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Do you work for someone who always has the answer, always has a comforting explanation for why things are as they are?

A bad monthly? Oh, he knows why, instantly opining on a number that is so open to error and misinterpretation as to be virtually meaningless.

These people walk through their life, and – unfortunately, if you work for one – yours, with the comfort of certainty.

Minds totally closed to uncertainty, unable to allow one opposing opinion; to do so would shatter their veneer of confidence.

Consider this:

“Am I sure? Is it really so? Is my preexisting opinion causing me to omit anything?“

And this:

“He has a gift for reconsideration. Reconsideration is hard; it takes courage. We have to deny ourselves the comfort of always being the same person, one who arrived at an answer some time ago and has never had any reason to doubt it.

In other words, we have to stay open (easy to say, in that confident, New Age way, but so hard to actually do, in the face of actual, grinding, terrifying life).

As we watch Chekhov continually, ritually doubt all conclusions, we’re comforted. It’s all right to reconsider. It’s noble — holy, even. It can be done.

We can do it.

We know this because of the example he leaves in his stories, which are, we might say, splendid, brief reconsideration machines.“

That’s the American author, George Saunders, who many consider the best living short story writer in the world. He’s describing the great Russian writer, Anton Chekhov. (If you’d like to read the book, about which I’ve posted before, it’s titled “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.”)

I have sat in rooms with Radio executives who allow no uncertainty and who then destroy others’ careers.

Interestingly, the fault they see so clearly always involves someone other than themselves.

They rarely have any real insight into why this station is successful and that one is not. And most are too insecure to admit that, especially to those signing their checks.

It’s easier – safer – to point to a song’s score in our music research, to declare with loud certainty that listeners want this, not that, when it comes to on-air content.

And the result…?

Well, the result is what you hear right now on the radio stations in your town.

Could the experience of listening to your station be different? Of course!

But that would require all those who affect the product you hear to have the self confidence to admit uncertainty.

To be open to reconsideration.

To admit they may have been wrong all this time.

Radio doesn’t have many with such courage today and you can clearly hear that every time you listen: safe, bland and boring…