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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 Economy Survey
By Porchlight
In November of last year, we sent out a survey to gauge the mood of ChangeThis readers and see if you could help provide some solutions and encouragement for ourselves and eachother. After many months of immense change, both in the country as a whole and within our small company, we have finally finished sifting through those responses. We made the following three inquiries: "In one word, sum up how you feel right now;"How is this affecting you. " and; "What are you choosing to do about it. " The 1400 replies we received to this survey are further proof, beyond the intuitive, that work is life and that the personal is the professional. Some people used creative metaphors to express their situations. Others used humor. Some enumerated their action plan. Some ranted. Some marveled. Some refused to accept a doom and gloom outlook and endeavored to see the possibilities that come with change. There are some trends, of course, and there were ample frustrations—with capitalism and ageism, with excess and politics.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Live the Juggle Life
By Ian Sanders
"In this scrambled up world of work there are no rules and few walls. And that means the key to business success is totally up for negotiation. It's time to rethink the best skills to have in any executive or entrepreneur's toolbox. Forget an MBA from a flash business school, a talent for spreadsheets, or an aptitude for social networking. Think Juggle!"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Stories, Storytelling, Story-Selling in Business
By Porchlight
"Good stories fascinate us all. They always have. They always will. At this moment in our nation's history, we are seeing two epic stories evolving—in terms of our new President, and in the state of our economy. The story of Obama many believe is epic, and certainly the story of our nation's recession and economic downfall is also a burgeoning epic tale. Stories move societies forward. They inspire, engage and initiate change through their telling and re-telling. Basically, there are two types of stories: Truth Stories and True Stories."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A World Without Surprise
By Porchlight
"The ChangeThis instructions read: 'If you have a book... please use it only as a jumping-off point from which to isolate a particularly intriguing idea.' Well, I have a book. It's called Pow! Right Between The Eyes! And its particularly intriguing idea opens mouths, pops eyes and, may I say, whups ass. While potent and influential, it is also the most bullying of ideas; taunting me, challenging me, expecting me, every time, to do something different. [...] I considered putting the words into song, but given a vocal range better suited to the dulcet tones of thrash metal, my message would've been distorted and muddied. So I did the next best thing. I think. May I present, the apocalyptic poetic vision of... A WORLD WITHOUT SURPRISE."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Learning to View Your Customers as a Powerful Tribe
By Porchlight
"As a business it's tempting to think of a 'tribe' as a 'customer base.' That's wrong. People aren't part of a tribe simply because they buy a product or service. What qualifies them as a tribe are their connections. Tribes of customers are connected to an idea, each other, products, services, employees, etc.—creating a network of connections to the business as a whole."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Self, and Importance. A Call to Reflection and Action
By Porchlight
"When we align ourselves with the opinions of others without examination, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to analyze our own preferences and desires, to determine our own solutions. We miss the chance to review the criteria others are utilizing, to question their biases and seek our own inspiration. In stunting the development of our own individual perspectives and initiatives, we trap ourselves in lives that appear to be predestined, and deny the possibility of realizing our personal potential."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Powerful Solving: In the Foundation of Innovation
By Porchlight
"In order to be powerful, you need to deliver as much force, covering as much distance, in the shortest time possible. Consequently, given a force, if you want to improve the power you need to apply the force over a greater range OR decrease the time needed! Let's now make an analogy in the cognitive world. What is the force analogy? Force is the origin of the move in the mechanical world. In the cognitive world, the move is initiated by your ideas. So: F = Ideas Now, let's look at the path."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Other Climate Crisis
By Porchlight
"One climate crisis is probably enough for you right now. I think there is another one. This one is just as urgent as and has implications just as far-reaching as the crisis we're seeing in the natural world. This isn't a crisis of natural resources. It is a crisis of human resources. I think of this as the other climate crisis. [. . . ] The fact is, though, that human organizations are not at all like mechanisms. They're much more like organisms. They are made up of people driven by feelings and motives and relationships. Most people who work in organizations know that it's their relationships with the other people in it that influence their contributions and loyalty or otherwise. Organizational charts show you the hierarchy, but they don't capture how the organization really works or what it feels like to be in it. This is why agricultural metaphors better illuminate the growth of people and organizations. Farmers base their livelihoods on raising crops. But no matter how good they are, farmers do not make plants grow.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
This is Your Buyology
By Martin Lindstrom
"I have spent years talking with brand fans; from obsessed Harley Davidson riders to young Japanese Hello Kitty admirers (one of whom, incidentally, owns more than 12,000 pieces of Hello Kitty merchandise), to devoted Irish Guinness beer drinkers. I've, time after time, been struck by the apparent parallels between the power of religion and of brands over followers. But, in reality, would such a claim possibly hold up? Is it possible that some brands have managed to create their own religion by, coincidently or deliberately, adopting triggers and tactics from the world of religion? The question became an obsession for me."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Leading with Agility
By Kevin Cashman
"Learning Agility, which has four dimensions—Mental Agility, People Agility, Results Agility and Change Agility—is a key to unlocking our change proficiency. In fact, research studies by CCL, Mike Lombardo of Lominger, Robert Sternberg and his colleagues at Yale University, and Daniel Goleman point to Learning Agility as more predictive of long-term potential than raw IQ. Learning Agility is a complex set of skills that allows us to learn something in one situation and apply it in a completely different situation. It is about gathering patterns from one context and using those patterns in a completely new context so that we can make sense and success out of something we have never seen or done before. In short, Learning Agility is Change Mastery—the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly changing conditions."
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.