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
Let's Make Leadership Real Again
By Mike Figliuolo
"What has happened to leadership. With all the crises and challenges we face and the increasingly risk-averse environment in which we operate, leadership has become generic, ephemeral, and bland. We have devolved from leaders into managers. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper said it best—you manage things, but you lead people. The problem is we're no longer leading. We're hiding behind committees. We're using the crutches of data and metrics to make our decisions for us. We blame policies and corporate culture for the problems our teams face rather than delivering the tough messages with a sense of ownership. The result of all of this is our people don't trust us anymore. Work has become transactional. They do the work and we pay them. It's a fee-for-service mindset. When they find someone who will pay them more for their services, they're gone. And when we no longer have need of their services, we simply cast those people aside. It's a toxic environment. It's hard for people to trust their leaders when they feel like they're simply a cog in the machine.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Rebooting America's Innovation Engine: Using Jugaad to Innovate Faster, Better, and Cheaper
By Navi Radjou
"The motto 'innovate or die' held true for American firms in the 20th century. In the 21st century, 'innovate faster, better, and cheaper—or die' will be your new mantra. Indeed, in today's hypercompetitive, ber-connected, and globally integrated economy, you need to crank out new products faster than you can spell 'R&D,' or else your customers will switch their allegiance to more agile rivals. Plus, your products need to deliver more value to customers—value no longer being defined by the bells and whistles in your product, but by the experience customers get from using your product. Finally, given the rapidly-shrinking purchasing power of the American middle class, your products got to be affordable to meet the frugal needs of thrifty US buyers. In sum, you need to innovate faster, better, and cheaper. Sadly, Corporate America is just not equipped to do that."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Unasked Question: How Do You Run a Company?
By Porchlight
"Just ask someone today this simple question: 'How do you run a company?' Invariably, you'll be met with a blank stare. Because nobody ever asks that question. Because no one expects that there's an answer. Yet it may be the most important question we need to answer if we want to grow our businesses and fix our economy."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Stop Selling and Start Storytelling
By Jason L. Baptiste
"After a lot of thought, it's pretty apparent to me what the most valuable overall skill is for future CEOs and world changers—the ability to tell a story. We live in a world where we are sold to hundreds of times a day and have become ridiculously blind to those trying to sell us something. But we're always up for a good story. Storytelling is what made us love the advertisements in magazines that, as children, we would rip out and put on our walls and asleep under with inspired awe. Stories are the most powerful form of inspiration and persuasion in the world."
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Blog / ChangeThis
We Say We Want a Revolution: How to Activate the Activist and Surf the Tidal Wave of Radical Change
By Gina Amaro Rudan
"Think about it: in one short year, the power of collective hearts and minds has toppled dictators, turned out corrupt and dysfunctional governments, brought moral accountability to media and corporate abuses, and given the financial institutions a worldwide wedgie in the form of Occupy Wall Street. There's no denying it—we're knee-deep in an era of radical change that may well transform the way our world works. I, for one, am thrilled to see the "public interest" back in the conversation. Yes, it's back in a messy, kind of unwieldy, shape-shifting way, but it is back."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Five Rules for Pricing Excellence: Getting the Most for Your Services
By Porchlight
"Pricing is critical, and short-changing your pricing strategy is the fastest way to leave cash on the table—money that will be lost forever and never recovered. So after that initial spark of innovation and the completion of the design, development and marketing phases that follow, don't screw up the process by treating price as an afterthought. Have you spent as much time and resources on price as you have on your latest social media campaign? (Probably not.) The most successful organizations know that pricing is strategic and that it can affect top-line growth and bottom-line profitability faster and more directly than anything else."
Categories: changethis
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Nine Things I Learned from Alan Mulally
By Bryce G. Hoffman
"Alan Mulally arrived in Dearborn like a Kansas cyclone, ripping through Ford's dark-paneled corridors like a twister through a trailer park. He would take a sledgehammer to the automaker's ossified silos, force long-time adversaries to kiss and make-up and challenge Ford's most cherished delusions. Over the next three years, he would also make Ford the most profitable automaker in the world. Mulally would do it as the rest of the American automobile industry fell apart in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And he would do it without taking a government bailout."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Avoid Becoming China's Bitch: A Radical Centrist Manifesto for Fixing What's Broken
By Porchlight
"Let's start by gazing in the mirror. The looking glass never lies, and it reflects two things about our beloved country: We have allowed ourselves to become paralyzed. And, worse, we are so used to being poorly led that we refuse to lead ourselves. How did we let this state of affairs happen to us? Well, to begin with, we haven't chosen the right leaders for the right times—and that used to be our talent. Could these times be any more uncertain? Imagine piloting the ship of state through all the global and domestic cross currents we face today. Leadership in uncertain times must be different than when the path is clear."
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How Habits Work (and How They Change)
By Charles Duhigg
"Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they're not. They're habits. [...] Countless people, from Aristotle to Oprah, have tried to understand why habits exist. But only in the past two decades have neurologists, psychologists, sociologists, and marketers really begun understanding how habits work—and more important, how they change."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Laughing at the Joneses
By Laura VanderKam
"The last few years have certainly shown the downside of thinking that more house is always better, even if you have to stretch to afford it. Regardless, it's silly to talk about personal finance without talking about where you live and what you drive. In the context of achieving happiness, there is also some intriguing research suggesting that big, infrequent purchases (such as houses and cars) don't do much for overall happiness, whereas spending a lower percentage of your income on these items might free up cash for categories that will give you a more pleasant life. There are also plenty of people who have discovered this truth and, rather than trying to keep up with the Joneses or submitting to their tyranny, are getting a good laugh at them."
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.