Optimists v Pessimists

Someone once said that the definition of an optimist is someone who keeps repeating the same behaviour and expecting a different result. Likewise a pessimist is someone who keeps changing their behaviour and expecting the same result. Why do I bring this up? Recently I have been part of discussions with the marketing department of a medium sized company about the performance of some of their products. They have been actively encouraging consumers to change their purchase from one size of Product X to a different size, by changing the way they promote and their on-pack promotions. Shock! Horror! The consumers actually changed their behaviour....but more surprising is that the marketers wanted to know why the original size of Product X declined. Did they have that little faith in what they were doing?

Before taking action we should fully consider the possible outcomes. Pessimist or optimist, we may not always get the outcome we would like but we wil almost always get the outcome that is intended...whether we know what that is or not.