Uncategorized Posts
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - It's Not the How or the What But the Who
By Porchlight
It’s Not the How or the What But the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best by Claudio Fernandez Araoz, Harvard Business Review Press, 244 pages, $28. 00, hardcover, June 2014, ISBN 9781625271525 At it’s simplest, It’s Not the How or the What But the Who is a guide to hiring, developing, and retaining the right people. That seems like a fairly straightforward proposition, but if you’ve ever had to hire people you know it is easier said than done.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
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Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 118
By Porchlight
Repairing the Hole in the Boat: How the Poor Can Save Capitalism by John Hope Bryant “What if there was a way to use the power of free market enterprise to lift every American and indeed every human being on the planet to a level of dignity, inclusion, fulfillment, engagement, economic security and stability? Wouldn’t that be a truly noble cause? ” The Accelerating Organization: In a Faster Moving World, We Need Speed and Agility to Keep Up by John P.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Accelerating Organization: In a Faster Moving World, We Need Speed and Agility to Keep Up
By John P. Kotter
"Organizations everywhere are struggling to keep up with the accelerating pace of change—let alone get ahead of it. Most people don't feel the full rush going on around them, which is a part of the problem. But on almost every important business index, the world is racing ahead. The stakes—the financial, social, environmental, and political consequences—are rising in a similar exponential way. In this new world, the big question facing business leaders everywhere is how to stay competitive and grow profitably amid this increasing turbulence and disruption."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Seven Steps to World Domination
By Lori Ann LaRocco
"It doesn't matter if you are a small business owner, manager, CEO, employee, or aspiring entrepreneur; you want to be the best you can be. You don't have to be a billionaire in order to be at the top of your game. In fact, you have more in common with the world's most successful business leaders than you may think—you are probably already using some of the strategies they use without being aware of it. To help you raise and sharpen your self-awareness there are seven key strategies that all leaders use, regardless of their industry. These steps lead to what I describe as 'world domination.' All of the seven strategies build and support each other, forming strong pyramid. As you read about these strategies, imagine how you would use each one when building your business or career."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Against the Odds: Startups that Make It
By Derek Lidow
"It is one of our saddest economic statistics: More than half small businesses fail within a few years of startup. Unlike the cheery pictures presented in advertising or the success stories showcased on Shark Tank, a significant percentage of fledgling enterprises sputter and eventually die. Only 1 in 43 has any employees after 10 years. These startups don't create much economic value. The vast majority don't even earn as much for their founders as those people could have earned working for someone else. Dreams die, jobs are lost, and communities lose their vitality. It does not have to be this way. In fact, if we want a robust economy with job growth, we must do something about it. I think that the solution is deceptively simple: entrepreneurs should stop thinking so much about the idea behind the business and focus instead on how to lead it."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Repairing the Hole in the Boat: How the Poor Can Save Capitalism
By John Hope Bryant
"I think we are sitting at a rare moment in history where we have an opportunity to change our nation and our world. Everything seems to be broken economically, socially, and politically. All the numbers are headed in the wrong direction. But the Bible says, where there is no vision, the people perish. We've got to have a vision that's larger than ourselves. We've got to be about we, and not about me; what we have to give, not just what we have to get. We need to turn traditional thinking on its head, and present a new vision for America."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Nature of Investing
By Porchlight
"We are all investors. We invest our time, our energy, our money. We invest every single day, as citizens, as consumers, as businesspeople. At its core, done well, investing is aligned with the same principles that govern natural systems. It involves connection, exchange, and mutual benefit: we humans invented this activity, to serve our own needs, our communities, and our planet. For any business endeavor, wise investing—of human capital, social capital, physical capital, and financial capital—is at the heart of success. [...] We need to reengage with investing in its essential, connected form—to reintegrate our professions with the real world, instead of the world on the screen. But how?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Unlock Employee Ideas to Power Your Organization
By Alan G. Robinson, Dean M. Schroeder
"After years of being asked to do more with less, managers are increasingly aware that they cannot produce the results that are expected of them with the organizations they currently have and the methods they currently use. Cutting wages and benefits, and requiring people to work harder with fewer resources can only go so far. Interestingly, the best solution to this problem involves the same people who have been bearing the brunt of the cost so far: front-line employees. Every day, these people see many problems and opportunities that their managers do not. They have plenty of ideas to improve productivity, responsiveness and customer service, for new and better products and services, or to enhance their organizations in other ways. Yet organizations generally pay little attention to soliciting these ideas, believing there is not much value in them. [. . . ] It is time to change the way we run our organizations. Today, a growing number of organizations are becoming very good at promoting front-line ideas, and as a result are reaching extraordinary levels of performance.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / News & Opinion
A Covert Departure
By Porchlight
Today is officially the last day of Jack Covert's tenure as President of 800-CEO-READ, a company he founded and has led since 1984. If it were up to us as a staff, we would find some grand gesture to mark the occasion. We would release a flock of exquisite birds in his honor, or etch "Thanks, Jack" onto the face of the moon.
Categories: news-opinion, narrative-biography, publishing-industry, the-company
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Blog / News & Opinion
The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company 2014 Business Book of the Year Award
By Porchlight
There has been a shake up around one of the major business book awards given every year, with McKinsey & Company taking the place of Goldman Sachs as the partner of the Financial Times for the tenth year of their prestigious award. Submissions have been open since last month, and they officially announced the launch of the 2014 Business Book of the Year Award yesterday. Also a first this year, they have announced an additional award—the Bracken Bower Prize—which "will be given to a promising young writer with the best proposal for a book about an emerging business theme.
Categories: news-opinion