Most Recent Articles
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Blog / ChangeThis
Success. Now What?
By Bob Buford
"Much has been written about the 'graying of America. ' According to a recent CNBC. com article, nearly a third of America's workers are now over 50, and employees over age 65 outnumber teenage workers for the first time since 1948. We are an aging population with all of the implications that brings for our society: Greater demand for health care workers, more senior housing, etc. But what does this development mean for our successful leaders, many of whom are also aging and, in many cases, reluctantly approaching retirement. Every day, men and women who have achieved great things both personally and professionally and reached the very top of the ladder are being put out to pasture to rarely, if ever again, use the significant gifts and talents that helped them for the first 50 or so years of their lives. I would suggest that it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, I would posit that the next part of their lives could cement their legacy and in many ways be their most important years with perhaps their greatest contribution.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The New Consumer Manifesto: Why Old is New, and Young is Old News
By Lori K. Bitter
"The majority of today's grandparents are from the baby boomer generation; they appear more youthful, vital and active than grandparents of previous generations. Grandparents are spending thousands on rock concerts, hundreds on hip jeans, stocking up on the best anti-aging formulas and scents, while amassing a shoe closet that Carrie Bradshaw would envy. p> Still, if you do an image search on grandparents in Google, look at what pops up! You will see photos of people 75+ in sedentary environments. Or cartoon caricatures of couples with gray buns, sagging bellies and boobs, and canes. This is far from the reality of the baby boom generation grandparents. In reality only 20% of grandparents are 75 and older. Stereotypes like this keep advertisers and their agencies from realizing the potential of the grandparent market as a viable target consumer."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Fanatical Fans Create the Bedrock for a Successful Brand
By Michael Silverstein, Dylan Bolden, Rune Jacobsen, Rohan Sajdeh
"Your most loyal customers set the stage for continuous volume growth. If you listen to them, they can help you define how far afield you can extend. If you track them and induce them to introduce you to their friends and family, they can be your surest route to growth. If you forsake them at any point, they can, like jilted lovers, go from being fanatical fans to fanatical detractors. They will tell you in clear language what is a sin and what is unacceptable behavior. But don't turn away. You need to listen, question, listen again, and test."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Bringing HR to the C-Suite: How Human Resources Can Create Value and Drive Performance
By Carol E. M. Anderson
"HR has been trying to get the proverbial seat at the table for eons, and it doesn't seem that there has been much progress and... there's a credibility gap between HR and the 'C' suite that gets wider every day. The C-Suite still doesn't see or value the role HR can and should play, because we are still mired in the morass of compliance and administration. I have spent my career as one of those HR professionals who have to cajole arrogant operational leaders into doing 'HR work.' I've fought the resistance, and I've learned a lot along the way. I've learned that this can't be 'HR work'—it's leadership, plain and simple."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
It's the Experience, Stupid!
By Denise Lee Yohn
"Over 18 years ago, Joe Pine and James Gilmore declared 'Welcome to the Experience Economy' and described a new state in the progression of economic value creation in which the emerging competitive battleground laid in staging experiences. Since then pundits have suggested that commerce has progressed to the digital economy (based on how the Internet created a global, interactive marketplace), the network economy (in which value is created and shared by all members of a network), and most recently the sharing economy (involving the sharing and reuse of excess capacity to increase the value of goods and services). These developments have indeed re-conceived the economic landscape, remade entire industries, and created seismic shifts in the way people live, connect, and do business. But they don't detract from the prominence of experience as the frontier on which companies compete and win today. Businesses may not be charging admission to staged experiences, as Pine and Gilmore predicted, but they are designing and differentiating their offerings to appeal to the buyers of experiences—or, at least, they should be.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Getting One Second Ahead: 5 Mantras for Mindful Leadership
By Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, Gillian Coutts
"In today's complex, fast-paced, always-on business environment, speed matters. As leaders, you need to be able to rapidly sift through an overload of information and multiple distractions to make the best decisions for your organization. Time is of the essence. Everything is urgent. The most common words for many leaders are 'more' and 'now. ' What if you could enhance your focus and clarity, improve your effectiveness, have more time and less stress. [. . . ] The underlying challenge is that our mind can have a mind of its own making it difficult to manage our attention. Recent scientific studies suggest that our ability to pay attention is getting less and less. If managing attention is key to realizing results, this is a significant issue for all of us not only in terms of ourselves as leaders but also in how we manage and support our teams, colleagues and clients. [. . . ] If managing our attention is at the root of the problem, then training the attentional muscle is the key to addressing it. ".
Categories: changethis
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Blog / News & Opinion
Inside the Longlist: General Business
By Dylan Schleicher
We begin taking a closer look at the books in the 2015 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards longlist by looking at five in the General Business category.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / New Releases
More Awesome Than Money: Four Boys, Three Years, and a Chronicle of Ideals and Ambition in Silicon Valley
By Dylan Schleicher
A paperback edition of Jim Dyer's excellent account of "Diasporo," an ambitious social media project that sought (still seeks) to rival the giants and protect privacy.
Categories: new-releases, narrative-biography
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Blog / Book Giveaways
Women and Transition: Reinventing Work and Life
By Porchlight
Linda Rossetti furthers the conversation of women in transition in the work and life by keeping the focus on women.
Categories: giveaways
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Why Should Anyone Work Here: What It Takes to Create an Authentic Organization
By Dylan Schleicher
Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones talk about how the "old paradigm has flipped" with regards to organizations and employment, and authenticity is an organizational advantage all should tap into.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
