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 Personal MBA, Updated & Expanded: Mastering Business Without Spending a Fortune
By Josh Kaufman
"The Personal MBA is a project designed to help you educate yourself about advanced business concepts as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This manifesto will show you how to substantially increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost, all without setting foot inside a classroom. The Personal MBA is more flexible than a traditional MBA program, doesn't involve going into massive debt, and won't interrupt your income stream for two years. Just pick up one of these business books, learn as much as you can, discuss what you learn with others, then go out into the real world and make great things happen. If you're interested in educating yourself about business, the Personal MBA is the best place to start."
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Blog / ChangeThis
8 Tips for Managing Your Personal Brand
By Porchlight
Your reputation is your brand. Your brand is your reputation. And it makes a world of difference in every relationship you have.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The How Manifesto: Why How Business Gets Done Around the World is the New Competitive Advantage, and New Metrics for a New Reality
By Dov Seidman
"'How?' is not just a question. HOW is the answer. HOW. We'll see that word a lot in this manifesto. Simply stated, HOW is the belief that in our more interconnected and interdependent world, we rise and fall together. The way to forge a better, more sustainable path of growth and progress lies in the realm of human behavior—HOW we do what we do. The days of "It's not personal; it's just business" are over. We truly have entered the Era of Behavior. Leaders have become successful at measuring "how much" by out-selling and out-spending. But instead of asking "how much", we should be examining HOW. How we behave, lead, consume, build trust in our relationships, and relate to others has always mattered but in an age when everything can be tweeted and blogged about and where there is no such thing as private behavior, HOW matters more than ever and in ways it never has before."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Perceptions Shape Realities
By Porchlight
"In our daily existence, we are constantly on a trip, going from one place to another. It is true whether we are faced with a situation threatening our survival, simply following our daily routine, or met with an unprecedented opportunity to thrive. Our journey is a needed activity that we too often view as a burden, as obligatory and forced. We thus make our journey a monotonous routine, depriving ourselves of memorable experiences and the enjoyment that we really deserve. A large majority of us do not understand that our perceptual view of our journey has a powerful influence on the enjoyment (or lack of it) and the feeling of accomplishment (or lack of it) we could receive from it."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Finch Effect: How Adaptability Will Save Your Career (and Happiness)
By Porchlight
"Our job market is in a perpetual state of turmoil these days. Every month, we hold our breaths waiting for some positive sign in the unemployment numbers, and every month it seems we are disappointed. The gains that have been made since the official end of the recession in 2009 have been minimal, and the changes we see in jobless rates each month are nominal at best. This economic twilight zone puts everything is on hold—our careers, our dreams for our family, our most basic happiness. We bite our nails and turn to one another asking "How long can this go on? When will things go back to normal?" But in our modern age, this age of Vocational Darwinism, the only people we can truly expect the answers to come from is ourselves. And the only way to answer those questions and take life off hold is to adapt."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Cure the (Self-Inflicted) Chaos First
By Karen Martin
"More than 80 percent of improvement efforts fail to make a discernible difference in overall business performance, regardless of the improvement methodology in use. The reason isn't a flaw in the methodologies, but a flaw inside of companies. Organizations in all sectors fail to meet their full potential because of self-inflicted chaos. I'm not talking about acute cases of chaos brought on by external events over which a company has little control, such as sudden supply chain disruptions, new regulations, or economic downturns. I'm talking about chronic long-term chaos brought about by ambiguity, lack of focus, inconsistency—habits and behaviors that organizations can control but choose not to. Self-inflicted chaos is an insidious disease that must be addressed before any meaningful improvement in performance can be achieved."
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The Art of Not Knowing
By Porchlight
"In education the starting point is what you don't know. Before you can begin your research or frame your experiments you'd better make sure that you are asking the right questions about what you don't know. Trying to understand the universe through science can only come from a place of not knowing. Innovation and creativity can only exist with the wonder of not knowing. I wonder what will happen if I mix this thing here with this thing over here. I don't know but would love to find out. Curiosity is born from not knowing. Not knowing therefore can help us change and grow."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Failure to Engage: Understanding the Mechanism that Determines Employee Engagement and Micro-Innovation
By John Bernard
"Micro-innovation is the Holy Grail of modern management. Micro-innovation (incremental improvement) that is driven by employees is the secret to transforming the customer experience, accelerating revenue growth, and reducing costs. Yet, the level of employee engagement required for micro-innovation remains one of the most elusive outcomes in modern organizational life. Research shows in aggregate that employee engagement continues a 25-year decline. In our real-time economy, the most powerful value proposition is the ability to say "yes" to customer's unique needs, and to say it now. Only the people who work on the frontline of a business can take meaningful action in real time. Because of that, the full engagement of people is simply a competitive necessity."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Get Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level
By Porchlight
"The reality you face at work is that talent, results, and competence alone simply will not allow you to attain the success you deserve. It's time to stop being surprised by this, and instead take control of your professional future by applying the PVI model. The three steps in the PVI model are perception, visibility and influence. When used together, these three powerful principles will catapult you to the next level in your career and ensure future success. Through the PVI model, you will learn how to: Create the right image Increase your profile across the organization Exert influence by driving change and inspiring people Identify and recruit advocates who will speak up on your behalf Become a known, valued and desired commodity at your company
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The Collaborative Organization
By Porchlight
The use of these new social and collaborative technologies and strategies are being deployed and implemented to solve many of these problems within the enterprise today. But, collaboration doesn't just benefit employees while they are at work, it also benefits them in their personal lives as well.
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.