Finding opportunity in bad news

After doing a workshop with some great Florida nonprofits today, I am in Fort Lauderdale airport trying to fly back to DC on a very delayed flight on USAir.  The agents promised mechanical status updates on our broken plane for over an hour and then made no announcements.  They did not even say to the 70 people in line, “We don’t have more information, bear with us.” Then the situation deteriorated to such a degree that people in line (not me, though I thought about it) started screaming to the agents, “PLEASE give us an update.”

It seemed near riot-status when they finally made an announcement—that we’ll leave in two hours because they found a part.  From JetBlue.  Thank you JetBlue for getting my USAir flight out of here.  Great marketing for JetBlue and lousy marketing for USAir.  If you’ve got bad news, just tell it and apologize.  If you have no news, explain that too.  Silence is not a good strategy.  Even bad events can be a good opportunity if you handle them right.  Southwest was so charming during my last flight delay, it was a net postive for them from a marketing perspective.

Given the highly negative vibe emanating out of Gate E3 right now, I thought I’d post on the concept of the power of positive thinking.  It is enjoying a lot of new attention lately, thanks to all the hype around The Secret, which is featured on the cover of Newsweek and on Oprah – a book and overall popular sensation that essentially says, the secret to getting what you want is willing it to be so with a positive mindset.  Self-help books have been saying this for years, as Newsweek points out, but our country can’t seem to get enough of it.  “The Secret” is very well marketed and making loads of money for the author.

Recently, I got asked to review a book, Top Performer’s Guide to Change, and much of what it concludes is that attitude determines outcome.  How you perceieve change will determine how well you are able to embrace it.  The authors (Tim Ursiny and Barbara Kay) do a thoughtful job explaining various personality types and their reactions to change, which is useful if you’re in the business of persuading people to do new things.  The book then suggests how to be better at adapting to and leading change by being optimistic and proactive, as well as what to do when you can’t change things – which is to let go and move on.  That’s not earth-shattering as a set of insights, but it’s useful to be reminded that if you view new things as opportunities rather than inconveniences, you’re going to be in much better shape.  If a news story or policy change or economic downturn renders your marketing plan less relevant, you can despair or you can figure out how to align with – and leverage – the change.  The right answer, of course, is the opportunistic #2. 

Of course, none of this should be a “secret” to us, and by even posting on any of this, I feel a little Oprah-esque.  But perhaps by willing my plane to leave on time, it will.

PS: My plane is actually boarding now, 90 minutes before they said it would.  Go figure.