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
How to Spread Ideas: Think Like an Entrepreneur, Not Like a Crusader
By Porchlight
"While crusaders waste their time trying to impose their views on other people, entrepreneurs prefer to avoid conflict. Their goal is simply to make exchanges that are beneficial to all the parties involved. Individuals who want to improve the world and their own situation should definitely avoid the ways of the crusader. Hostility and conflicts tend to make collaboration impossible, and aggressiveness never leads to happiness. Anyone who wants to attain happiness and effectiveness must start by adopting an entrepreneurial attitude."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Can You Call It a Business If It Isn't Making Sales? Why So Many Business Owners Find Selling Difficult and What To Do About It.
By Porchlight
"Sales are only one ingredient in the marketing cake. Here's why I like this analogy: In a good cake, can you pinpoint the spot where flour ends and sugar starts? Is there any reason why your business shouldn't use this approach in marketing and sales? For the best brands, selling is not an isolated activity. It's beautifully integrated into all customer touch points. Your customer touch points can and should be mapped out, designed to be enjoyable, productive and attractive, and actively managed to maximize customer value. There are two simple questions you can ask yourself to accomplish this."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Secret to Self-Discipline
By Rory Vaden
"Today's work environment has been dubbed everything from the Age of Distraction and the Age of Inattention to The Multitasking Generation. The bottom line is this: regardless of your job title, we are all trying to accomplish increasingly more with increasingly less resources—whether those resources are money, time, focus, or energy. How can we achieve success—however you define it—given these constraints? I study successful people for a living, and I believe the answer can be boiled down to one word: self-discipline. It's not a breakthrough idea, and it's certainly not popular. But it's an old-school way of thinking that has unfortunately fallen out of vogue—and one that can yield measurable results when applied to the challenges of working in modern business."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Way of Identity
By Porchlight
"The myth of personal freedom—the idea that you are at liberty to pick whatever path in life you want—is the unspoken agony of the modern person. It ignores the fact that life has order, and that order bears heavily upon your choices—on what makes sense to do with the time you have. The good news is that although you can't be anything you want to be, you have more potential than you know. The order in life that affects us all is contained in a code, the identity code. Much like our biological genetic code, our identity code is born into each of us, providing a complete map of how we, as human beings, are designed to function—of how we are supposed to live—when we are living according to who we are. Within the framework your identity provides, life's seeming boundaries melt away. Genuine freedom is yours. Crack your identity code and the contours of your life will shift. You will not only come out stronger, you will come out larger. Larger in heart, larger in influence, larger in your capacity to love and be loved.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The ROE Manifesto: How to Maximize Your Return On Energy
By Porchlight
"Return on investment is the investment of time, money and energy. There is only so much time and money and just like time and money, energy can be exhausted too. It's easy to measure how much time we have and how much money we have left, but energy is something that is hard to explain, much less tie to business results. Until now."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Struggle
By Porchlight
"Just about everyone you come across today is going through some kind of struggle in their lives. Most people bear such a heavy burden, quietly and alone, so focused on making sure it looks like they have everything under control that they forget they don't have to have it all under control, and they certainly don't have to walk their road alone. That there is hope and help, if they would only look for it. You're probably going through a struggle right now, even as you read this."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Make Change Stick: Kill the Company
By Lisa Bodell
"A decade into the 21st century, one thing has become clear: change is the new normal. In business, we call it innovation, and it's a strategic pillar in nearly every organization. Thanks to a growing body of research and thought leadership in recent years, we're learning a great deal about the individual skill sets behind innovation, and the organizational strategies that create disruptive growth. Yet in companies around the world, well-intentioned innovation initiatives crash and burn, despite a wealth of great ideas, copious research, and well-designed strategies. Why? Innovation is not just about data analysis, plans and processes, and thinking outside the box. More than anything else, innovation is about change. And the truth is that as much as we'd all like to think otherwise, we are all hardwired to resist it."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A Three Trillion Dollar Reason to Work Together: Public-Private Partnerships Are Here to Stay
By Porchlight
"All across the land trouble is brewing, as tax revenues continue to shrink and The Great Recession slogs on. ... Almost every state has reduced educational funds and numerous school districts are being forced to lay off teachers, reduce bus services and eliminate curriculum. Colleges and universities, public hospitals, law enforcement organizations and public transportation agencies are struggling to find additional revenues. Roads and bridges can no longer be maintained with public funds. Relief won't come quickly or easily, but one thing is crystal clear: government must reach out to private sector partners for innovative solutions."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Selling, Art or Science?
By Jim Holden
"Having been in the sales training business for more than 30 years, we have seen all manner of sellers; strong performers, average sellers, and those who just don't make the grade. But behind all of this has always been the debate as to whether sales is an art or a science, almost to suggest that for some, sellers are born and not made. The intent of this manifesto is to apply unconventional thinking to the question of art or science, not only resolving the issue, but also putting forth the significance of the answer from both a seller and supplier company perspective"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Why Companies Must Reduce Complexity
By Neil Smith
"Done right, a good change process focuses on reducing complexity, which will automatically bring about greater efficiency and profitability and lead to lasting improvements. Too often companies look at reducing expenses without even thinking about reducing complexity. These types of programs to increase profitability may be successful in the short term, but unless you look at how things get done, change won't be sustainable."
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.