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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
The Magic Triangle of Company and Career Health
By Rich Karlgaard
"While giving speeches about the post-recession recovery, I began to wonder why some companies had blasted out of the recession in fine shape while others had not yet escaped, as if sick or dysfunctional. When a human being is sick or dysfunctional—or just not thriving—the root cause is always found in one of three areas. Picture a triangle. One side is physical health. Another side is emotional. A third side is social. If you are thriving on just two sides but not on a third, your entire health is at risk. Ask an otherwise physically and mentally healthy person who is struggling with social health, going through a traumatic divorce, say. What does robust health look like in a company or career? Can we find a similar triangle that can help us locate the root cause when our companies and careers are underperforming? I believe so. But warning: I will spend most of the time discussing the least appreciated side of the triangle—the soft edge."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Ignite Innovation with F.I.R.E.
By Dan Ward
"Solving a difficult technical challenge requires imagination, focus, endurance, and a tolerance for failure, to name but a few key ingredients. However, the real secret behind delivering world-class innovation actually depends on what we lack rather than what we have. [...] In fact, the pattern of rapid, thrifty innovation shows up across a large range of technical contexts and genres. Whether we are talking about submarines or software, medical or military technology, the most impactful and successful innovations tend to be produced by small teams with short schedules, tight budgets, and strong commitments to simplicity."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Heed Your Call
By Porchlight
"You have been invited to heed your call, and now it is up to you to decide where you go from here. You are the result of the choices you make every single day, and what you choose, you become. To choose wisely, be a witness to your thoughts and actions, both positive and negative. Observe each and every one with neutral emotion. Avoid judging or being critical. Just examine your thoughts as they pass through your psyche. Consider the source, then act or don't act on them. How you choose to respond to this call is what will define and shape your future."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Your Product or Service Is Either Relevant or It's Worthless: Three Things You Need to Do to Make Sure It's Relevant
By Porchlight
"Every day, according to best estimates, your customers and the people you would like to be your customers, are bombarded with more than 5,000 messages. There are advertisements—commercials, billboards, pop ups; calls from telemarketers; emails from deposed princes who need your help banking their fortunes; companies promising to enhance this or that; signs on buses and cabs; branding on clothing and in stores... you get the idea. No wonder it is becoming harder and harder to break through the clutter. In an environment where literally thousands of messages are competing for attention, how do you get people to pay attention to your business, message, or offering? Simply put: by being relevant."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Strategic Thinking: A Framework for Individual Executives to Elevate Business
By Rich Horwath
"The inability to effectively navigate strategy challenges can have devastating long-term effects on an organization. ... While it's convenient to blame an organization's failings on external factors such as the economy, decisions about strategy account for failure a whopping 70 percent of the time. Yes, strategy does matter. When poor decisions about strategy are made and an organization goes through a revenue stall, it's been shown that, on average, low performance continues for more than 10 years. Unfortunately, this prolonged period of poor performance can lead to bankruptcy. Research on 750 bankruptcies during a 25-year period showed that the number-one factor behind these bankruptcies was bad strategy. Contrary to popular opinion, the researchers attributed the failures to flaws in the strategies themselves, not to poor execution of the strategies. Therefore, it's important to be skilled at crafting strategy."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Finding Excellence: How to Give and Be Our Best Every Day
By Harry Paul, John Britt
"In the 80's, many began their search for excellence. Over three decades later, the search still continues for many of us and, for others, the search has just begun. We were intrigued by the concept of excellence in both the personal and organizational domains. So, we began on a journey to understand excellence and soon found that a significant barrier exists. Excellence did not have a generally accepted definition. Thus, any further value we could contribute to the understanding of excellence must be predicated on unshakable bedrock and pillars sanctioned by all those in search of excellence. In short, a common working definition of excellence must be derived."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Cultivate Winning Relationships
By Morag Barrett
"Having fun and feeling satisfied with relationships at work are important! For many of us, the hours we spend at work far exceed the time we spend with our families or in social settings. So why not actually enjoy this massive part of our lives? Working respectfully is not a win/lose power struggle. Nor is it 'soft' to have a conversation about how you work together. When you cultivate winning relationships, everyone involved can benefit—especially you."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Your Biases Make You Blind
By Faisal Hoque, Drake Baer
We best empathize with people—be they colleagues or customers—that we have some shared experience with. So if a company is homogenous in form, it will only be able to connect with a homogenous swathe of humans outside the organization.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Brevity Mandate
By Joseph McCormack
"The business world today is full of information overload and there is not enough time to sift through it. If you cannot capture people's attention and deliver your message with brevity, you'll lose them. For starters, the discipline to capture and manage elusive mindshare now shapes and defines professional success. Shorter e-mails, better organized updates, and tighter and more engaging presentations are immediate indicators that you've got what it takes to succeed in an attention economy. Getting to the point is a non-negotiable standard. The reasons why are plentiful. Ten years ago, brevity was a nicety and meant primarily for long-winded types that couldn't shut up. Today, being clear and concise is an absolute necessity; it's what successful people expect to see—and get quickly frustrated when it's missing."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How To Experience a Hero's Journey and Become the Hero of Your Own Life Story
By Porchlight
"What if I told you that there a formula to living a heroic life? What if there was a basic framework, a roadmap that anybody could follow in order to become the hero of their own life story? In the 1940s, mythologist Joseph Campbell discovered that heroic myths from every culture on Earth are essentially the same story. He discovered a pattern in any story where an ordinary person accomplishes something heroic. Whether it was the Greek tales of Odysseus' return home from the Trojan war or the Nepalese stories of Gautama Buddha, who attained enlightenment and founded Buddhism, these stories follow the same set of steps that Campbell dubbed the 'Hero's Journey.'"
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.