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
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."
Categories: changethis
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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.
Categories: changethis
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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."
Categories: changethis
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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."
Categories: changethis
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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
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Blog / ChangeThis
Making Decisions like Tomorrow Depends on It
By Tom Rath
"Choices count. You can make decisions today that will give you more energy tomorrow. The right choices over time greatly improve your odds of a long and healthy life. [...] No matter how healthy you are today, you can take specific actions to have more energy and live longer. Regardless of your age, you can make better choices in the moment. Small decisions—about how you eat, move, and sleep each day—count more than you think. As I have learned from personal experience, these choices shape your life."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Comparing Apple to Plastic Bricks: Why Steve Jobs Was Great for Products, but Lousy as a Management Model
By David Robertson
"When people talk about innovation in business, a single company—Apple—usually gets all the attention. . . . Many managers ask: How do I follow in Apple's footsteps. . . . The truth is Apple is no model for innovation management. Steve Jobs was utterly one of a kind. He co-founded Apple and made it in his own image. No other "Steve" would have anywhere near the clout or force of personality. And don't try finding one in the first place, as people like that simply don't come around that often. So ignore all the lessons about innovation management that you might be tempted to learn from business press articles about Apple. There are much better examples for you to consider. One of the best is LEGO. Yes, the plastic brick company. The 80-year old, family-owned business is one of the giants of the toy industry, with $4 billion in sales and $1. 3 billion in profits in 2012. Revenue growth for the past five years has averaged 24 percent per year, and profit growth a stunning 40% per year. Growth like that keeps occurring year-in and year-out because after a lot of trial and error, LEGO has created an extraordinarily effective system of innovation management that works within a traditional management structure.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
7 Principles to Upgrade Your Work and Life
By Porchlight
"You tell yourself. . . It would be selfish and reckless of me to try to break out of my box; I have a family to support, massive student loans to pay off. I can't afford to take that risk. But still, you want in. You want a piece of the new creative economy, the happiness economy, or the purpose-driven career path. You want to make a difference, set a vision, set a course for your life. The whole paradigm of work is changing, and many of us are still stuck under the thumb of the boss in our life when what we want is to be the boss of our own life. We crave the freedom to manage our own time, to be valued for who we are. We want a career that encourages risk and excitement, growth and personal development, learning and exploration. Do you really have to stifle your inner child, who is dying to come out and play in this dynamic new world. Is stultification the price of security. Is it asking too much of your family to risk trying for more. Our parents went to work every day too, but when they looked around, everyone was in the same box, following the same well-worn paths.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Success In 5 Easy Lessons
By G. Richard Shell
"As a senior faculty member at the Wharton School of Business, I am best known for my work in negotiation, persuasion, and interpersonal influence. [… ] Given what I do now, most people are surprised to learn that I did not start my my academic career until I was thirty-seven and spent most of my twenties unemployed, much of the time deeply uncertain about who I was and what I wanted to do. But I count those years as the most important of my life. It was during that intense period of living with failure that I gained my first insights into the true meaning of success."
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.