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"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.
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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. They don't attach the roots, glue on the petals, or color the fruit. The plant grows itself. What farmers and gardeners do is provide ideal conditions for growth."
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"Have you been wishing for the good old days lately? Or at least to rewind the economic clock 12 months? Leading a company during a slowing economy has plenty of challenges:
What should you change, stop or continue doing?"
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"Though it may be hard to grasp, networking is much easier than you think. Forget the myth that you need to be an extrovert to network well. You don't. Or that you must network nonstop. Absolutely not. Or that networking is all about working the room at a big event with a big fake grin plastered on your face. Far from it."
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"The Internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, and every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times.
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Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?
I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
Well, what can't be copied?"
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30 Days-Notice is a countdown to Aly Hensler's final day as a traveling saleswoman, with each chapter chronicling a day in that month. In a foray into creative nonfiction, we at ChangeThis have the honor to share two of those days with you.
"No one expected me to leave. In a world of shifting loyalties and job hopping, Widgets Inc. is the kind of rare place that people retire at, where a sales representative can pull in a comfortable base salary, company car, and expense account."
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