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
Responding Effectively to Workplace Bullying: Managing Behavior at the Time of an Attack
By Aryanne Oade
"By the end of the manifesto I hope that you will be equipped with sufficient knowledge and practical actions that you know what to do and how to do it should you become subject to workplace bullying in the future. And I also hope that reading this manifesto will assist those of you who have already been targeted by a workplace bully to be able to process your experience and find relief from the nagging self-doubts that often form part of the aftermath of an experience of workplace bullying."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Reinventing the Wheel: Creating Lifetime Customers
By Chris Zane
"These types of relationships are not easily formed nor are they formed overnight. They require exceptional care, attention, and a focus on continuously exceeding expectations. At Zane's, where we have chosen to compete on service rather than on price alone, it means providing unparalleled customer service. We can never accept an unhappy customer, nor look at unsatisfied customer as an inevitable part of doing business. This method goes beyond the mindset of making an unhappy customer happy or simply matching the offers of our competitors. Creating lifetime customers requires that you offer every customer or potential customer more service than they consider reasonable. Further, it means that you actively solicit customer feedback about what you could be doing better and use that information to expand and tweak your offerings to best service the customer."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Unplanning Your Business Can Make It Happen Faster
By Ian Sanders, David Sloly
"We gave a talk at South By South West Interactive in 2010 and asked a room full of entrepreneurs who had written a business plan if they had actually looked at it since launch. A resounding 'no' came back. So we asked if the business they now owned and ran looked anything like the one they had written about in the business plan. Another 'no. ' They all admitted that they had written the plan simply because they thought that is what you're supposed to do. They had exerted great effort on a document that they would not look at again. How does this make sense. And this is from entrepreneurs that made their business idea happen, these were the successful ones. So what of the thousands that started to write a plan, got a little stuck and gave up. What ideas have the world been deprived of because they believed they needed a fully detailed plan to make that thing real. [. . . ] The problem with writing a fixed plan is that you can get stuck in amber mode. You get so bogged down with hypotheticals, financial modeling and revenue projections that your cool business idea gets stuck in a spreadsheet and the light never goes green.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Power of Trust and Mistrust
By Porchlight
"When trust levels are high, so is the quality and performance of business—and the reverse is also true. These facts are demonstrated dramatically when we look at the financial outcomes of companies that are among the best to work for and their peer companies that aren't. Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For have roughly double the rates of return, income, return on assets, profits, stock market returns and employee and customer retention rates compared to peer companies."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Go Do: How Hard Can It Be?
By Porchlight
"It's important to realize that the only true barrier in life is you. Sure, there can be obstacles that you face every day and people who are impediments to achieving your goals, but ultimately, you will be the reason that you achieve or fail. I quite often tell folks that they have to "Go Do." Frequently, on social media, you will see that two-word charge from me because I hope it will click with folks in need of motivation. There are so many people out there with the "woe is me" attitude; what they must realize is that they are causing the woe and they are the only conduit for change."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Guarding the Guards: Crushing the Bureaucratic Rules that Limit Success
By Tom Rieger
"Fear is destroying companies. Or more specifically, fear of loss is causing companies to destroy themselves. As managers are forced to do more with less, contend with limited resources, or battle for headcount and budget, many will begin to build walls to help protect their ability to meet their own local goals. Unfortunately, sometimes those walls become so high that those inside lose sight of the ultimate outcome. Their world becomes defined by the piece, and not the puzzle. With the best of intentions, barriers are born, particularly if the rules that are created make it difficult for others outside of the silo to succeed."
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Blog / ChangeThis
At the Speed of Seth: What I Learned Working With Seth Godin and the Domino Project
By Porchlight
"Getting anything up and flying is a tricky business. I'm still learning how to catch the wind just right in most of the things I do. This story is about launching a new project, a book. But if it was a kite, right now we'd be seeing it crashed and broken on the ground. [...] 18 months later, and it's all changed. End Malaria launches September 6th, published by Seth Godin's latest venture The Domino Project. 58 smart men and women share their best insights, strategies and tips to stop the overwhelm, focus on the work that matters and make a real impact in the work you do. And we've solved the money thing. $20 from every $25 book sold goes to Malaria No More, to further their mission of ending malaria in Africa by 2015. Here's why, second time around, my own Great Work Project got off the ground and what I learned (and you can learn to) from traveling at the speed of Seth."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Most Important Sales Conversations You'll Ever Have
By Mike Schultz
"This manifesto is for every sales person who is committed to becoming a rainmaker no matter what the product or service. Rainmakers are the sales elite, typically outperforming average sales people by 300 to 500%—often by a lot more. Success as a rainmaker depends on your ability to lead masterful sales conversations from 'hello' to 'let's go,' but the first sales conversation, the most important sales conversation, happens before you talk to actual prospects. The most important sales conversation you have... is the one you have with yourself."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Capture a New Market
By Stephen Wunker
"How do you capture a new market? There's a lot of traditional business strategy you need to throw out the window. New markets are too poorly understood and change too quickly for the standard approaches of graphing trend lines and computing market share. Here are 10 approaches that work—for businesses and the people within them—when the market is fuzzy and in flux ... "
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Six Rules Women Must Break in Order to Succeed
By Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, Mary Davis Holt
"We all have thoughts that limit our potential. Some of these beliefs come from our individual experiences; they take hold over the years. "I'm not good at taking credit. I'm much better working behind the scenes. I'm lucky to have this job. " Other beliefs are a result of the gender stereotypes that are all around us. They creep into our heads over time. "It's my job to nurture everyone else before I take care of my own needs. I am selfish and self-centered if I choose to indulge my ambition. " Still others are simply erroneous conventional wisdom. "I can have it all without compromise. I'm a failure if I can't make it look easy. " We get in our own way when we buy-into these limiting beliefs. But it does not have to be that way. We can nurture the beliefs that will sustain us and help us grow. To rise to the highest ranks in business, women need to unwind some of the traditional thinking that holds us back. We need to rethink the conversations we are having in our heads and tell ourselves a new story.
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.