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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
The Four Strands: Creating Companies Aligned With Human DNA
By Porchlight
"There are universal developmental issues and milestones in the construction of all people, which like gravity, must be obeyed. They are like the laws of physics, non-negotiable. Break these laws and dysfunction occurs. But, obey these laws and people thrive. They will be what we call "healthy." So, when a company is designed and operates in ways that are aligned with how people are constructed, it will be like an airplane aligned with the laws of physics that govern force or torque. It will reach the altitude, speed and course that its horsepower allows. But if its design is not aligned, it will fly in circles, stall out, crash, or break apart."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Make It Happen: Turning Good Ideas Into Great Results
By Peter Sheahan
"The world is not short of ideas. It's not. It is short of people who can execute on them. It is short of people who know how to take their aspirations and make a real impact on the world with them. What differentiates the great ideas that end up on the cutting room floor from those that wind up changing the world? There are five steps, or rather five competencies you can build that separate the haves from the have-nots, the doers from the talkers ... They are not a mantra for meditation, they are not positive affirmations that you chant to yourself in the mirror, they are actions."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Little Bets: Think Differently
By Peter Sims
"Our education system places great emphasis on teaching us about facts that are already known, such as historical information or scientific tables, and then testing us in order to measure how much we've retained about that body of knowledge. Those skills work perfectly well for many situations, but not when doing something new. Or creative. Or original. They certainly won't help us invent the future. As education and creativity researcher and author Sir Ken Robinson puts it, 'We are educating people out of their creativity.' But it's still there. And unleashing our creativity, however deeply it's hidden, begins with little bets."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Sharpen Your Sales Strengths
By Tony Rutigliano, Brian Brim
"There is no single right way to sell. In fact, we believe there are as many ways to sell as there are salespeople. Does that feel liberating? We hope so. If you enjoy sales, if you're good at it, and if you're finding some of the success you want, you possess a rare ability—and you should celebrate it. You're someone who can do this job. And if you're trying to follow a method or emulating a sales hero and it's not working, it might not be your fault. Who you are is who you should be. You'll be most successful at sales if you make the most of who you are. And by that, we mean using your natural talents—the ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that come naturally to you. "
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Don't Let the Sidewalk End: How To Create a Revolution
By Porchlight
"This manifesto is about creating revolutions. Not big political revolutions, although it could help there too, but revolutions of any size and in any field or industry. It is also about innovating, and how to be better at it and how innovations, properly nourished, are the catalysts of revolutions. To start with, we should all recognize that innovation is a process, not an event. When the process results in dramatic change, it is called a revolution. At any one time there are numerous revolutions underway that will affect our life. We have a choice – we can be a part of the revolution or we can deal with it when it comes. In our modern world I really don't think the latter option is a viable choice."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Happiness Advocacy, Or, How Positive Psychology Will Save Us From Zombies
By Porchlight
"Happiness. That feeling you get from StuffOnMyCat.com or Skyping with a far away friend. Side effects include: joy, contentment, glee, elation, and surges of confidence, hope, and gratitude. That happiness. If you're ready to throw in the towel (or this in the garbage), kindly allow me to clarify something. This ain't yo' momma's (or for that matter my momma's*) self-help book so don't get all judgmental. If MacGyver can stop a bomb with a toothpick, we can save the world with happiness. 'Fiction!' you say? It's even been scientifically proven. You see, it's all in the technique, my friends."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Three Gaps Between Goals and Greatness
By Porchlight
"In the global race to achieve faster, better, cheaper business greatness, most leaders face a huge gap between the goals they set and the actual results achieved by the people in their organizations. This phenomenon is not a failure to plan, but rather, a failure to execute. [...] While there are many possible explanations for the root cause of the gap, the one common, recurring element is a stubborn, nagging blind spot: People issues. They won't go away. They are always around. No matter how much you try to avoid them by setting goals and staying busy, people issues are always right in front of you, either helping or hurting your organization's competitive advantage in the marketplace." Like the Manifesto? Buy the book!
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Social Sharing Manifesto: The Arguments For and Against The Rise of the Sharing Consumer
By Porchlight
"Nothing has really changed, even with the popularity of terms like social consumer, sharing consumer etc. people have always shared. Whether sitting around the campfire, standing at the water cooler, or chatting over the garden fence, human beings share their opinions with others. If those opinions prove to be useful, that person will be sought out for an opinion about other things and on a more frequent basis."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Why "Free" Is the Wrong Price for Water—Even If You Live on $1 a Day
By Charles Fishman
"Free turns out to be exactly the wrong price for water—whether that water is being used by huge global corporations, farmers, ordinary middle-class citizens, or the poorest people living in developing countries."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Mistake Manifesto: How Making Mistakes Can Make Us Better
By Alina Tugend
"While I am not advocating that we all run around blundering and goofing up all the time—and certainly none of us like dealing with people who make the same mistake over and over—our fear of mistakes has a very high cost. We exert enormous energy blaming each other when something goes wrong rather than finding a solution. Defensiveness and accusations take the place of apologies and forgiveness. Mistake-avoidance creates workplaces where making changes and being creative while risking failure is subsumed by an ethos of mistake-prevention at the cost of daring and innovation."
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.