Most Recent Articles
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Unplanning Your Business Can Make It Happen Faster
By Ian Sanders, David Sloly
"We gave a talk at South By South West Interactive in 2010 and asked a room full of entrepreneurs who had written a business plan if they had actually looked at it since launch. A resounding 'no' came back. So we asked if the business they now owned and ran looked anything like the one they had written about in the business plan. Another 'no. ' They all admitted that they had written the plan simply because they thought that is what you're supposed to do. They had exerted great effort on a document that they would not look at again. How does this make sense. And this is from entrepreneurs that made their business idea happen, these were the successful ones. So what of the thousands that started to write a plan, got a little stuck and gave up. What ideas have the world been deprived of because they believed they needed a fully detailed plan to make that thing real. [. . . ] The problem with writing a fixed plan is that you can get stuck in amber mode. You get so bogged down with hypotheticals, financial modeling and revenue projections that your cool business idea gets stuck in a spreadsheet and the light never goes green.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Go Do: How Hard Can It Be?
By Lou Imbriano
"It's important to realize that the only true barrier in life is you. Sure, there can be obstacles that you face every day and people who are impediments to achieving your goals, but ultimately, you will be the reason that you achieve or fail. I quite often tell folks that they have to "Go Do." Frequently, on social media, you will see that two-word charge from me because I hope it will click with folks in need of motivation. There are so many people out there with the "woe is me" attitude; what they must realize is that they are causing the woe and they are the only conduit for change."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Power of Trust and Mistrust
By Dr. Judith Bardwick
"When trust levels are high, so is the quality and performance of business—and the reverse is also true. These facts are demonstrated dramatically when we look at the financial outcomes of companies that are among the best to work for and their peer companies that aren't. Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For have roughly double the rates of return, income, return on assets, profits, stock market returns and employee and customer retention rates compared to peer companies."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Reinventing the Wheel: Creating Lifetime Customers
By Chris Zane
"These types of relationships are not easily formed nor are they formed overnight. They require exceptional care, attention, and a focus on continuously exceeding expectations. At Zane's, where we have chosen to compete on service rather than on price alone, it means providing unparalleled customer service. We can never accept an unhappy customer, nor look at unsatisfied customer as an inevitable part of doing business. This method goes beyond the mindset of making an unhappy customer happy or simply matching the offers of our competitors. Creating lifetime customers requires that you offer every customer or potential customer more service than they consider reasonable. Further, it means that you actively solicit customer feedback about what you could be doing better and use that information to expand and tweak your offerings to best service the customer."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Responding Effectively to Workplace Bullying: Managing Behavior at the Time of an Attack
By Aryanne Oade
"By the end of the manifesto I hope that you will be equipped with sufficient knowledge and practical actions that you know what to do and how to do it should you become subject to workplace bullying in the future. And I also hope that reading this manifesto will assist those of you who have already been targeted by a workplace bully to be able to process your experience and find relief from the nagging self-doubts that often form part of the aftermath of an experience of workplace bullying."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Guarding the Guards: Crushing the Bureaucratic Rules that Limit Success
By Tom Rieger
"Fear is destroying companies. Or more specifically, fear of loss is causing companies to destroy themselves. As managers are forced to do more with less, contend with limited resources, or battle for headcount and budget, many will begin to build walls to help protect their ability to meet their own local goals. Unfortunately, sometimes those walls become so high that those inside lose sight of the ultimate outcome. Their world becomes defined by the piece, and not the puzzle. With the best of intentions, barriers are born, particularly if the rules that are created make it difficult for others outside of the silo to succeed."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / Staff Picks
The Coming Jobs War
Book Review by 800-CEO-READ
Right now, some of us are sitting in positions we've held for years, and looking forward to staying that way. Others are scrambling to prove their worth in a highly competitive market. Yet others still may have given up, after years of trying to find work, with no hope in site.
Categories: staff-picks
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Blog / Staff Picks
Talk Normal
Book Review by 800-CEO-READ
Jack reviewed a great book a few years ago called The Management Myth: Why the “Experts” Keep Getting It Wrong. It is a serious book critiquing what the author calls "the pseudoscience of management theory," a call for us to look at management theory not as a science, but as a philosophy. A question at the heart of that book is the efficacy of business jargon—that is, does the language we invent around business topics really produce a better understanding of those topics, or simply make the speaker of that language sound more clever, studied and imbued with expertise.
Categories: staff-picks
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Blog / New Releases
Uncertainty
By 800-CEO-READ
I remember taking swimming lessons when I was a kid. I hated them. They were early in the morning so the water was a bit colder than usual, and besides, it was swimming - something I couldn't really do, and worst case scenario, if I really screwed up, could drown from it.
Categories: new-releases
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Blog / Excerpts
Is Your Idea Crazy Enough? An Excerpt from Creative Thinkering
By Sally Haldorson
IS YOUR IDEA CRAZY ENOUGH? An Excerpt from Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work by Michael Michalko The playful openness of creative geniuses is what allows them to explore unthinkable ideas. Once Wolfgang Pauli, the discoverer of electron spin, was presenting a new theory of elementary particles before a professional audience.
Categories: excerpts
