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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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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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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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 Accelerating Organization: In a Faster Moving World, We Need Speed and Agility to Keep Up
By John P. Kotter
"Organizations everywhere are struggling to keep up with the accelerating pace of change—let alone get ahead of it. Most people don't feel the full rush going on around them, which is a part of the problem. But on almost every important business index, the world is racing ahead. The stakes—the financial, social, environmental, and political consequences—are rising in a similar exponential way. In this new world, the big question facing business leaders everywhere is how to stay competitive and grow profitably amid this increasing turbulence and disruption."
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Seven Steps to World Domination
By Lori Ann LaRocco
"It doesn't matter if you are a small business owner, manager, CEO, employee, or aspiring entrepreneur; you want to be the best you can be. You don't have to be a billionaire in order to be at the top of your game. In fact, you have more in common with the world's most successful business leaders than you may think—you are probably already using some of the strategies they use without being aware of it. To help you raise and sharpen your self-awareness there are seven key strategies that all leaders use, regardless of their industry. These steps lead to what I describe as 'world domination.' All of the seven strategies build and support each other, forming strong pyramid. As you read about these strategies, imagine how you would use each one when building your business or career."
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Against the Odds: Startups that Make It
By Derek Lidow
"It is one of our saddest economic statistics: More than half small businesses fail within a few years of startup. Unlike the cheery pictures presented in advertising or the success stories showcased on Shark Tank, a significant percentage of fledgling enterprises sputter and eventually die. Only 1 in 43 has any employees after 10 years. These startups don't create much economic value. The vast majority don't even earn as much for their founders as those people could have earned working for someone else. Dreams die, jobs are lost, and communities lose their vitality. It does not have to be this way. In fact, if we want a robust economy with job growth, we must do something about it. I think that the solution is deceptively simple: entrepreneurs should stop thinking so much about the idea behind the business and focus instead on how to lead it."
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Repairing the Hole in the Boat: How the Poor Can Save Capitalism
By John Hope Bryant
"I think we are sitting at a rare moment in history where we have an opportunity to change our nation and our world. Everything seems to be broken economically, socially, and politically. All the numbers are headed in the wrong direction. But the Bible says, where there is no vision, the people perish. We've got to have a vision that's larger than ourselves. We've got to be about we, and not about me; what we have to give, not just what we have to get. We need to turn traditional thinking on its head, and present a new vision for America."
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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.