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
Acceptable Loss: A Formula For How to Fail Quickly and Cheaply, and Ultimately Succeed
By Porchlight
"If you looked at the way entrepreneurs act, you would be tempted to conclude there is not a lot to be learned from studying them. You would have to be Bill Gates to start Microsoft and Oprah Winfrey to begin Harpo. But if you look at the way they think, you will discover amazing similarities. When successful entrepreneurs head off into the unknown—and there is nothing more unknown than starting a new company—they ... reduce it to a formula. They: Act. Learn. Build (off that learning.) And Repeat. But notice what is going on, because the steps are small, and so is what it puts at risk. It's a way of keep potential failures from being devastating."
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Blog / ChangeThis
10 Lessons on Art and Strategy
By Jessica Hagy
"War is just a metaphor for every problem you've ever had in your life. Without problems, you've got no plot, and without a plot, your character can't develop. So don't just choose your battles. Embrace them. Here's how... "
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Blog / ChangeThis
The New Leadership Paradigm—Everyone, Every time, No Exception!
By Lior Arussy
"Organizations and leaders are facing today the convergence of three mega trends that are reshaping their value proposition, their customer relationships, and their talent engagement. Alone, each of these mega trends is a significant challenge to face. Together they present either an existential threat to the business or an evolutionary opportunity. And, by and large, most leaders are neither ready nor equipped to address these changes."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Earth Shakers: The Art and Craft of the Global Change Agent
By Dean Williams
"Earth shakers figuratively shake the ground on which we work and live. They stir people to action to address tough problems. They mobilize people to fix what is flawed or broken. They generate movements to tackle complex issues. They transform teams, organizations, communities, and nations. They help us to think differently about the world, and to take actions to make it a better place. The earth shaker is a global change agent. They may operate at the local level or on the international stage but they appreciate how global forces and dynamics affect local forces and dynamics, and vice-versa. Given the interdependent nature of complex problems, they know they must cross borders and boundaries to get anything significant accomplished, as problems cannot be resolved in isolation. We need earth shakers because globalization presents a whole new set of challenges for which traditional forms of leadership cannot resolve. Globalization generates forces and dynamics that produce unintended and unexpected consequences—surprises—some that are delightful and some that are threatening and outright scary.
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Blog / ChangeThis
THE PENGUINS ATE YOUR CHEESE!
By BJ Gallagher
"The penguins were in trouble and they knew it. For many years they had ruled the Land of Penguins with unquestioned authority. They had built a great enterprise that grew and thrived in the Sea of Organizations. Penguins were seen as models of success, and for a long time their world was orderly, predictable, and safe. But there came a time when things began to change In the Land of Penguins..."
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Connect and Thrive: Create a Connection Culture to Win at Work (and Life)
By Michael Lee Stallard
"Human connection is a superpower. It helps individuals and organizations thrive. [...] Most people don't recognize connection as a superpower—yet—and therefore miss out on connection's benefits. In your defense, you may be living and working in cultures that have conditioned you so that you don't see, feel or experience connection as much as you ought to in order to live your most productive, enjoyable and life. If connection isn't obvious to you, this manifesto will be an eye-opening wake-up call."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Simplicity Cycle Manifesto
By Dan Ward
"We started with nothing. Now we have something. The receptacle is no longer empty. This makes all the difference. Through carelessness, inattention, or miscalculation, we may inadvertently overfill it to the detriment of the whole. Additions once led to improvement. Beyond a certain point, that is no longer the case. Additions begin to make things worse. When our additions get out of control, the plot becomes jumbled, the colors muddied, the flavors discordant or overpowering. The new pieces do not simply add less than the previous pieces—they actually diminish the value of the whole."
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The Membership Economy Manifesto
By Robbie Kellman Baxter
"We hear the stories. Cornered by a passionate friend, we are regaled with tales of binge-watching House of Cards on Netflix, or the virtues of the Paleo diet combined with Crossfit, or a new recipes and decorating tips found on Pinterst. Certain organizations are winning the hearts and voices of their customers, and building the kind of loyalty that traditionally was reserved for family, community, and church. The secret that these organizations know is that people are craving membership. Organizations that build their businesses around people's need to belong, to be connected, and to be admired, organizations that are focused on relationships over products, are winning in today's economy."
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Built to Reinvent: The Ten Commandments of Today's Sustainable Company
By Nadya Zhexembayeva
"Ask any manager on planet Earth, 'What is your key challenge. ' and among many different responses one will strike you with remarkable consistency: Staying afloat. The fast-moving roller-coaster economy we live in today makes this task increasingly difficult. Just as we handle one crisis, another looms around the corner. How can we sustain—and even thrive. The answer is the one you've heard before: We must consistently remake who we are, what we offer, and how we deliver our offerings to the world. Put it simply, we must reinvent. What you may not have heard before is this: Today, the frequency with which our reinvention must take place is staggering. Essentially, we must become a new company every three years. In fact, we must reinvent so frequently and so radically that the traditional roles and processes inside of an organization cannot keep up. It's time to make reinvention into its own profession. The Ten Commandments are here to help you with this task. Spoiler alert: all hail the Chief Reinvention Officer.
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Unlocking Failure's Grip On The "Static Quo" In Your Organization
By John Danner, Mark Coopersmith
"Ask yourself: why is it so few organizations ever achieve performance even remotely close to their potential, much less that of their aspirations. Why is it so few organizations succeed through their second or third generation of leadership. Why are so few workplaces truly "great places to work". Is it because their leaders are stupid, their people incompetent, or their strategies inept. Did all those executives running formerly dominant companies such as Blackberry, Nokia, RadioShack or Kodak never get the memo about The Innovator's Dilemma. Is it simply not possible for most organizations to do fundamentally better. Or is all this just a matter of bad luck or fate, or the natural consequence of business Darwinism. We don't think so. A big part of the answer is that most organizations and the executives who run them don't recognize, respect or leverage the reality and potential of the one resource every organization and management team create every day: failure—the other 'F' word.
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.