I hear you

Sometimes, it’s hard to get your voice heard. In the team meeting or the communal Slack, whether the subject is how to implement a critical new design element or deciding whose turn it is to do the washing up, that feeling of being overlooked or not listened to will be familiar to many. All the forces of truth and science may be on your side, but the person you are talking to can be so intransigent and set on not listening that it takes personal experience to change their mind. Think of the smoker who only reforms after contracting sepsis, or the climate denier whose Road to Damascus only starts when their own house burns down in a wildfire.

Absurd or comic reaches of the imagination can be called for, like surrounding yourself with sports- and businesspeople of a certain hue and gender in order to convince a foreign president that you might, just might, know your own country better than they do. Sadly, not many of us can call in favours from golf pros and rich-listers to get our point across.