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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We Are All Artists Now
By Porchlight
"This isn’t a manifesto for other people. This is a manifesto for you. It’s a manifesto for anyone who has been overlooked or brainwashed or seduced into being invisible."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Death Blues: The Celebration and Opportunity of Each Moment
By Porchlight
"How much time is left. Do we know. Does our plan know. What happens when we thoroughly hold and understand that our lives are finite. How does this understanding of our end shape our present. And how do we become more 'present. ' Because each moment is an opportunity and a decision. We all have dreams for the future: Making a million dollars, getting a new car, finishing school, getting a promotion, and achieving any number of goals, while potentially important, might not be possible in this instant. But considering an overdue apology, sending a positive email to someone, calling a family member, talking to a co-worker about a project idea, connecting in any way with someone in order to make something good happen can be done right now. And consider the affect those immediate actions might have on the longer-term goals listed previously. Many big events in our lives are the results of a series of immediate but important smaller events that take place before them. Immediate positive actions are the structural building blocks for what's to come.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Paradox of Skill: Why Greater Skill Leads to More Luck
By Michael J. Mauboussin
"Okay, you have gotten the memo on improving skill: 10,000 hours, hard work, deliberate practice, grit, and attentive teacher. We've all heard it. You also recognize that in many of life's activities, the results you achieve combine skill and luck. No debate there. Now, what if I told you that in many cases improving skill leads to results that rely more on luck? That's right. Greater skill doesn't decrease the dependence on luck, it increases it. If you have an interest in sports, business, or investing, this lesson is for you."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Snowflake Moment: Presenting the Future Today
By Porchlight
"The snowflake moment we idolize, that final and glorious crystalline state which Bentley captured on black velvet time and time again, does provide justification for everything else. It is the end, and so must mean something, must make a bold statement about the substance and quality of our existence. But the snowflake moment is just one of a countless million moments, an isolated still shot of an existence that is predominantly defined by its very motion. We are what we do every day. Nothing more. Scientists have proved the value of diversity in so many different ways that they almost seem to disprove the fundamental concept. Darwin thought the variety among finches on Galapagos derived from absolute necessity: adapt or die. And yet other scientists have found that diversity among species is greatest in times of relative ease and abundance: hard times keep the genetic nose to the grindstone, but when survival is easily achieved DNA begins to flex and bend. Again, the discrepancy seems insurmountable, and this seems true for presentation styles, too: some branch out as a last-ditch effort when everything else has gone wrong; others push the envelope of convention at the beginning of each day.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Creative Instinct: How Big Ideas Happen
By Porchlight
"When we realize that our mind is a creative platform—a vast network of networks—we experience a revolutionary and profound transformation. New possibilities emerge. The process of realization and transformation is the essence of life. It means that everything in this world has an inherent purpose—and that is to find its optimal form. This is why we are constantly trying to improve ourselves, why we venture out into the unknown, why we have children, and why we want to be the best in the world at what we do. The more creative we become, the more resourceful we will be. We can transform ourselves and everyone around us. These connections, and this archetype of innovation, uncovers the building blocks of life itself, revealing our origins. Innovation is intrinsic to essence, and essence is intrinsic to the act of creation."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to be an Idea Guru: U.S. Department of Innovation, April 1, 2018
By Porchlight
"Please Note: The following is a transcript of the introductory workshop for the Department of Innovation's, How to be an Idea Guru program, held from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM on April 1, 2018 at the Department of Innovation's Training Center in Washington, DC. The Presenter is Dannel Malloy, Secretary of the Department of Innovation. The Guest Speaker is Bryan Mattimore, Cofounder and Chief Idea Guy at The Growth Engine Co. I would like to welcome all of you who are here in person, as well as the other 5,300 of you who are viewing this workshop on-line. This is the Department of Innovation's kick-off meeting for the How to be an Idea Guru training program. My name is Dannel Malloy, and I am the Secretary of the Department of Innovation. As many of you know, the Department of Innovation was created in early 2017 to deliver the new administration's promise to restore the greatness of American ingenuity to every institution within our society. Our mission is to "pioneer, popularize, and promote the application of state-of-the-art ideation and innovation processes to generate new ideas for the benefit of our citizens, our institutions, and the U.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Timeless Leadership for a New World
By Erika Andersen
"The moon has risen. You and your family and friends are gathered around the fire, deciding who will be your next chieftain. Your former leader has died in battle, and this is a solemn and important occasion. The adults speak quietly, the firelight flickering over their faces, while the children and adolescents listen to every word. [. . . ] This is the most important decision the tribe can make: choose badly, and they could all starve to death, or be overrun by an invading enemy. Choose well, and they can hope for safety, freedom, a measure of prosperity. The discussion continues far into the night. [. . . ] Our deeply-wired-in sense of what makes a good leader is still there. You can see it every day in how we respond to the leaders in our organizations. Some leaders are merely "appointed": they may have the title and the corner office, but people simply don't commit to them. They have employees, but they don't have followers. Then there are what I call "accepted" leaders. Sometimes they don't even have the external signs of leadership—they may not have the top job or the big paycheck, but people gravitate toward them.
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Rethinking Your Business from the Outside In
By Harley Manning, Kerry Bodine, Josh Bernoff
"If you read the pages of the Wall Street Journal you would come to believe that business is about big deals—about multi-billion dollar acquisitions, massive pay packages for executives, macroeconomic forces, stuff like that. In fact, the secret of success is in the little things. Billions of small decisions. [...] Spend a few moments with this essay, and we'll show you three things. First, customer experience is central. ... Second, customer experience is hard, because it's not just about your front-line customer-facing employees. ... Third, delivering a great customer experience requires discipline—or more accurately, six disciplines that cut across every element of how your company operates."
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The Connected Company: How Distributed Organism Businesses are Rising Against the Machine to Build a More Connected World
By Dave Gray
"Companies are not really machines, so much as complex, dynamic, growing systems. After all, companies are really just groups of people who have banded together to achieve some kind of purpose. [...] For many years the machine view has prevailed, and many companies are designed as information-processing and production machines. But information processing is not learning. Production is not learning. Learning is a creative process, not a mechanical one. Many critical factors in business cannot be easily counted, measured or controlled."
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The Laws of Subtraction: How to Innovate in the Age of Excess Everything
By Matthew E. May
"Our businesses are more complicated and difficult to manage than ever. Our economy is more uncertain than ever. Our resources are scarcer than ever. There is endless choice and feature overkill in all but the best experiences. Everybody knows everything about us. The simple life is a thing of the past. Everywhere, there's too much of the wrong stuff, and not enough of the right. The noise is deafening, the signal weak. Everything is too complicated and time-sucking. Welcome to the age of excess everything. Success in this new age looks different, and demands a new and singular skill: Subtraction. Subtraction is defined simply as the art of removing anything excessive, confusing, wasteful, unnatural, hazardous, hard to use, or ugly—and the discipline to refrain from adding it in the first place."
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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.