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 "Helpful" Systems Extinguish Career Development (and What You Can Do to Reignite It)
By Beverly Kaye, Julie Winkle Giulioni
"Career development appears at the top of many lists. Unfortunately, the lists tend to be those focused on what employees desperately want but are not getting from their managers. As for managers, most appreciate the value of career development and really wish they could do it—more frequently and more effectively than they currently do. But let's face it: a manager's day-to-day reality is a kaleidoscopic blur of meetings, responsibilities, and shifting priorities. Helping employees to develop and grow is one of many activities perpetually pushed out in time to that elusive 'someday' that too rarely comes. How can managers get past this conundrum? How can they make career development happen within the pressure-cooker reality that is business today? The answer is definitely NOT new systems, checklists, processes, or forms. Those have actually contributed to the problem."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
El Sistema Comes to the USA: Playing the Mambo and Other Transformations
By Porchlight
"I know it sounds impossible, but El Sistema is for real. El Sistema's founder, the visionary musician and economist Jose Antonio Abreu, has said, "If you put a violin in a child's hands, that child will never hold a gun." It is a profound idea: to use an orchestra as a means of personal growth for children in impoverished environments—which in turn brings transformation to the community as a whole. Yes, a very big idea. And now this idea is spreading around the world. Every month, it seems, we hear about another nucleo starting up in another country."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Tell a Story: 10 Simple Strategies
By Jonah Sachs
"We live in a world that has lost its connection to its traditional myths, and we are now trying to find new ones—we're people, and that's what people without myths do. These myths will shape our future, how we live, what we do, and what we buy. They will touch all of us But not all of us get to write them. Those who do have tremendous power. And where there is power, there is struggle for it. That's why, just below the surface, just beyond what the uninitiated can see, there are wars going on. The soldiers at are Tea Party demonstrators and champions of "the 99 percent," climate change activists, makers of computers and sneaker brands. They seem to be fighting over ideas and dollars, but they are really fighting for control of our stories."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Taking Higher Education Higher: How to Cut College Costs and Increase Degree Value
By Porchlight
"With college costs rising, student loan debt skyrocketing and average starting salaries falling, the following questions must be asked. Is college for everybody. Who is college for. What types of experiences should students pursue that will make them more competitive in the job market. In the midst of great change, what is the role of the university. What are the roles of the student, and of the family in picking a college to attend. Policy wonks will issue decrees on change and philosophers will debate them. Poets will write odes to the university of the past, and visionaries will dream of the university of the future. This manifesto is about the architects of the present—those that seek to rebuild the system, brick by brick. This manifesto seeks to identify some steps that colleges, students and families can take to make education more affordable and accessible for students, and give them more of what they need to succeed in the present and future economy. It is also about how students can take control of the current educational system and make college a more sound investment than it is presently.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Personal MBA, Updated & Expanded: Mastering Business Without Spending a Fortune
By Josh Kaufman
"The Personal MBA is a project designed to help you educate yourself about advanced business concepts as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This manifesto will show you how to substantially increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost, all without setting foot inside a classroom. The Personal MBA is more flexible than a traditional MBA program, doesn't involve going into massive debt, and won't interrupt your income stream for two years. Just pick up one of these business books, learn as much as you can, discuss what you learn with others, then go out into the real world and make great things happen. If you're interested in educating yourself about business, the Personal MBA is the best place to start."
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Blog / ChangeThis
8 Tips for Managing Your Personal Brand
By Porchlight
Your reputation is your brand. Your brand is your reputation. And it makes a world of difference in every relationship you have.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The How Manifesto: Why How Business Gets Done Around the World is the New Competitive Advantage, and New Metrics for a New Reality
By Dov Seidman
"'How?' is not just a question. HOW is the answer. HOW. We'll see that word a lot in this manifesto. Simply stated, HOW is the belief that in our more interconnected and interdependent world, we rise and fall together. The way to forge a better, more sustainable path of growth and progress lies in the realm of human behavior—HOW we do what we do. The days of "It's not personal; it's just business" are over. We truly have entered the Era of Behavior. Leaders have become successful at measuring "how much" by out-selling and out-spending. But instead of asking "how much", we should be examining HOW. How we behave, lead, consume, build trust in our relationships, and relate to others has always mattered but in an age when everything can be tweeted and blogged about and where there is no such thing as private behavior, HOW matters more than ever and in ways it never has before."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Perceptions Shape Realities
By Porchlight
"In our daily existence, we are constantly on a trip, going from one place to another. It is true whether we are faced with a situation threatening our survival, simply following our daily routine, or met with an unprecedented opportunity to thrive. Our journey is a needed activity that we too often view as a burden, as obligatory and forced. We thus make our journey a monotonous routine, depriving ourselves of memorable experiences and the enjoyment that we really deserve. A large majority of us do not understand that our perceptual view of our journey has a powerful influence on the enjoyment (or lack of it) and the feeling of accomplishment (or lack of it) we could receive from it."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Finch Effect: How Adaptability Will Save Your Career (and Happiness)
By Porchlight
"Our job market is in a perpetual state of turmoil these days. Every month, we hold our breaths waiting for some positive sign in the unemployment numbers, and every month it seems we are disappointed. The gains that have been made since the official end of the recession in 2009 have been minimal, and the changes we see in jobless rates each month are nominal at best. This economic twilight zone puts everything is on hold—our careers, our dreams for our family, our most basic happiness. We bite our nails and turn to one another asking "How long can this go on? When will things go back to normal?" But in our modern age, this age of Vocational Darwinism, the only people we can truly expect the answers to come from is ourselves. And the only way to answer those questions and take life off hold is to adapt."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Cure the (Self-Inflicted) Chaos First
By Karen Martin
"More than 80 percent of improvement efforts fail to make a discernible difference in overall business performance, regardless of the improvement methodology in use. The reason isn't a flaw in the methodologies, but a flaw inside of companies. Organizations in all sectors fail to meet their full potential because of self-inflicted chaos. I'm not talking about acute cases of chaos brought on by external events over which a company has little control, such as sudden supply chain disruptions, new regulations, or economic downturns. I'm talking about chronic long-term chaos brought about by ambiguity, lack of focus, inconsistency—habits and behaviors that organizations can control but choose not to. Self-inflicted chaos is an insidious disease that must be addressed before any meaningful improvement in performance can be achieved."
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.