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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
What Ethical Leaders Believe: The Leading in Context Manifesto
By Linda Fisher Thornton
"Aristotle said 'We are what we repeatedly do.' He was right. Our daily choices define us. They show just how far beyond ourselves we're thinking, how broadly we imagine our constituents, and how we see ourselves in the world. As we navigate the turbulence of today's workplace, there is power in asking ourselves, 'What is it that I repeatedly do?' [...] We would like to think that we are making the most responsible choices that we can under the circumstances. But then, in a typical challenging, chaotic day, what really determines what we do?"
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Blog / ChangeThis
What is Customer Service?
By Steve Curtin
"Too often, customer service is viewed as a department, a designated employee's job role, or someone else's responsibility. Because of this limited view of customer service, many employees are content to simply execute a series of mandatory job functions until the end of their shifts—blissfully unaware of the myriad opportunities forfeited to make lasting positive impressions on their customers. To expand on this narrow definition of customer service, I'd like to submit my own definition for consideration: Customer service is a voluntary act that demonstrates a genuine desire to satisfy, if not delight, a customer."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How To Future-Proof Your Career
By Jocelyn K. Glei
"The first co-working space was opened in San Francisco in 2005. Today, there are over 2500 co-working spaces in existence around the world. Cellphones first began to be used by the general population in 2000. Now, roughly 85% of the world has access to a mobile phone. Facebook was founded less than 10 years ago. Today, 1.25 billion people use the service. (That's 1 out of every 7 people on planet Earth.) Today, the way we interact with people, the tools we use, and the way we work are all changing at an incredibly rapid pace. This has huge implications for the way we run our careers. In fact, it demands that we utterly reinvent our approach, shifting from a focus on past accomplishments—the 'resum model'—to constant self-iteration, or what I think of as the 'learner's model.' To move to this model, we must adopt a new set of career rules. A set of rules that are, quite literally, made to broken."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Rewriting The Myths of Creativity
By David Burkus
"There is a mythology that surrounds creativity. Cultures develop myths when they can't rely on existing knowledge to explain the world around them. They are developed and passed down in an effort to explain why certain mysterious events occur, or to affirm how we should behave and think. Creativity is no different. These myths were prevalent almost everywhere I looked—everywhere except in the most innovative companies and people. If we want to be more creative, if we want our organizations to be more innovative, then we have to learn from these companies and individuals, use the wealth of empirical research at hand, and rewrite the myths of creativity."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Perfecting Your Pitch
By Porchlight
"Have you ever been faced with settling family financial squabbles, asking for a raise, offering tough but constructive criticism, rejecting a friend or relative's request for a loan, selling and holding to a price, making budget denials and requests, dealing with customer objections, or negotiating a contract where you feared the other side had all the leverage. And, like me on occasions, you then spoke words to solve the problem and in an instant thought to yourself: 'WOW, why did I say that. ' How often do we come out of an important discussion or a negotiation and ponder what we could've done differently to achieve a better result. Having been involved in all of these situations and an array of other business and personal communications challenges throughout my career, I systematized how I managed them. More recently I decided to articulate for others that system and how it allows us to find and speak the 'words that work' so that we're not left thinking 'Oh I wish I had done/said that differently.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
INCREMENTALISM MUST DIE. NOW.
By Porchlight
"Our future is bright, but to capture the light we must embrace change. If we ignore or fail to embrace change, our future will be doomed. The outcome depends on how we address our most vile, insidious, and common enemy: incrementalism. There are massive opportunities out there, requiring BOLD responses, and one change that must be made now: WE MUST ERADICATE INCREMENTALISM. I want to work with you to change this."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Making It Happen! Shifting Your Focus from Something Else to It
By Jones Loflin, Todd Musig
"It seizes some significant mental real estate and prevents you from being fully present in the moment. You attempt to suppress your thoughts about It with countless less important activities, but It simply won't leave. You hope to escape being a mental hostage to It when you are spending time with your family or friends, but still It hangs around, diminishing your ability to enjoy these moments, as well. Its presence, however, can most strongly be felt when you are trying to rest. You want to physically, emotionally, and mentally relax from the break-neck pace of the day, but thoughts of It keep robbing you of these much needed moments of sacred idleness. "What is this all powerful It," you ask. Simply put, It is your most Important Thing. " Those tasks, activities, goals, dreams, and plans that are neglected almost daily in the overwhelming world of working on "something else. " You don't consciously try to avoid It. You really want to work on It, whether it will take five minutes, five months, or five years, but you aren't for many reasons.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Transforming Your Business To Be The Most Highly Recommended Brand In Your Category
By Paul M. Rand
"92% of consumers report that a recommendation from a friend, family member of someone they trust is the leading influence on their purchase behavior. Business-to-business buyers also rank recommendations at their top of their list. Recommendations and word of mouth, of course, have always been important. But in the age of social media, they are essential. One-to-one communication has become one-to-millions. Word of mouth is now on steroids. Becoming, and staying, highly recommended has become the make-or-break business imperative."
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Blog / ChangeThis
From Burning Platform to Burning Ambition; How Leaders Sustain Change
By Porchlight
"Leadership effectiveness is not a matter of intention; it's a matter of impact. Why do I say that? I've never met the leader who aspires to destroy shareholder value, irritate customers and alienate staff. Yet often the unintended consequence of our leadership is to do just that. The bad news is that in studying leaders who have actually bridged this gap between their noble intentions and their impact, my colleagues and I have found no magic formula to guarantee success. It turns out that leadership transformation is extremely context bound. Every leader's journey is unique. The good news, however, is that there are common threads in the experiences of those who've realized their leadership vision, and achieved a transformation in their organization."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Smart Sales Managers Are the New Normal: A Crash Course in Generating More Revenue from Your Inside Sales Team in the Sales 2.0 Ecosystem
By Josiane Feigon
"The dynamic Sales 2.0 ecosystem is digital, diverse, connected—and dramatically different from the world that many sales managers cut their teeth on. Customers, talent, tools, prospecting . . . the rules have changed. Customers don't answer phones, make appointments for lunch and golf, and read long whitepapers about your product. Today they do their own research—online, and talking to peers—and create their own sales cycles. Talent doesn't plan to put in time and pay their dues. They want to know why they're doing everything that's asked of them, they expect work to be F-U-N, and they expect their managers to give them all the answers immediately, SIRI style. Tools have grown far beyond noise-canceling headsets. Next-generation tools, processes, and prospecting practices are already driving revenue in the new economy. Welcome to the New Normal: Managing a high-performing inside sales team by operating under the old sales rules just won't work."
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.