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.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Art of Hassle Map Thinking
By Adrian J. Slywotzky with Karl Weber
"Let's face it: All too often, life is a succession of hassles. There's an endless array of frustrations, inconveniences, complications, disappointments, and potential disasters lurking in most of our daily experiences. Even very good products and services (we'll call them simply "products" for simplicity's sake) have their weaknesses and drawbacks. My new smartphone sometimes drops my calls; my favorite hotel chain sometimes loses my reservation; those new lightbulbs last longer but produce less light; my new hybrid car gets better mileage but the engine feels less peppy. . . Managers, marketers, designers, service suppliers, and salespeople for the companies that provide these products don't focus on their weaknesses. That's understandable. They devote their lives to making products that are as good as they can possibly be and then to promoting them as enthusiastically as they can. Who wants to concentrate on the negatives. Yet we've found that organizations that excel at demand creation do exactly that.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Six Rules Women Must Break in Order to Succeed
By Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, Mary Davis Holt
"We all have thoughts that limit our potential. Some of these beliefs come from our individual experiences; they take hold over the years. "I'm not good at taking credit. I'm much better working behind the scenes. I'm lucky to have this job. " Other beliefs are a result of the gender stereotypes that are all around us. They creep into our heads over time. "It's my job to nurture everyone else before I take care of my own needs. I am selfish and self-centered if I choose to indulge my ambition. " Still others are simply erroneous conventional wisdom. "I can have it all without compromise. I'm a failure if I can't make it look easy. " We get in our own way when we buy-into these limiting beliefs. But it does not have to be that way. We can nurture the beliefs that will sustain us and help us grow. To rise to the highest ranks in business, women need to unwind some of the traditional thinking that holds us back. We need to rethink the conversations we are having in our heads and tell ourselves a new story.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Most Important Sales Conversations You'll Ever Have
By Mike Schultz, John E. Doerr
"This manifesto is for every sales person who is committed to becoming a rainmaker no matter what the product or service. Rainmakers are the sales elite, typically outperforming average sales people by 300 to 500%—often by a lot more. Success as a rainmaker depends on your ability to lead masterful sales conversations from 'hello' to 'let's go,' but the first sales conversation, the most important sales conversation, happens before you talk to actual prospects. The most important sales conversation you have... is the one you have with yourself."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Right Fights: Making Conflict Productive
By Saj-Nicole Joni
"Your job as a leader isn't to eliminate dissonance–your job is to make conflict productive. Right Fights enable you and your team to stop fighting about everything that doesn't matter and start fighting, in a high-minded manner, about what really matters. I promise you this: Master the competencies of Right Fights and you will achieve sustainable breakthroughs and effect real organizational change. The fuel of human invention is found in dissonance, diversity, competition, and even conflict. That's how you win in the marketplace. Start by asking yourself: Is this the right fight to fight?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Lessons from S&P Recession Survivors
By Larry Mallak
"Investors have heard many decry the decade of the 2000s as the 'lost decade.' A dollar invested in the S&P 500 on the first trading day of 1999 saw it worth just 65 cents a decade later (3/31/09 is our cutoff point). This "underperformance" is seen by many as a failure of the U.S. economic engine. If we look at the Top 20 performers of the S&P 500 during that same time period, we see a vastly different story. Instead of a 35% loss during that time, the Top 20 earned an average 426% return in stock price, excluding dividends. What accounted for this differential performance during this "lost decade"? This manifesto offers some insights based on an analysis of the Top 20's business environment and strategies deployed during the 2000s. Then, we recount some lessons that any firm can use to build a solid economic future."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A General's Guide to Deploying an Army of Entrepreneurs
By Jennifer Prosek
"When you build a team, are you focused on joining links in a chain or weaving together a strong rope of intertwined employees? While I may have started out building a chain–mindful that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link—I came to see that interweaving the threads of a rope came much closer to meeting my goal of a cohesive, interactive team. That way, I eliminate the inevitable spaces between chain links, replacing them with a 'rope' team, where every thread is bound together. [...] This is the model I used as I found, trained and deployed my staff—my Army—and I could not be more satisfied and proud of the results we've had and the achievements I see on a daily basis."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Adapt: The Benefits of Safe Mistakes
By Tim Harford
"We cling on to the idea that successful business people are talented leaders running objectively brilliant corporations. But the world is far too complex and changes far too rapidly for us to have any confidence that this fondly held idea is true. It's easy to list corporations which have enjoyed periods of great success, only to stumble and fail to adapt: think of US Steel and Cudahy Packing a hundred years ago, Atari and Pan Am in the 1970s, and General Motors and MySpace more recently. Or think of eBay, McDonald's, and the Nobel-prize winning Grameen Bank, which have suddenly sprung from nowhere, almost by accident, because somebody happened upon a brilliant idea. So does economic success happen despite business failure? I'd go further than that. Economic success happens because of business failure. It's the failure of once-dominant companies that makes space for new business ideas."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Sober Entrepreneurship: Why Modern Entrepreneurs Won't Succeed Under the Influence
By Carol Roth
"According to the Kauffman Foundation, we are seeing approximately 6 million new businesses created every year. Most of those aren't driven by innovation and if recent history is an indicator, they won't grow or even exist five years from now. If we are going to hang our hat on entrepreneurship, we need to ensure more successes, avoid the number of true failures and make sure that we have the right people pursuing the right opportunities at the right time with the right preparation. Friends don't let friends start businesses under the influence."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The End of the Roundabout Way: Why Quality of Life Will Finally Take Center Stage
By Julia Valentine
"The next quantum leap will occur when a critical mass of people realizes that one of the major purposes of life is JOY. Until then, most people will accept an ersatz, an imitation, or a roundabout way of creating joy. Is JOY a BMW? (That's the advertising campaign the company has been running). Not really. Sorry, but no. With all due respect to BMW, joy has nothing to do with a (great!) metal box on wheels. That's transportation. And if you do not feel joy unless you have money to buy this car, you're really screwed. Because next year, joy is going to be your own private Boeing. Or a trip to Mars. Or watching shooting stars on Jupiter."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Your CQ: Why It Might Be the Most Important Number You Don't Know!
By David Livermore
"Everything has gone global. Communication. Work. Politics. Relationships. Faith. We get it. In fact, by this point, the statement almost sounds a bit trite. Any organization knows that the word "global" better find its way into its messaging and strategy. But how do we move beyond mantras about cultural sensitivity and global awareness to successfully adapting to various cultures while simultaneously remaining true to ourselves? Both sides of the equation are essential—being true to ourselves and adapting to different cultures. And being true to our organizational identity and brand while also responding to an onslaught of culturally diverse markets."
Categories: changethis