Nobody Decides to Become Irrelevant. Are You Becoming a Phone Booth?

Do you remember phone booths?

I do.

They were everywhere. On city sidewalks, inside diners, in hotel lobbies. You planned around them. You remembered where they were. If you needed to make a call and you were away from home, you found one.

I was thinking about this recently and realized I could not remember the last time I saw one in use. Or the last time I even noticed one.

I suspect you cannot either.

They didn’t disappear overnight. There was no announcement that all booths will be removed by a certain date. They simply became irrelevant, gradually. The world moved on. More convenient options came along. Phone booths, as useful as they once were, were far inferior to alternatives, so no one needed them anymore.

What was once essential infrastructure became, over time, street furniture nobody looks at. And, eventually, something that had to be removed.

This happens with things. It also happens with people and companies.

Kodak had engineers who invented digital photography in 1975. Its leadership spent the next two decades protecting film. They failed despite initially being ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and understanding what customers wanted. They failed because they could not imagine a world where their expertise no longer mattered.

Blockbuster had data showing streaming’s rise by 2006. Leadership spent years protecting physical rentals and late fees. They could have bought Netflix at $50 million, a cost that meant nothing to them, but they could not have been less interested. They failed because they could not imagine a world without store clerks.

BlackBerry was the phone to have. Its founders genuinely believed business professionals would never want to browse the internet on a phone.

None of them decided to become obsolete. It happened the same way it happened to the phone booth. Gradually. Then completely.

The world moves fast. Especially right now.

The skills that made you professionally relevant five years ago are not the same ones that will keep you relevant this year, let alone next year or five years from now.

This is not a warning. It is just how it works. And you already know it.

Which is why the question is worth asking yourself, not once, but very often. It is also a variation of a question we ask about every client we coach:

Is this client becoming a phone booth?

What needs to change to help them stay relevant and remain in demand?

If there is any doubt, the answer is not to think about it more carefully. The answer is to change what you are doing. Fast. Starting today.

At StrategyTraining.com we work with people who have decided not to wait. Senior professionals who want to build a sustainable competitive advantage and stay professionally relevant in 2026, not rely on what they thought was relevant two years ago.

We focus on the strategic layer. How to think about markets. How to build arguments that influence people and deliver extraordinary results. How to develop insights that make your clients and superiors see you differently. How to connect what you do to outcomes that actually matter to the people above you.

That kind of thinking does not go out of date. But it does not happen on its own either.

The people who stay professionally relevant share one habit. They keep investing in how they think, speak, write and lead. They do it consistently, even when life is busy and budgets are tight.

Because they know that the moment they stop, the drift starts. It is not that noticeable at first.

Then one day it is.

They also know that studying the same material as everyone else in their field will not give them a competitive edge. It will keep them on par, maybe, if they are equally gifted or talented. That is different from being ahead.

Take care,

Kris Safarova

StrategyTraining.com / FIRMSconsulting.com