvent. The good news about reinvention is that you don't need magic, genius, good looks, or vaults of cash to transform your organization or career. Instead, the required elements are open-mindedness, courage, and imagination. Unleashing your imagination is no longer optional and, in fact, will become the lifeblood of your success. It's time to embrace your role as chief disruption officer, no matter where you sit on the organization chart.
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The Digital Marketer's Manifesto
By Larry Weber
"To succeed in a customer-centric world, we must truly see our customers. Not stalk them, but understand them. As customer experience architects, we must collaborate to design and deliver products, services, environments, and personalized experiences that truly meet our customers' needs. As we do, we will transform a traditionally passive and transaction-oriented association into a productive, profitable, and mutually beneficial collaboration with our customers. To See ( s/ verb): to understand Now that we have entered what Forrester describes as the age of the consumer, those organizations that are able to really see their customers will be the ones that succeed. Indeed, the ability to see—to know where to look, to decode meaning from a glut of information and interactions, and reflect that understanding in our customer experience—is today's primary source of competitive advantage."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Caring Mandate
By Porchlight
"It is very common to hear sales and marketing leaders talk about 'relationship.' All sales strategies and marketing campaigns work to build a relationship with a buyer. Trust is the basis of relationship! Therefore, it is the way to repeat sales and customer loyalty. However, I think that in order to meet the third level of motivation, we have to go toward something deeper and more at the core of relationship. I call it the Essence-to-Essence connection. Something in us connects with something outside of us, at a core level, and meaningful magic happens."
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The Most Important Company In the World: Intel, Moore's Law, and the Heartbeat of Civilization
By Michael S. Malone
"The biggest invention of our digital age is one we rarely think of: ourselves. [...] Mankind lived for hundreds of thousands of years with almost no change; then, with the Industrial Revolution we learned to inhabit a world of continuous improvement. But now, we deal with lives that experience the equivalent of an Industrial Revolution every few years. We've survived it, we've adapted to it, and now we are learning to thrive in it. And, though we barely noticed the change, we now live differently, learn differently, communicate differently, an ultimately, think differently. ... In other words, we have internalized Moore's Law. Its beat is now our heartbeat; its pace of change is now the heartbeat of civilization."
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Gravy Train or Train Wreck? Which Leadership Train Are You On?
By Kirk Dando
"Have you ever thought that leadership is a lot like a train. Here's how I think of it: The cars sitting on the tracks are loaded with different but valuable cargo (like team members: They're all different but collectively valuable); they have a destination (the vision, measurable goals and expected time frames for arrival at the goals); and they have a route to follow (the mission and strategic plan). But they do not have a way of getting anywhere on their own. They have to hook up to the engine (the leader). Have you ever watched how a bunch of railcars (the team) form a working train. It all begins with the engine (leader). The engine switches itself to the same track as the car (team member) it's going to pick up; then it backs up to the car, makes contact and connects. Then it repeats the process until it has all the cars and starts heading toward its destination, sometimes picking up more cars along the way. Likewise, all leaders are conductors, steering their corporate 'trains' onward, upward and ever forward with knowledge, experience, confidence and enthusiasm—and, above all else, passion and a sure and steady hand.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Four Faces of Change: A Tool for Change Readiness
By Kevin Allen
"Even though I had fought my way in to the mighty McCann Erickson one of the world largest advertising agencies, I still thought of my internal age as (still is), 13. While my business card may have had a fancy title, inside I was terrified. What on earth would I say. What would I do. [. . . ] The answer came in the strangest form, from the most unlikely place. That weekend as I visited my family I shared my fears. My mother spoke up, 'It's simple, give them your love. ' Ugh. I was exasperated by what seemed to be a perfectly ridiculous observation, a moment of momentary insanity. Now, Mom is one of those people who doesn't just see the glass as half full, she sees it as overflowing onto the table. She pursued her point, 'It doesn't matter what they're doing for a living, all people are just like us—families—and every person in that family has a sense of belonging. You lead the family, and they need to know you'll care for them. They'll do things for you if they think you are genuine, and if they see that they'll follow you anywhere.
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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.