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
F2 | Firefly Manifesto: Remixed
By Jonathan Fields
"Try this career choice standard on for size. Will this choice allow me to: Spend the greatest amount of time Absorbed in activities and relationships that fill me up While surrounding myself with people I cannot get enough of, and Earning enough to live comfortably in the world. It sounds so simple. This is the standard I've used to guide my own evolution from six-figure, beaten down mega-firm attorney to lifestyle entrepreneur, blogger, author, copywriter, marketer and, yes, even yoga teacher. . . oh, and still earn enough to live very comfortably in the world and support my family in New York. Fact is, this definition of success keeps me honest. And, with good reason. It's evolved out of thousands of hours of testing and exploring a broad spectrum of career paths and entrepreneurial ventures, interviews with a wide cross-section of successful career renegades, from maverick CEOs to internet-earning soccer moms and extensive research into the field of applied positive-psychology.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Hazards of Leading Culture Change
By Chip R. Bell, John R. Patterson
"When great starts have poor endings, it can leave change pioneers disappointed, hard working organizers disheartened, and skeptics with proof they were correct all along. It makes the next initiative more challenging to launch and the next set of resistors more defiant. However, without needed change the organization risks losing its competitive advantage. Losing its edge makes it harder to attract and retain the best talent and resources, and in today's economy, the death knell begins. Planned change takes courage and tenacity. Even organizations with a burning platform, effective leaders, and well-crafted plans can sometimes miss the mark because they fail to recognize early signals that the seeds for derailment are being sown or they fail to realize the power of the signals they are sending via decisions that are unsupportive of the culture change commitment. Derailment is much more likely during periods of organizational anxiety from economic challenge, organizational shift (like a major merger or new competitor), or a change in senior leadership.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Quit Managing Your Time... and Start Managing Your Attention
By Lee J. Colan, David Cottrell
"The myth of time management never dies. Many people enroll in 'time management' classes and learn techniques like making to-do lists. That's fine. Lists can be useful, even satisfying. It's great to experience that rush—Ahhhh. —as we check something off the list. However, by the end of the day, or the week, or the month, most people discover projects that are still not checked off and some projects they haven't even started. That's when frustration begins to set in. The time is gone, and there's no way to get it back. You can't manufacture time, you can't reproduce time, you can't slow time down or turn it around and make it run in the other direction. You can't trade bad hours for good ones, either. About all the time management you can do is to cram as much productive work as possible into each day. What you can manage, however, is your attention. Attention is a resource we all possess. It's a lot like time. In fact, as long as we are awake, we produce a continuous stream of it.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Your Butt's in the Wrong Seat: A Manifesto for Public Transportation
By Porchlight
"It's not sexy. It's not tracking as a Twitter trend. And it's not a YouTube sensation. In fact, by current reputation, it's dirty, it (sometimes) smells, it forces you to interact with people you don't know, it's slow, and inconvenient. But it shouldn't be. Or at least, it shouldn't be positioned and marketed like it is. Here's the problem with 'it.' Its competitors are some of the largest, most renowned companies in the world, and despite the current 'crisis' affecting the automobile industry, it doesn't stand a chance. 'It' is public transportation, and 'it' is hurting. So what's the problem? It's simple; your butt is in the wrong seat."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Habitudes in the Classroom: Teaching the Habits and Attitudes Our Students Need in the 21st Century
By Angela Maiers
"Education shouldn't be about adding more to our lists of HAVE's, DO's , and BE's, but rather thinking outside the lines, intentionally about the BE's, DO's, and HAVE's that matter most. The 21st century world needs learners to BE critical, BE creative, and BE strategic. The 21st century world demands learners to DO their own thinking, rather than relying on someone else to think for them. The 21st century world expects learners to HAVE the endurance, fortitude, and courage to brave through each new challenge with confidence and competence."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Design for the Other 90%
By Paul Polak
"Ninety percent of the world's designers spend all their time working on solutions to the problems of the richest 10 percent of the world's customers. A revolution in design is needed to reverse this silly ratio and reach the other 90 percent. In my book, Out of Poverty, I talk about how this can be done. I pull stories from some of the 17 million people I've help lift from poverty with the organization I founded 25 years ago, International Development Enterprises. More recently, we have incorporated an organization called D-Rev: Design for the Other Ninety Percent, whose mission is to create the design revolution."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A Good Food Manifesto for America
By Will Allen
It is time and past time for this nation, this government, to react to the dangers inherent in its flawed farm and food policies and to reverse course from subsidizing wealth to subsidizing health.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Hub Mentality: Shifting From Business Transactions To Community Interaction
By Stephen Palmer
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to catch the eyes of the consumer. Once you have them you have to keep them. Technology has transformed relationships between businesses and customers. Now, your job isn't just to transact sales. Your job is to cultivate trust, build community, and interact with your customers on an ongoing basis. Your job is to become a hub, a center of influence that creates value for your customers on their terms. Sales and profit are the result of fulfilling customer desires through educational, valuable content and remarkable products and services. Do this and your loyal community members become your advocates and evangelists."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
10 Lessons Learned in Igniting Word of Mouth Movements
By Porchlight
"It's official: the word 'campaign' is becoming more and more scarce as it relates to the new world of marketing. And rightly so. People want to be engaged with a company, organization or cause beyond a short-term gimmick. So we're starting to see the emergence of the term 'movement,' which makes a lot more sense. Let's compare the two."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Cracking the Genetic Code: A New Way Forward For Corporations
By Porchlight
"Synapses are natural, visceral, reactions connecting the soft organs of the body to the central nervous system. They can be trusted to be "on the money," and most corporate bodies—human or otherwise—are lost without them. Not being in tune with one's own ecosystem leads to unrewarded, misplaced effort and operational dysfunction. Enabled by technology, we now have knowledge of how to make human connections work best in corporations connected by a common purpose. This is a document that'll show you how to make that happen."
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.