Over the past few days Lucy Kellaway at the Financial Times has planted teddy bears in office meetings to test research from Harvard University that the presence of stuffed animals makes adults more likely to “engage in pro-social behaviours.”
Lucy was unable to replicate the civilizing effect of toys in her morning news conference, but this story makes me think of innovative methods that researchers use to engage business partners. We have seen Amway create “trends forest” events to help business partners see the forest for the trends trees and Levi Strauss diagnose individual constituents’ learning styles to maximize recommendation adoption.
What are your secrets for improving business partner communication? Share your tricks-of-the-trade hits and misses in the comments section below.
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