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
Transcendent Leadership: How to Lead Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime
By Les McKeown
"What if your leadership role just felt, well... right: demanding, yes, but fun too; challenging but controllable; intense but invigorating? What if with every step on the ladder of leadership you felt more comfortable, more 'in the zone,' less stressed, less pressured? What if each successive leadership role brought out more of what makes you you, rather than asking you to compromise your core values, bury your deepest wishes, hold ransom your dreams? Having coached and advised hundreds of leaders, I know this isn't a pipe dream. From frequent observation, I know that it's not only possible to be relaxed, fulfilled and energized by leadership, it is in fact precisely how the most consistently successful leaders operate.
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Blog / ChangeThis
It Really is As Simple As ABC: What Leaders Can Learn from Masterful Orators of the Past
By Porchlight
"Millions of meetings and presentations occur daily. Each of these presentations is meant to drive 'someone' to do 'something.' And what do the vast majority of these presentations have in common? Unfortunately, they usually fail to get anyone to do anything. There are so many noble causes led by charismatic, effective leaders, yet it is still difficult for many of these leaders to establish a clear message that resonates and connects with their audience, not due to the content or nobility of cause, but because we are all subject to information overload. But, masterful orators have succeeded in every generation, and one factor that has not changed over time is the ability of a master orator to captivate and move audiences, to attain levels of success that many thought were unachievable at the time. And each of them mastered the ABC's of communication."
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The Promise of Entrepreneurship
By Porchlight
"We are made to believe that when it comes to business success, bigger is always better. In our super-sized, consumption-oriented culture, not even small business is exempt from the pressure to grow for growth's sake. We fixate on top-line revenue growth and increasing numbers of employees and locations. We pepper entrepreneurs with questions such as, 'What are your plans for expansion. What's next. How many cities will you go to. ' instead of asking what their goals are or why they started their business in the first place. When talk about growth we focus on speed, not sustainability. When we talk about success we focus on size, not satisfaction. So much so that entrepreneurs doubt their own success and skill if they aren't pursuing the largest form of their business possible. We've talked with countless business owners who run profitable ventures, make a good living, enjoy what they do every day, and have significant impact in their industry—but who also hesitate to call themselves successful.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Does Your Customer Really Need You? Lessons from Zappos
By Joseph Michelli
"For those of you not familiar with Zappos, the company is an online retailer who defied the odds and built an Internet empire, initially as a virtual shoe store and now expanding its inventory well beyond shoes alone. Zappos has always charged top dollar for its products and has succeeded primarily because the leadership innovated an experience that consistently exceeds the expectations of customers, vendors, and people who simply encounter the brand. ... Unlike other failed online vendors from the "dot gone" bust, Zappos invested in both the delivery infrastructure and the corporate culture necessary to produce customer evangelists. To help you appreciate how Zappos might serve as a provocative benchmark for your customer experience, let me give you a few highlights from the 5 principles outlined in The Zappos Experience"
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Blog / ChangeThis
Leading Transformation and Captivating Communities
By Brian Solis
"Social media is not the catalyst for change, but merely one of its agents. We must remember that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and the like are the networks that facilitate an uprising. However, it is repression, angst, injustice, inequality, vision, aspiration and hope that serve as the true stimulus for insurrection and progress. Technology plays a part in transformation and it is up to you to learn how social, mobile, real-time, and all other emerging trends are affecting your industries, communities, or markets. What we learn as a result however is that these new tools can bring people together and unite them under a common front or concerted mission. At the center of any revolution is the burning desire to bring about change. But it always comes down to people, shared experiences, and a common ambition. And it is people who need one another for leadership, support, and inspiration. What's missing from the equation is your vision and leadership."
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The Business Genome Approach: Finding Your Next Competitive Advantage
By Andrea Kates
"You have the wrong tools. And you use them the wrong way. It isn't your fault. You were taught, as we all were, to make forecast models out of past results. You were taught to look in the rear-view mirror. You were also taught to look straight ahead of you. If that competitor was in your line of sight, you had their number. That's how you knew you were staying ahead. They were good people that taught you these skills, great professors of the craft in business school, veteran managers and executives in your first, third, and twentieth job. But that was a different time. That was when we could see the future by looking back. Somehow, it made sense back then. But, now, the rules have changed: our game plans have gone public, and whoever knows what the customer will do next wins."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Putting a Signature on Customer Experience
By Porchlight
"To reach it's full impact, customer experience needs to be thought of as a strategic agenda item on par with and actually integrated with corporate strategy, managing the brand, and new product development. Customer experience should not be confused with existing efforts to focus on customer service or touch-point management. These efforts are focused more on delivering tactical reengineering of customer-facing processes. As a customer experience leader, you want customers to talk with everyone they know (and don't know) about your company, employees to live and exude the best qualities of the brand on and off the job, and to be rewarded as a market leader. If you share that vision for your customer experience efforts, here are some strategic tools and ideas to help you do that."
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Blending Art & Science To Create More Effective Ideas
By Porchlight
"Blending art and science is about collaborating in ideas generation: the inter-relationship is critical, you can't have one thing without the other. A bunch of code or data is just a bunch of numbers without the art. Science can enable us to be more creative, and creativity allows us to get the most out of our data. But consider 'the multiplier effect'. If either the data or creative are bad, the idea will fail. It's not one or the other that we need, it's both. It's not science plus art equals results, it's more science times art, so a zero for either means failure. That is where the interesting ideas are - at that intersection. The future is all about ideas connecting. Those who can bridge art and science will be in demand, will be powerful. So if our ideas are going to change hearts and minds, let's blend them together."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Innovate or Perish! What's Your Strategy?
By Porchlight
"It doesn't matter what industry you are in, someone, somewhere right now is building a product, process or business model designed to kick your butt. If it's you, then you define the rules by which others must play the game. If it's NOT you, then you had better get comfortable playing by someone else's rules. Someone is going to start a revolution that will change your world. How? By producing change that matters—change that disrupts the competition and amazes your customers. Why can't it be you? ... In a world where everyone and everything around you is getting better, where technology waits for no one, and where smarter, more sophisticated customers who are "wired and dangerous" demand more, people are constantly in search of the next big thing. Want to find what's next? Make these 10 rules part of your cultural DNA."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Clickability: A Skill for Life
By Porchlight
"Most of what you need to know about success in life is personal in nature. I've learned, through my own experience and that of the people I've worked with, that people need each other to have fulfilling work, successful careers and meaningful lives. Regardless of your cultural background, your age group, or your social status, your need to get along with people is fundamental to your happiness. No matter how much technical skill you have in your particular field of expertise, no matter how smart you are, how capable you are, how gifted you are, if you don't know how to connect, relate and communicate with people, there's little hope for you. Whether the times are great, or the economy is in the tank, the people who do the best, who prosper and advance, are the people who know how to connect with other people and have it matter. Whether you are a homemaker, a parent, a business owner, a manager, a waiter or a postal worker, your skill with other people determines everything. And when you have the skill to build relationships and networks of relationships, the world is your oyster, and all options are open for you.
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.