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
Ending Ephebiphobia: Young People Deserve More
By Porchlight
"The stereotypes of young people and the irrational fear we have of them have no place in modern society. Pliny the Elder was on to something when he said, "What we do to our children, they will do to society." If his words are to ring true, then we are in for a whole lot of trouble. If we don't counter this trend, our young people will increasingly lack the emotional resilience and social competence that is needed to make society a safe, fair and happy place. What we need is a model for empathetic behavior when it comes to dealing with young people. A model that every adult can apply in every situation—be they a parent, an employer, a schoolteacher or a concerned citizen. Isn't it about time that, as a society, we stopped crushing the spirits of the next generation and started to understand their situations, feelings and motives and in turn change our own feelings, thoughts and attitude towards young people?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Reinvention Imperative
By Daniel Burrus, John David Mann
"In the good old twentieth century, you could reinvent your company, product category or industry once, and then go for a decade before doing anything especially innovative again. That doesn't work anymore. The world has changed, and more importantly, change itself has changed. [...] In the past, stability and change were two contrasting states: when you achieved stability, you did so despite change. Today change itself has become an integral part of stability: today you can achieve stability only by embracing change as a continuous and permanent state. It used to be, you could find something you do well, learn how to do it, and just keep on doing it. Not anymore. In the past, reinvention was an option. Today it is an imperative."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Maxwell Fallacy: There's More to Leadership than Influence
By David Burkus
"John Maxwell, billed often as America's foremost authority on leadership, has made his career around the phrase: 'Leadership is influence; nothing more, nothing less.' This is the key phrase has guided the writing of the most prolific leadership author in America and influences the work of countless others. As a result it is perhaps the commonly accepted definition of leadership. It's brief. It's pithy. It's wrong."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A Call Against Complacency
By Dambisa Moyo
"Many will agree that a system of incentives is, and has been, the backbone of the success of the capitalist economic system. That over centuries, a network of incentives has driven innovation, which in turn has encouraged the inventiveness that has led to the unparalleled generation of ideas, goods, and services across America and the industrialized West. [...] Given the evidence and importance of positive incentives, why, over the past 50 years, have policymakers embarked on a systematic and deliberate strategy of putting in place a catalogue of policies that dis-incentivise citizens from acting in a manner that could be beneficial to their economies, and the world at large?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Six Reasons Why the Sharing Society (aka the Mesh) Will Trump the Ownership Society
By Lisa Gansky
"Get out of your chairs and into the streets, kids—the Internet has come to town. Literally. The IT revolution started by moving data around. Now mobile devices have spread the revolution to physical things—to the street. Making a reservation for a car, bike, a home or a meal from your phone connects you to the company's data, which may include information on your preferences, how they compare to other people's preferences like you (to make juicier, more personalized offers), and data collected from sensors in the car, bike, home or at the cafe. Your social networks allow you to make better informed choices of goods and services, as well as recommend the things you like. Mobile plus GPS changes everything. It means you can get more of what you want exactly when you want it. It means convenient access to fresh goods and services. Convenient access means you don't have to own something in order to have a pulse on its exact location and availability; you can use it—share it—save money while sparing hassles.
Categories: changethis
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Activating the Entrepreneur Within
By Jeffrey Weber
"Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, an economist who is known as the 'banker to the poor' by making small loans in impoverished countries stated, 'I did something that challenged the banking world. Conventional banks look for the rich; we look for the absolutely poor. All people are entrepreneurs, but many don't have the opportunity to find that out. ' An entrepreneur in his own right as founder of the Grameen Bank, Yunus developed the concept of microcredit as a method to help fund entrepreneurs who would not qualify for any other type of loan. He believed in creating economic development from the lowest tier of society and saw that the entrepreneurial dream was defined to no man; it was a gift to all. So you, dear reader, want to know if you are an entrepreneur. It would be so easy to draw your blood and see the entrepreneurial DNA floating about and qualitatively state, "Yes, he is an entrepreneur. " But what good would this do. There still would be so much lacking outside the control of simple DNA to activate the entrepreneur within you.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Disciplined Dreaming: How to Build Your Organization's Creativity Mojo
By Josh Linkner
"I developed the Disciplined Dreaming system to give creativity its own place and practice, to provide everyone in the organization a structure for developing their own creative ideas, and to bring creativity back to the heart of business—where it belongs. Disciplined Dreaming isn't a stifling, rigid "innovation process", but an open system. It provides a strong and flexible framework that frees individuals and organizations to improvise and explore—and, in the process, develop their creative chops. The ideas, processes, and practices of Disciplined Dreaming will help you build your chops by expanding your creative capacity and targeting your creative energy."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Turn around Problem Performance in Five Questions or Less
By Porchlight
"Underperformers suck. They suck the productivity out of a team or organization. They suck the morale out of your high performers. [. . . ] That begs a question that is central to this manifesto: What are underperformers costing you. How much time do you spend reacting to problems related to underperformance. Think of the things you could do with that time if you could only get it back. There's the bait, now here's the switch. It's easy to condemn underperformers for stealing your time and contributing to the ills listed above, and they do own their share of the blame. But here's the hard truth: you do too. As a manager your job is to enable your people to achieve their performance goals. If they're not then you're underperforming in this critical area of your job. It's not really your fault that you're in this situation; managers aren't often taught how to address performance problems in people. But that's no excuse to let the status quo ride. You're doing a disservice to yourself, your team, and even the underperformer by not taking action.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
As One: A Manifesto for Individual Action and Collective Power
By Mehrdad Baghai
"As One. Five letters that make all the difference between a group of individuals and a unified team. Two words that transform individual action into collective power. One idea that can help you realize the full power of your people. [...] Adding the phrase "as one" to another word changes its entire meaning. Imagine the possibilities: Working versus Working As One. Competing versus Competing As One. Winning versus Winning As One. The sources of inspiration are endless. Believing As One. Stronger As One. Succeeding As One."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Seven Myths of Hyper-Social Organizations: Why Human 1.0 is Key
By Porchlight
"With the rise of social media, which provides a massive platform of participation and a social infrastructure that is finally catching up with the conference infrastructure, the social element is reentering commerce and business with a vengeance. People can now claim a share of voices that is equal or larger than that of companies, employees can now develop support networks that cross the traditional hierarchical organization charts, and people can once again behave the way they were hardwired to behave in business and commerce–tribally, humanly, and socially. To understand the changes that are afoot in the world of business you are better off understanding Human 1.0, which took tens of thousands of years to develop, rather than Web 2.0, which took merely a decade."
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.