Reverb Consulting

When I was a child my father had an 8 track player in his car.  He didn’t choose to have it; it was just in the car that he bought.  I liked to listen to vinyl records and thought the idea of music of your choice while you drove was a pretty good idea.  My dad bought me a stereo with turntable to play my records and it included an 8 track player.  Again, I don’t think that my dad choose that 8 track player; it just came with the stereo.  Before long my older brother came home from college and he had added a cassette player in his car.  When he showed me his new toy, he explained that he had come to the conclusion that the cassette format offered a better technology than the 8 track format.  He predicted that the 8 track format would become obsolete; it would cease to be relevant.  I immediately took issue with his conclusion.  I had no factual evidence to rebut his claim.  I had never even considered the question before.  But as a young child with an undeveloped mind, I was adamantly opposed to his conclusion.  Why?  Because I owned an 8 track player.  I was on the ‘8 track team’ and I was loyal to my team.  This automatic defensive reaction, concluding without any conscious thought, is something that I consider to be human nature.  I see this reaction all the time now even in well educated adults.  Some people just have an automatic aversion to anything new.  They have that mindless automatic reaction without any investigation.  They never even ask a question.

My brother considered the choice between more relevant music players available at the time and made a decision.  He asked the question, “What is the best available format?” His answer was right at that point in time.  When he asks that same question today, there is a different answer.  The question remains the same but the answer has changed. Not only has the 8 track lost it’s relevance, so has the cassette.  Today my brother has an iPod.  In this analysis of decision making and its factors, I see another valuable lesson.  I encounter plenty of folks that seem to have the attitude that once they get “the” right answer, they can check that off and move on. They never considered questioning again.  They never “re-consider”.  Consider your acquaintances that still have the same hairstyle that they sported in their early twenties.

Be mindful of the fact that there is a question to be asked.
Be accepting that you may not know the answer.
Be willing to ask the question.
Determine the answer appropriate to this moment in time.
Consider the answer relevant only for right now because answers change.
Ask the question again.

Stay relevant

Here is what the 'relevance expert' suggested for our Mom on Mother's Day