Most Recent Articles
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Boost Your Bottom Line... And Save the Planet, Too
By Mark R. Tercek
"The old, knee-jerk opposition between business and the environment is yesterday's way of thinking. Increasingly, top business leaders view nature as a foundational asset base and essential ally to their companies' productivity. If you want your company to thrive, you will need to be bold, think big, and be aggressive about pursuing business opportunities that work with the environment, not against it."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Fitting in and Standing Out: Shifting Mindsets from Taking to Giving
By Adam Grant
"When people think like takers, they focus on getting as much as possible from others. When they operate like givers, on the other hand, their overarching emphasis is on contributing their knowledge and skills to benefit others. ... Identification is a powerful driver of contributions. People act like givers rather than takers when they've internalized a group as part of their self-concepts or identities. To catalyze this shift in mindsets, we need to understand what causes people to identify with a group. A fascinating insight comes from research by the eminent psychologist Marilynn Brewer, who observes that when we interact with other people, we face a tension between two competing motivations: fitting in and standing out. On the one hand, we want to belong—to experience similarity with others. On the other hand, we want to feel unique—to differentiate ourselves from others."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Time Ain't Money: Stop Punching the Industrial Age Clock, and Start Embracing the Digital Now
By Douglas Rushkoff
"Living in the digital media environment changes a whole lot more than the technologies through which we do business. It has changed our relationship to time—and this is having profound effects on our businesses, our economy, and our customers. To put it most simply, the money we use has a built-in clock—an embedded relationship to time that informs how we obtain capital, how we pay it back, how we invest, how we sell, and how we communicate. That clock has run out. It has wound down, and been replaced with something else. I call it "presentism", or a focus on the now over the past or even the future. If we understand this shift—the only truly significant change wrought by the digital—we can thrive in the new landscape. If we can't—if we end up paralyzed in what I've come to call "present shock," then we may as well go down with the rest of the Industrial Age."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
It's Smart to Suck (Sometimes)
By Jake Breeden
"Think about work that made you proud. Remember something you produced—a product, a pitch, a proposal—that represents you at your very best? Pride feels good. We want to feel it more, and we'll work hard to get that good feeling. Now think about work you did that made you ashamed. Remember something sent off incomplete because you didn't have time to do it justice? Remember early work you completed before you climbed up the learning curve? How'd that feel? We're driven to do more of the work that makes us proud and less of the work that makes us ashamed. Usually, that's smart. Pride pulls us to do things well, and shame pushes us away from doing things poorly. But in certain critical times—especially when it's time to do something new—these emotions push and pull us in unwise directions. Sometimes doing your very best is the very worst decision. In fact, sometimes it's smart to suck."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / Staff Picks
How to Be Interesting
Book Review by 800-CEO-READ
This week, Dylan and I went to go see Jessica Hagy speak at the wonderful Lynden Sculpture Garden. Hagy, an ex-advertising copywriter who now creates doodles and charts with keen observations on people and the situations they find themselves in, presented a summary of her "10 Simple Steps" from her new book How to Be Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps). After enjoying her previous book Indexed, which consisted solely of pages of charts and minimal commentary, I was curious what her presentation might consist of.
Categories: staff-picks
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Blog / News & Opinion
The Customer Rules: An Interview with Lee Cockerell
By Porchlight
Lee Cockerell's new book, The Customer Rules, is a modest-looking volume of 39 'rules' for providing outstanding customer service. Despite the book's apparent simplicity, The Customer Rules offers readers essential advice ranging from the general—be nice—to the specific—never ever argue with a customer. While reading this book, I often found myself thinking, "Of course; this is a fundamental rule.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Bring Your (Emotional) Self to Work
By Sally Haldorson
Listen. In every office you hear the threads of love and joy and fear and guilt, the cries for celebration and reassurance, and somehow you know that connecting those threads is what you are supposed to do and business takes care of itself. The words above were written by James A.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Thinker in Residence: Erika Andersen on Business & Books
By Sally Haldorson
POST & WIN! Post a reaction or question for Erika in one of her Thinker in Residence posts, and not only will Erika pop by for the discussion, but we'll randomly pick one participant to win a copy of Leading So People Will Follow! In our past two Thinker in Residence posts featuring the thoughtful and motivating work of Erika Andersen, we introduced you to her newest book on leadership, Leading So People Will Follow, and also shared an in-depth Q&A with Erika about strategy.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Thinker in Residence: A Q&A Interview with Erika Andersen on Being Strategic
By Sally Haldorson
For me, the most exciting thing about being strategic is that it’s learnable. Most people talk about being strategic as though it’s something you’re born with…or not. And too bad for you if you’re not!
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Thinker in Residence: Erika Andersen, author of Leading So People Will Follow
By Sally Haldorson
The next featured author in our Thinker in Residence series is Erika Andersen, author of Leading So People Will Follow (Jossey-Bass, 2012); Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Out-Think Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change (St. Martin's, 2010); Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People Into Extraordinary Performers (Portfolio, 2007), and the author and host of Being Strategic with Erika Andersen on Public Television. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus International, a consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness.
Categories: news-opinion
