ChangeThis
ChangeThis is our weekly series of essays from today's thought leaders that are meant to evoke conversation by bringing forth new and unique ideas.
ChangeThis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Make Change Stick: Kill the Company
By Lisa Bodell
"A decade into the 21st century, one thing has become clear: change is the new normal. In business, we call it innovation, and it's a strategic pillar in nearly every organization. Thanks to a growing body of research and thought leadership in recent years, we're learning a great deal about the individual skill sets behind innovation, and the organizational strategies that create disruptive growth. Yet in companies around the world, well-intentioned innovation initiatives crash and burn, despite a wealth of great ideas, copious research, and well-designed strategies. Why? Innovation is not just about data analysis, plans and processes, and thinking outside the box. More than anything else, innovation is about change. And the truth is that as much as we'd all like to think otherwise, we are all hardwired to resist it."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A Three Trillion Dollar Reason to Work Together: Public-Private Partnerships Are Here to Stay
By Porchlight
"All across the land trouble is brewing, as tax revenues continue to shrink and The Great Recession slogs on. ... Almost every state has reduced educational funds and numerous school districts are being forced to lay off teachers, reduce bus services and eliminate curriculum. Colleges and universities, public hospitals, law enforcement organizations and public transportation agencies are struggling to find additional revenues. Roads and bridges can no longer be maintained with public funds. Relief won't come quickly or easily, but one thing is crystal clear: government must reach out to private sector partners for innovative solutions."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Selling, Art or Science?
By Jim Holden
"Having been in the sales training business for more than 30 years, we have seen all manner of sellers; strong performers, average sellers, and those who just don't make the grade. But behind all of this has always been the debate as to whether sales is an art or a science, almost to suggest that for some, sellers are born and not made. The intent of this manifesto is to apply unconventional thinking to the question of art or science, not only resolving the issue, but also putting forth the significance of the answer from both a seller and supplier company perspective"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Why Companies Must Reduce Complexity
By Neil Smith
"Done right, a good change process focuses on reducing complexity, which will automatically bring about greater efficiency and profitability and lead to lasting improvements. Too often companies look at reducing expenses without even thinking about reducing complexity. These types of programs to increase profitability may be successful in the short term, but unless you look at how things get done, change won't be sustainable."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Build This: Your Culturematic Laboratory
By Grant McCracken
"Every organization needs a Culturematic laboratory... It gives the senior manager a "landing party" with which to search for navigable spaces, habitable worlds, futures we want as opposed to ones that will be otherwise forced upon us. Managers can wait for the future to "happen" to them. Or they can use Culturematics and choose. Culturematic labs are a new management tool."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Unleashing the Creative Reservoir: The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited
By Richard Florida
"If the economic crisis has taught us anything, it's that putting our faith in the market alone will not work. New institutions are needed to harness powerful new economic forces, to address worsening class divides, and to make society and the economy work for all of us. We desperately need to institute and ratify a new social compact, entailing everything from investment in our human capital, the only real capital we have, to a new approach to education and learning. We need to recommit our economy to innovation, our society to openness and diversity, and we need to knit a new safety net for the truly disadvantaged. We need a complete break with the old Fordist order. It's time to forge a new society that reflects the demands, challenges, and opportunities of the Creative Age."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Shattering: How We Get From Where We Are to What and Who We Need to Be—A Non-Illustrated Guide to Becoming Honest
By Porchlight
"The Shattering is the moment where everything familiar slips away. Our protective facades of familiarity spontaneously combust and we shun faith, deny comfort. We're left voiceless regardless of our need to scream. We tread water in an ocean filled with every brilliant memory of what was only moments ago. Life has a cruel way of serving up The Shatterings, too. Nary a Google or Outlook Calendar would deign to accept the meeting and we're left simply wondering What. The Fuck. Happened? Over the past seventeen months, I've become a student of that question. In the process, I've gone through even more Shatterings. And I've come to one invaluable realization: I've been asking the wrong question. I shouldn't concern myself with what happened. I should be asking, 'What's happening?'"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Face-to-Face Manifesto: Back to the Future
By Ed Keller
"It is undeniable that Facebook, the king of the social media hill, has accumulated a huge number of users who spend growing amounts of time on the site. Its growth and ability to attract a loyal and highly networked audience is to be admired. For brands, however, it is far from the Holy Grail of marketing. Facebook and other online social networks represent merely one channel out of many that marketers can tap to spark a powerful word of mouth wave. And when looked at in the context of the 'total social' opportunity, it is but one very small part of the overall picture and needs to be seen as such. And true to Naisbitt's 'high tech, high touch' megatrend, the fact is that online social networking is no substitute for the power and impact of face-to-face communications. Real world conversations—most of which take place face-to-face—are still the dominant mode of communication, and they are the most trusted and persuasive."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Let's Make Leadership Real Again
By Mike Figliuolo
"What has happened to leadership. With all the crises and challenges we face and the increasingly risk-averse environment in which we operate, leadership has become generic, ephemeral, and bland. We have devolved from leaders into managers. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper said it best—you manage things, but you lead people. The problem is we're no longer leading. We're hiding behind committees. We're using the crutches of data and metrics to make our decisions for us. We blame policies and corporate culture for the problems our teams face rather than delivering the tough messages with a sense of ownership. The result of all of this is our people don't trust us anymore. Work has become transactional. They do the work and we pay them. It's a fee-for-service mindset. When they find someone who will pay them more for their services, they're gone. And when we no longer have need of their services, we simply cast those people aside. It's a toxic environment. It's hard for people to trust their leaders when they feel like they're simply a cog in the machine.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Rebooting America's Innovation Engine: Using Jugaad to Innovate Faster, Better, and Cheaper
By Navi Radjou
"The motto 'innovate or die' held true for American firms in the 20th century. In the 21st century, 'innovate faster, better, and cheaper—or die' will be your new mantra. Indeed, in today's hypercompetitive, ber-connected, and globally integrated economy, you need to crank out new products faster than you can spell 'R&D,' or else your customers will switch their allegiance to more agile rivals. Plus, your products need to deliver more value to customers—value no longer being defined by the bells and whistles in your product, but by the experience customers get from using your product. Finally, given the rapidly-shrinking purchasing power of the American middle class, your products got to be affordable to meet the frugal needs of thrifty US buyers. In sum, you need to innovate faster, better, and cheaper. Sadly, Corporate America is just not equipped to do that."
Categories: 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.