Blog
-
Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - Winning the Story Wars
By Porchlight
Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell—and Live—the Best Stories will Rule the Future by Jonah Sachs; Harvard Business Review Press, 264 pages, $27. 00, Hardcover, July 2012, ISBN 9781422143568 A popular pursuit for business and current affairs writers is to produce work that investigates and exposes all the various ways that marketing manipulates consumers. And there is certainly cause for concern.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
-
Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - The Book of Business Awesome
By Porchlight
The Book of Business Awesome/The Book of Business UnAwesome, by Scott Stratten, John Wiley & Sons, 272 pages, $24. 95, Hardcover, August 2012, ISBN 9781118315224 This new book by Scott Stratten is actually two books in one. Open the cover with the title The Book of Business Awesome: How Engaging Your Customers and Employees Can Make Your Business Thrive and you’ll read some great advice about marketing, business technology, customer service, branding, human resources, public relations, and more.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
-
Blog / News & Opinion
Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck
By Porchlight
This new book by Anthony Tjan, Richard Harrington, and Tsun-yan Hsieh divides the successful entrepreneur into one of four traits they're biased toward. According to the authors, Heart is about passion, indicative of CEOs like Howard Schultz. Smarts is about brain power, as seen in people like Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 97
By Porchlight
The How Manifesto: Why How Business Gets Done Around the World is the New Competitive Advantage, and New Metrics for a New Reality by Dov Seidman “HOW. We’ll see that word a lot in this manifesto. Simply stated, HOW is the belief that in our more interconnected and interdependent world, we rise and fall together.
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / News & Opinion
Welcome Michael Jantz!
By Porchlight
We are pleased to announce a new addition to our team! Michael Jantz has been hired to handle Special Projects. What are Special Projects?
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / ChangeThis
The How Manifesto: Why How Business Gets Done Around the World is the New Competitive Advantage, and New Metrics for a New Reality
By Dov Seidman
"'How?' is not just a question. HOW is the answer. HOW. We'll see that word a lot in this manifesto. Simply stated, HOW is the belief that in our more interconnected and interdependent world, we rise and fall together. The way to forge a better, more sustainable path of growth and progress lies in the realm of human behavior—HOW we do what we do. The days of "It's not personal; it's just business" are over. We truly have entered the Era of Behavior. Leaders have become successful at measuring "how much" by out-selling and out-spending. But instead of asking "how much", we should be examining HOW. How we behave, lead, consume, build trust in our relationships, and relate to others has always mattered but in an age when everything can be tweeted and blogged about and where there is no such thing as private behavior, HOW matters more than ever and in ways it never has before."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
How Perceptions Shape Realities
By Porchlight
"In our daily existence, we are constantly on a trip, going from one place to another. It is true whether we are faced with a situation threatening our survival, simply following our daily routine, or met with an unprecedented opportunity to thrive. Our journey is a needed activity that we too often view as a burden, as obligatory and forced. We thus make our journey a monotonous routine, depriving ourselves of memorable experiences and the enjoyment that we really deserve. A large majority of us do not understand that our perceptual view of our journey has a powerful influence on the enjoyment (or lack of it) and the feeling of accomplishment (or lack of it) we could receive from it."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
The Finch Effect: How Adaptability Will Save Your Career (and Happiness)
By Porchlight
"Our job market is in a perpetual state of turmoil these days. Every month, we hold our breaths waiting for some positive sign in the unemployment numbers, and every month it seems we are disappointed. The gains that have been made since the official end of the recession in 2009 have been minimal, and the changes we see in jobless rates each month are nominal at best. This economic twilight zone puts everything is on hold—our careers, our dreams for our family, our most basic happiness. We bite our nails and turn to one another asking "How long can this go on? When will things go back to normal?" But in our modern age, this age of Vocational Darwinism, the only people we can truly expect the answers to come from is ourselves. And the only way to answer those questions and take life off hold is to adapt."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
Cure the (Self-Inflicted) Chaos First
By Karen Martin
"More than 80 percent of improvement efforts fail to make a discernible difference in overall business performance, regardless of the improvement methodology in use. The reason isn't a flaw in the methodologies, but a flaw inside of companies. Organizations in all sectors fail to meet their full potential because of self-inflicted chaos. I'm not talking about acute cases of chaos brought on by external events over which a company has little control, such as sudden supply chain disruptions, new regulations, or economic downturns. I'm talking about chronic long-term chaos brought about by ambiguity, lack of focus, inconsistency—habits and behaviors that organizations can control but choose not to. Self-inflicted chaos is an insidious disease that must be addressed before any meaningful improvement in performance can be achieved."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
The Art of Not Knowing
By Porchlight
"In education the starting point is what you don't know. Before you can begin your research or frame your experiments you'd better make sure that you are asking the right questions about what you don't know. Trying to understand the universe through science can only come from a place of not knowing. Innovation and creativity can only exist with the wonder of not knowing. I wonder what will happen if I mix this thing here with this thing over here. I don't know but would love to find out. Curiosity is born from not knowing. Not knowing therefore can help us change and grow."
Categories: changethis