Håkan Samuelssons Kennedy-statement

Two days ago, Håkan Samuelsson, (CEO) for Volvo cars, made the following statement: From 2019, all internal combustion engines in new Volvo cars will be supplemented with electric propulsion in form of mind or plug-in hybrid powertrains. The content of the statement is consistent with assigned goal-setting which triggers motivation and curiosity to explore to learn and discovery. It's similar to John F Kennedy's moon statement 1961. It’s likely that Samuelsson’s statement will have a similar impact on people working at Volvo cars.

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Two days ago, Håkan Samuelsson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Volvo cars, made the following statement:

From 2019, all internal combustion engines in new Volvo cars will be supplemented with electric propulsion or plug-in hybrid powertrains.

Samuelsson gave the rationale for the statement:

We are determined to be the first premium car maker to move our entire portfolio of vehicles into electrification … This I a clear commitment towards reducing our carbon footprint.

The content of the statement is consistent with assigned goal-setting: a clear and challenging rhetorical symbol of a wanted future, with a narrow time-frame.

It’s common knowledge that goals, if they are clear and challenging, will influence peoples’ driver of behavior - motivation - which in turn explain performance, creativity for problem solving, and learning (Dunker, 1945; Locke and Latham, 2002; Österberg, 2012).

How does this kind of message influence the receiving part?

Neuro-physiology describe the process in the following way:

The Hippocampus responds to novel stimuli by sending a burst of the messenger substance dopamine to the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA), according to the hippocampal-SN/VTA loop model. From the SN/VTA, nerve fibers run back to the hippocampus, triggering the release of additional dopamine in response to novelty. These brain structures deteriorate with age, which may help account for why seniors sometimes have trouble remembering new information (Fenke and Schütze, 2008).

When people encounter novel and challenging information, they get curious to explore and learn new things (and probably open-minded enough to apply this new knowledge to solve complex problems).

In 1961 John F Kennedy gave two speeches dealing with putting a man on the moon - the Apollo project. One speech to the Congress to get money for the project, and another one to the nation to encourage people to learn new things that could be used to solve various complex problems that lead to building a rocket that can travel to the moon. It was very successful.

It’s likely that Samuelsson’s statement will have a similar impact on people working at Volvo cars, as well as the car industry as a whole. As with the Apollo project there are numerous problems that seem unsolvable, and with prospective thinking, but they managed to solve them.

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