ChangeThis Newsletter

The Keen Thinker

Hello friends of ChangeThis,

The company that has cared for ChangeThis for the past five years, 800-CEO-READ, is launching an electronic newsletter, The Keen Thinker. There are 11,000 business books published each year. There is endless information about business being pumped out onto the Internet each day. After 25 years in the book selling business, 800-CEO-READ can act as a filter for all of that information, while, hopefully, inspiring and entertaining you at the same time.

We promise that The Keen Thinker will continually offer insider information on new books you should be reading, current trends in business thought and even an opportunity to win some free books. WE also hope it provides an opportunity to get to know us at 800-CEO-READ a little better, so that we, in turn, can get to know you better.

If you’d like to receive your monthly edition of The Keen Thinker, please sign up today! You can do so by visiting our home page:

http://800ceoread.com/

(The form is in the middle column, down the page a bit.)

If you'd like to take the first issue of the newsletter out for a test drive, visit:

The Keen Thinker v.1

Thanks!
Your friendly neighborhood ChangeThis editor

66.01 - Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Reinvent Yourself by Seth Godin

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

“Years ago, when you were about four years old, the system set out to persuade you of something that isn’t true.

Not just persuade, but drill, practice, reinforce, and yes, brainwash.

The mission: to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people, again and again, is a safe and easy way to get what you want.

Step out of line and the system would nudge (or push) you back to the center. Show signs of real creativity, originality or even genius, and well-meaning parents, teachers and authority figures would eagerly line up to get you back in line.

Our culture needed compliant workers, people who would contribute without complaint, and we set out to create as many of them as we could.

And so generations of students turned into generations of cogs, factory workers in search of a sinecure. We were brainwashed into fitting in, and then discovered that the economy wanted people who stood out instead.

When exactly were we brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job?

I think each one of us needs to start with that.”

66.02 - Beyond Sink or Swim: The Case for Accelerating Leadership Transitions by Michael Watkins and Doug Soo Hoo

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

“Given the magnitude of the overall organizational impact, it is surprising how few companies invest in helping their precious leadership assets to succeed during transitions—the most critical junctures in their careers. A few companies (GE, for example) explicitly train their managers how to take charge. More common are “on-boarding” programs that introduce outside hires to the strategy, businesses, and culture of the company. While useful, such programs seldom provide systematic guidance on the process of managing a successful transition. And the vast majority of companies do not provide any support at all. Why do so many companies leave their people to sink or swim?”

66.03 - The Creativist Manifesto: Consumer or Creativist?by Olivia Sprinkel

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

“I believe that the most significant choice that we can make in today’s society is to be a Consumer or to be a Creativist.

[…]

This default way of being is now so entrenched that 'consumer' is the default label for people. And in terms of public services, which are provided by the taxes that we pay, we are just service users—we consume services.

So what’s the alternative? To be a Creativist: To reclaim the right to our individual identities; To play an active role in shaping, in creating our lives from the inside out; To fulfill our need to create which is part of all of us.”

66.04 - The Wow Factor is You by Frances Cole Jones

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

“The ‘Wow Factor’ is you.

The knowledge that you’ve done the research, considered the risks, paid attention to every detail.

It’s the calm that comes from no-regret living. The confidence that says, ‘I have something to offer.’

Unfortunately, however, we rarely access our Wow Factor. We talk ourselves out of contributing with the one of the 3 mantras of self-defeat:

• ‘I’m sure it’s been done before.’
• ‘It’s a great idea, but it’s just not me.’
• And, everyone’s favorite, ‘It’ll never happen.’

(There’s a reason why you don’t see these phrases on bumper stickers.)”

66.05 - The Need to Remember Our Aging Veterans by Andrew Gabriel

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

"So many of our parents and grandparents have, and unfortunately some still do, sacrifice their innocence as human beings in struggles to defend our very morals and ideals. I believe that it is safe to say that most of us, at some point in our lives, have heard a tale of a soldier fighting for his or her life in a foreign country against an unfamiliar enemy. But the question is: How many of us have actually sat down and truly, completely listened to these soldiers and to their personal accounts?"

65.01 - The World on Reset by John Hope Bryant

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

“I keep saying that this is not a recession, it is a reset. What amazes me is how many brilliant people I know, in the US and around the world, who either don’t see it as anything more than a recession, or who don’t want to. No one really argues with me when I say it, but more so, simply want to turn away; hoping that by turning the mental page, somehow the reality of the statement will simply go away. It is as if society has a vested interest (and we do, by the way) in ‘keeping the party going,’ and doing precisely that, even if for only a little while, and even if that means fooling ourselves. Fear has the world in its grips these days, and fear is the ultimate prosperity killer.”

65.02 - Freedom, Inc. Free Your Employees and Let Them Lead Your Business to Higher Productivity, Profits and Growth by Brian M. Carney & Isaac Getz

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

“From Genesis ‘in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread’ to Marx’s ]the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains,’ work has always been seen as a constraint and the workplace as a ship’s galley. But this is beginning to change, and it comes, we have discovered, not from workers but from their bosses. This is the most important corporate movement of the last two decades, a movement that has been quietly transforming the fortunes of dozens of businesses and the lives of thousands of employees by using a source of benefits neglected by most—complete freedom and responsibility for employees to take actions they, not their bosses, decide are best.”

65.03 - Chief Culture Officer: Building a Living, Breathing Corporation by Grant McCracken

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

“The American corporation is bad at culture. It’s good at management, finance, technology, and HR. It’s getting better at innovation, cocreation and social media. But culture? It still pretty much sucks at culture. Culture is the ‘last mile’ for the corporation. It’s the final ‘core competence’ required for its skill set. Until it masters culture the way it now master the other pieces of management—finance, strategic planning, human resources—it will suffer the blind side hit or miss yet another opportunity. The thing about errors here is that they are not small. They do not merely take a percentage point of volume or profit. They do not merely inflict a tiny ding on a CEOs reputation. No, the mistakes that come from culture can cost millions. And they lay a CEO low. It’s time to bring in a Chief Culture Officer.”

65.04 - Brands Are People Too by Joy Panos Stauber

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF. “When you talk about ‘branding,’ you are not discussing a superficial activity. More and more business people are finally starting to understand that. A brand is not a veneer you apply to make a business (or product or service or idea) appealing to its intended audience. Instead, a brand begins to exist when a business has something to offer to the world—values, services, or products. From there, the brand’s work is to articulate those unique attributes and strive to communicate them the right way, and to the right people. Even so, a brand is not what a business says it is. It’s what the consumer ends up perceiving it to be.”