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Friday, June 19, 2009 | Beating the Recession

Denver Business Journal - by Ed Sealover

Kathleen Lavine | Business Journal

More than 10 years ago, when Barbara Brannen was an executive with a 2,000-person company that needed to lay off 400 workers, she put her own job on the line.

As top officials piled into a room to discuss layoff strategies, she handed everyone but the CEO a red puffy nose. As he turned to address the meeting, he stared at 65 clowns — and laughed for the first time in five days.

Rather than giving the heart-wrenching speech he’d prepared, he asked for everyone’s help to figure out what could be done. In the end, the company didn’t lay off anyone; it changed strategy and tripled revenue in the next few years.

Click here for a DBJ/CBS4 video report on this story.

And though Brannen would stay in the corporate world until 1999, she realized that day that laughter and creativity can break the normal patterns of thinking in business and lead officials to new solutions. Now, after taking a nearly year-long break to rethink her focus, Brannen and her Playmore consulting business are back and growing rapidly.

“In this world today, there’s never been a time when more has been asked of us to be more creative, to be more out of the box,” she said. “People are so nervous and scared. If we can get people to move a little bit, it breaks up that tenseness.”

The Playmore concept came from one of Brannen’s children, who once advised her about a nervous client: “You just need them to play more, Mom.” She wrote a book called “The Gift of Play,” using it as a way to re-examine business.

After nine years of being pulled in different directions as a public speaker, consultant and executive coach, though, Brannen wanted to give more definition to her efforts. She took time off and re-branded herself as a “situational specialist,” a consultant not on permanent retainer who can come in and help in critical situations.

When she emerged from the hiatus, she had the idea of bringing together different clients for a “play date with Barbara.” At those free events, she takes a dozen business leaders of her choosing to places such as Don Paladino’s Balance Point Studios fitness area in Centennial, feeds them, makes them think creatively and gives them a new way of exercising.

“We’ll bring people in and we’ll play with the new idea,” Brannen said. “The more mixed up it is, the more fun it is.”

A normal consulting session with Brannen is anything but normal. But the games are not for distraction; they’re for tackling problems head-on.

Jasmine Espy, owner of Aurora-based Summit Staffing, took her staff to Playmore for a 2009 strategic planning session and saw Brannen counteract her focused, task-oriented style with a loose and all-involving structure. Staffers played the part of puzzle pieces to determine what they brought to the table, used crayons and pipe-fitters to create their vision, and were so overjoyed that many got emotional, she said.

“It’s probably spawned the most creative aspect I’ve ever formed in my business,” Espy said. “Her approach is very different. It’s not all whiteboards and stickers and a few breaks.”

Brannen’s clients range from those with $1.5 million in annual revenue to one that brings in more than $3 billion a year.

Business has grown 35 percent since she revamped it.

The key, clients said, is that while businesses are slower to pay for consulting at a time of recession, they’re willing to look at someone who will smile through it and still ask penetrating questions.

“In the times where everybody’s in almost a panic mode and there’s all kinds of layoffs going on, it’s tough to keep morale up,” Paladino said. “Barbara can help people understand that productivity can’t be sustained if everybody’s in fear.”