News SPLASH

Can adding an element of fun, change behavior?  For commuters in Stockholm, it did.  To encourage more people to take the stairs than the escalator, Volkswagen Sweden anonymously transformed subway stairs there into a giant piano keyboard.  As commuters climbed up and down, they were delighted by the sounds of actual musical notes (watch the video).   Stair traffic rose 66%.  Later, Volkswagen revealed they were behind the experiment and a campaign called the Fun Theory.  According to BusinessWeek (11/2/09), the “campaign will next feature Web ads that ‘link the projects to our environmentally friendly cars,’ says Marcus Thomasfolk, VW Sweden’s head of communications.”  How can you inject fun to engage consumers with your brand?

Flip-flopping is bad in politics and in business, right?  Not so, according to Jack and Suzy Welch in their March 9 BusinessWeek column.  Here is what they say:  "What nonsense.  It is the essence of leadership to have the self-confidence to admit that a strategy has gone off course or a position has become outdated...Change happens."  We whole-heartedly support this position when it comes to business.  When is the last time that a project moved perfectly from A to Z?  More likely you ran into obstacles, experienced changes or met unexpected outcomes.  To some, that might mean failure or poor planning.  But if you waited for each and every question to be answered before moving forward, you never would.  What leads to success (or not) is how you recalibrate at each roadblock.  As the business gurus write, "...it is the responsibility of all leaders in such a 'predicament' to revise their direction swiftly, widely communicate it, and move on without undue pandering or emotionality."  What do you think about flip-flopping?

Resilience - the ability to bounce back from adversity - is completely underrated and yet absolutely critical in this time of economic turmoil.  Psychoanalyst Kerry Sulkowicz, MD, says in his recent BusinessWeek column, "Analyze This," that emotional resilience in the face of the current crisis would be "the ability to resist being swept up in the global state of panic and to adapt as creatively as possible to one's setbacks and losses."  In other words, this is the time to get creative and look for the opportunities that are (really!) out there.  The old ways may not be working so conjure your entrepreneurial roots and explore a different path - find new investments, create new products, try new communications techniques.  Dr. Sulkowicz writes that he sees a variety of responses from CEOs he works with regarding our current state of affairs.  "Some see a dangerous and unpredictable time that they hope to 'ride out,'" he writes.  "Others consider these events a chance to learn, as they focus on protecting their companies and looking for opportunities."  Which will you choose?