These executives are foregoing a knee-jerk response in favor of smart strategies for a down economy.

    By Ram Charan

    Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric

    How I changed the way we communicate

    The business press isn't always the most complimentary to GE these days. So we hired people from different backgrounds -- like political backgrounds -- to teach us how to communicate better to our investors and to our own people.

    I'd have to say we are much better at communicating because of the crisis than we were before, when we could just take our reputation for granted.

    Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon

    How I changed our marketing to reflect the times

    We've seen research that says only 13% of people who are trading down will go back to their old spending patterns. For us, it's a great opportunity to make explicit what has always been implicit: that Avon is a smart value.

    In our catalogue we're using language like, "Look beautiful for less," "Beauty on a budget," or "Shop smart: Shop Avon."

    Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Nalco

    How I motivated my employees to cut costs

    We saw the market start to weaken in late September and quickly established a goal of cutting $150 million in costs for 2009. We froze salary increases but said if we hit the goal, everybody would get a 4% increase. When we hit the halfwaymark -- $75 million -- everyone got a 2% increase. If we cut more than our goal in the second half, they'll get more.

    David Steiner, CEO of Waste Management

    How I got my customers to share the pain

    In the past our recycling business had a "revenue share" model. Customers gave us cardboard, we'd sell it for, say, $100. They'd get $75, we'd get $25. But if cardboard prices plunged, we'd lose money with every transaction.

    As we go to customers now, we're instead doing a processing fee of $20 plus 10%. We get a physical hedge on commodity prices, and we ensure we can never lose money on the deals.