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
Inspire and Influence with the Power of Presence
By Kristi Hedges
"Lying inside you, untapped, is an inspirational force. Guided by passion and steered by your influence, you can build momentum for yourself, others or a greater cause. Hearts are full, and ideas are many. You might want to start a business. Land a 'change everything' job. Get respect. Break the glass ceiling. Shatter your own ceiling. Own the room. Motivate a team to greatness. Change your entire career. Leave a legacy. Or fight for an issue you lose sleep over. You can do it, no question. But it takes more than heart. It requires the game changing power of leadership presence. And most people have no idea how to get it. "
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Change Medicine
By Porchlight
"The practice of medicine today is obsolete, extremely wasteful, driven by patient crisis and perverse incentives. New tools in medicine can reboot the future of health care, making it more precise, consumer-driven, and truly preventive. While not intended to be a comprehensive overhaul of all of the maladies of medicine, the 9 steps outlined here address exceptional opportunities for getting us on the right path for the future."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Changing the Way We Change
By Porchlight
"As a senior executive in fields as diverse as Aerospace, Entertainment and Intelligence, I've learned a hard lesson about people and organizations everywhere: they seldom learn from previous failures. To make matters worse, most people not only repeat past mistakes, but fail to learn that they've failed to learn from the past so they go on making the same mistakes over and over again."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Strategy for Personal Success: Discovering Your Purpose
By Rich Horwath
"Just as we need strategy for business success, we need to plan for successful lives. Without one, we allow all kinds of forces to push, pull, twist, and turn us into mental and emotional pretzels. Our inability to say 'no' pushes us into time-wasting activities; a lack of strategic direction allows us to be pulled down a career path we never wanted; good intentions to volunteer in the community are twisted into negative comments when we're not able to meet the time commitments; and we're emotionally turned around when the relationship we let wither finally ends."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Substitution Economy: How Small Changes in Our Day-To-Day Spending Can Shake the World.
By James Marshall Reilly
"We are, to some degree, what we buy. Or at least we can become a bit closer to who we want to be based on the products we use, consume, and wear. As consumers our brand alignment can function not only as a means for public self-identification, but also as an important source of self-affirmation. The brands we purchase can become, in a sense, our personal position statement. Each of us can define ourselves publicly, and we can simultaneously feel good about who we are privately, as a direct result of our consumption patterns."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
From Dropouts to Fully Functioning Adults: What's Missing in Our Efforts to Fix America's Public Educational System
By Steve Rothschild
"Young people pay a high price for not graduating high school. Drop-outs earn substantially less than their friends who have diplomas—when they're employed. The recession is tougher on them: their unemployment rates are higher than the rest of the population. Their risk of going to jail is higher, too. The rest of America also pays a high price for this awful situation: in lost talent, in lost taxes, the costs of social services we provide, and the costs of dealing with crime. And we can't even say that the whole world is in the same boat. We rank 8th from the bottom in a comparison of high school graduation rates among the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But we don't have to accept this travesty. We can teach young people the attitudes and skills they need to succeed in school and in life. And we can make it worthwhile for schools make the effort."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Generating Repeat Business
By Porchlight
"For any enterprise to thrive, you cannot underestimate the importance of repeat business. The vast majority of senior executives believe that providing good customer service is sufficient to obtain return customers. However, focusing on the service interaction alone is not always enough to generate repeat business; it's building an emotional connection that becomes the loyalty glue."
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Make Social Media Sell—Now
By Porchlight
"The 'social media revolution' is over-hyped nonsense. The real business opportunity is to become more relevant and meaningful to customers in ways that create sales. Few will question the impact social media is having on people's lives. From assisting political revolutions to simply reconnecting us with old friends, social media is touching our lives in meaningful ways every day. But with all the stories you're hearing about the power of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social networks, the one question you may be asking is 'how can my business actually make money with social media?'"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Shift & Reset
By Porchlight
"I am angry. There are real problems facing the world, and we, as a society, are not doing enough to address them in the right ways, not the ways we know are possible. The old way isn't working, and we know it. We continue to reward the same behaviors we have rewarded in the past while expecting different results. We profess interest in really doing things differently but settle into routines that are comfortable and safe, and we are fooling ourselves. There are lots of excuses for not making real, demonstrable changes in the way we live, work, and how we interact as individuals and engage in groups/communities. I have heard them all. I have used many of them myself. But they are bullshit. All excuses are. A person either truly, deeply, genuinely cares about changing things or he doesn't. You can step up and do what it takes, in whatever way you can, or you need to acknowledge your limits and accept the results. What might be possible if we were really committed, as individuals and as a society.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
GROW: How to Change the Narrative of Business
By Jim Stengel
"It's time to change the narrative of business. From a winner-take-all tale, no-holds-barred, no matter what the cost to individual firms, investors, the economy, and society, to doing business on the basis of what I call brand ideals, shared ideals of improving people's lives. Wider adoption and leveraging of brand ideals would be the best medicine the economy could possibly get. Instead of inflating a bubble that would sooner or later burst with tragic consequences for everyone, it would trigger and sustain unprecedented growth in every sector it touched. Make no mistake, however. The business case for brand ideals is not altruism. It's self-interest and mutual interest. In addition to its wider positive impact, a devotion to brand ideals will do more for your own business and career than any other factor. Maximum business growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They're inseparable."
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.