Blog
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Blog / ChangeThis
Rethinking Your Business from the Outside In
By Harley Manning, Kerry Bodine, Josh Bernoff
"If you read the pages of the Wall Street Journal you would come to believe that business is about big deals—about multi-billion dollar acquisitions, massive pay packages for executives, macroeconomic forces, stuff like that. In fact, the secret of success is in the little things. Billions of small decisions. [...] Spend a few moments with this essay, and we'll show you three things. First, customer experience is central. ... Second, customer experience is hard, because it's not just about your front-line customer-facing employees. ... Third, delivering a great customer experience requires discipline—or more accurately, six disciplines that cut across every element of how your company operates."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Connected Company: How Distributed Organism Businesses are Rising Against the Machine to Build a More Connected World
By Dave Gray
"Companies are not really machines, so much as complex, dynamic, growing systems. After all, companies are really just groups of people who have banded together to achieve some kind of purpose. [...] For many years the machine view has prevailed, and many companies are designed as information-processing and production machines. But information processing is not learning. Production is not learning. Learning is a creative process, not a mechanical one. Many critical factors in business cannot be easily counted, measured or controlled."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Laws of Subtraction: How to Innovate in the Age of Excess Everything
By Matthew E. May
"Our businesses are more complicated and difficult to manage than ever. Our economy is more uncertain than ever. Our resources are scarcer than ever. There is endless choice and feature overkill in all but the best experiences. Everybody knows everything about us. The simple life is a thing of the past. Everywhere, there's too much of the wrong stuff, and not enough of the right. The noise is deafening, the signal weak. Everything is too complicated and time-sucking. Welcome to the age of excess everything. Success in this new age looks different, and demands a new and singular skill: Subtraction. Subtraction is defined simply as the art of removing anything excessive, confusing, wasteful, unnatural, hazardous, hard to use, or ugly—and the discipline to refrain from adding it in the first place."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Uncommon Wisdom: Why Great Leaders Don't Reward Results
By Porchlight
"In today's economic environment—where most of us, even those who are succeeding—face pressure and uncertainty in our business, there's an increasing emphasis on rewarding results. And why shouldn't there be? Why shouldn't we disproportionately direct praise, resources, and rewards to those who produce bottom line results? The answer is that—in the long run—doing so may empower lesser-valued employees, punish our future stars, and undermine the most valuable organizational asset, a company's culture. The framework of this manifesto will help managers and leaders identify the employees who represent the future of their business, and it will help them spot and eliminate the organizational vampires that may kill it."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Trust-and-Track: A New Approach to Small Business Success
By Nick Sarillo
"We all know bosses who adopt a rigid, rule-bound, Command-and-Control approach to management. But do we love them. Will we move heaven and earth to achieve superior performance for them and the company. Will we put our heart into our work even when these bosses don't happen to be standing over us. My two Nick's Pizza and Pub restaurants in suburban Chicago are among the top ten busiest independent pizza chains in the United States, as measured in per-unit sales. Our margins are often twice those of the average pizza joint, while employee turnover is less than 20% per year in an industry that averages 150%. My employees do love to come to work—and it shows, each and every day. I didn't get numbers like that or the love of my employees by dictating their every behavior, insisting things be done my way, and punishing them when they go astray. You won't find any surveillance cameras in my restaurants—although many people tried to sell me them when I first opened, and friends and associates told me I needed them.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / News & Opinion
An Interview With Steven Johnson
By Porchlight
Steven Johnson is the author of eight books, including Where Good Ideas Come From, Everything Bad is Good For You, and The Invention of Air. He is also a contributing editor for Wired magazine. His newest book, Future Perfect is published on Riverhead Books.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Being a Leader: Fail First
By Sally Haldorson
Fail first for future success. View your failure as an opportunity, not an obstacle. That's the lesson we investigate in this latest KnowledgeBlocks exploration.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
A KnowledgeBlocks Book Giveaway!
By Sally Haldorson
Over on KnowledgeBlocks (powered by 800-CEO-READ) we're giving away 20 copies of Design Like Apple by John Edson. Entry is open to everyone! So stop on over and sign up to win this impressive and timely book!
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Wild Company
By Porchlight
Experience is the best teacher. I learn with my hands. If you find yourself saying things like these, perhaps you'll find Mel and Patricia Ziegler's story about the birth of Banana Republic to be an interesting item.
Categories: news-opinion, narrative-biography
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Blog / News & Opinion
Creating & Innovating: Slow Down to Think Smarter
By Sally Haldorson
We've posted a new Exploration over on KnowledgeBlocks: Slow Down to Think Smarter. It's an age-old adage, most often told in relation to an Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare": slow and steady wins the race. But is that still true?
Categories: news-opinion
