Relevance: The Power to Change Minds and Behavior and Stay Ahead of the Competition

9

How to Become Irrelevant

You Don’t Want to, but You Could Be Taking Steps to Make It Happen

We are trying to be funny with our chapter title, “How to Become Irrelevant,” of course no one wants to become irrelevant.¹

And yet, without working very hard, you can come up with a seemingly endless list of companies, products, services, or ideas that have achieved irrelevant status, some within a very short time.²

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

—Four-Star General Eric Shinseki

Organizations have an obligation to stay close to their customers, and yet we are constantly amazed by the number of companies and nonprofits that don’t spend any appreciable part of their marketing or research budget doing that. They ...