The question, "When did you last listen to a poor person properly and try to understand what's going on inside their own experience?" enables you to connect.

If you were disabled in Russia, you had to re-register every year, and it took up to six months to re-register, so people who lost limbs in Afghanistan had to prove that their leg hadn't grown back.

Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get the growth and everybody benefits. And they'll just repeat that, because if you're a minister or a senior civil servant, you don't have time to read anything anymore. You get very fixed in your views.

Somewhere like Russia or China, decision-makers have far fewer constraints on acting than in more open systems.

There are always pressures on decision-makers other than just what is right or what is wrong.

Often we're having an argument with something imaginary - a fixed idea of the "enemy" and the good. We need to get beyond that and actually develop a deep curiosity about people and systems and understand them better.

Activists can get very preachy about things. It's more about understanding people's own experiences and tapping into them.