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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
Brains, Bones, and Nerves: The Only Three Things an Enterprise Leader Should Focus On
By Rajeev Peshawaria
"The key is to control and shape the three most important levers of sustainable business growth—the Brains, the Bones, and the Nerves. The brains of a business are its vision and strategy, and here the enterprise leader must shape and set direction. The bones are the organizational architecture, and here the enterprise leader must design the organization in order to execute the strategy. The nerves refer to the culture and climate of the organization, and here the enterprise leader must foster a culture of longlasting excellence. Just as the human body needs all three systems—the brain, bones, and nerves—functioning in perfect harmony to maximize longevity and performance, a business needs its strategy, architecture, and culture to work in harmony in order to maximize results. As an enterprise leader, you should focus on these three as your most important focus areas; everything else must be delegated."
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We First: How Consumers and Brands Can Partner to Build a Better World
By Simon Mainwaring
"We First capitalism posits that we can no longer accept the myopic, short-term, profit-for-profit's sake practice of capitalism we invite corporations and consumers to engage in today. Allowing every individual, every investor, every corporation, and every nation to think solely about its own self-interests and its own profits is not the solution to creating a more peaceful, prosperous, and equitable world. The transformation from Me First to We First is no longer an option, because we now live in an interconnected, complex, globalized world of 7 billion people, all of whom need a portion of the resources and the prosperity that the Earth provides. Capitalism can no longer be an elite economic system whose results fund a limited group of people, leaving billions of others living without opportunity or hope. Our connections to each other are growing ever tighter, such that the actions of a single individual, bank, corporation, or nation can have an immediate and deleterious impact on millions of other people.
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What If They Listened to Entrepreneurs?
By Henry R. Nothhaft
"Before any significant and sustained increase in the creation of good middle-class jobs can take place, the voice of the entrepreneur who is the source of all breakthrough innovation and job growth must be heard. Sadly, however, entrepreneurs are just about the only Americans without a voice in Washington. Big Business certainly has a voice. So does labor, as do teachers, retailers, insurers, doctors, environmentalists and just about every interest group you can think of. Only entrepreneurs lack an effective organized voice. This despite the fact that, as the distinguished economist Jonathan Hughes once put it, entrepreneurs are 'the vital few' upon whom all of society depends for economic progress."
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Blog / ChangeThis
TouchPoints: Why the Interruptions That Drive Us Crazy Just Might Be the Most Productive Opportunities We Have Every Day
By Douglas Conant, Mette Norgaard
"Some days it feels like the information age has morphed into the interruption age. But what if those interruptions turned out to be our best opportunity to make a difference in our workplaces. As leaders, we make choices all day, every day. The "knock on the door" happens over and over again in some form – phone calls, meetings, emails, and text messages with questions to answer, concerns to address, problems to solve, and fires to put out. There are big issues and small issues, planned sessions and surprises, and they come at us endlessly and from every direction. We have to make decisions without having all the available information, and we need to make them right now. The workload is expanding, and the time we have to deal with each issue is shrinking. But what if we could step back and look at all those interactions with a fresh perspective. What if, instead of seeing them as interfering with our work, we were to look at them as latent leadership moments. What if these moments were the answer to transformational leadership in today's busy world.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Put Your Mindset to Work: The Secret Weapon in Winning, Keeping, and Flourishing in the Best Jobs
By Paul Stoltz, James Reed
"What does it really take to win, keep, and flourish in the best jobs? Let's begin by shattering a sacred assumption. If you want a good job, it's all about qualifications. Put another way, the best way to increase your chances of getting a great job is by upgrading your skills. Right? Wrong! That is, at least according to the thousands of the world's top employers we formally surveyed. Their answers to these four questions can and should have profound implications on your entire career. [...] Mindset utterly trumps Skillset. Not by a little, but by a landslide. That's why trying to win the best jobs by doing yet-more skills training is like training for a marathon by doing sprints and hurdles. It may help, but it's not going to win the race."
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CLEARED HOT!
By Vernice Armour, Vernice Armour
"You HAVE permission to Engage! Notice, the emphasis is on the word 'have.' That's because you already possess your own permission to engage. I'm not giving it to you. In fact, I can't. You've always had it; you just have to release it. It's up to YOU to make the decision to engage. Once you have given yourself permission, you are Cleared Hot to create realities from possibilities beyond your expectations. What does Cleared Hot mean? Well, in military terms, it means you have permission to fire your weapons on your target. During training that means you're shooting at wooden tanks or old worn out tires. In real combat, you're firing on the enemy. An enemy that in my case was trying to shoot my attack helicopter out of the sky. In civilian life, Cleared Hot the process of acting on a Breakthrough Mentality (BTM)."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Why a Corrupted Service Covenant Has Made Customers Wired and Dangerous
By Chip R. Bell, John R. Patterson
"Progress requires change. And, change provokes resistance. However, customers do not necessarily resist change itself. They accept change when they get a vote; they embrace change when they can participate. They resist the perception or prediction of being controlled or coerced without their involvement. Migrating customers toward self-service, for example, can bring an array of time-saving benefits to everyone—service provider and service receiver. But the manner in which that migration typically occurs—without influence from customers—can be viewed as devaluing the co-creator, thus adding another spark to the flame of their opposition. Today's customers are already picky (all about value), fickle (reluctant to show loyalty), vocal (quick to comment on poor or indifferent service) and vain (only interested in tailor-made offerings). Armed with a computer and a network, the new normal customer becomes wired and dangerous if frustrated."
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The Third Screen: Why Mobile Is a Game Changer
By Chuck Martin
"We're in the midst of a revolution bigger than the TV or PC and businesses of all types and sizes will be faced with how to deal with it. Not only are many businesses not ready, others are totally unaware. The new market is mobile and it's about to change everything. Mobile is a game changer."
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Reputation Rules: Don't Neglect Your Company's Most Precious Asset
By Daniel Diermeier
"CEOs and board members routinely list reputation as one the company's most valuable assets. Yet, every month a new reputational disaster makes the headlines destroying shareholder value and trust with customers and other stakeholders. During the last year leading companies ranging from Toyota, Goldman Sachs, BP to HP and Johnson & Johnson battled severe reputational crises. In recent weeks we have witnessed not only the devastating earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, but also the so far futile response of Tepco, the nuclear operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. [. . . ] Trust is now an essential part of business success. Yet trust in U. S. business has substantially dropped over the last decade. While trust in business is still higher in developing countries, Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are on a par with businesses in emerging markets and more trusted in developed markets including the United States. These data suggest that business can no longer rely on a trust reservoir. Rather trust needs to be earned.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Change In a Leader Can Change the World
By Jeremie Kubicek
"Our world is in trouble. We need leaders who lead for the benefit of others. I believe we need to systematically transform the leadership culture from a dominating system to a liberating system. I believe it starts one leader at a time. Each leader must play a part in this transformation by thinking differently about the way they lead if we are to ever see true 'Change in the World.'"
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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.