What you don't do is just say, "I've got all the ideas and all the knowledge, and listen to me."

The magic formula is there is no magic formula.

To be effective at selling ideas, at being a lobbyist, influencing other people, you have to be very sure of yourself.

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

People think there's a single solution to complex problems, and the solution is often making an enemy of a group of people - pulling back and rejecting the other.

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.

Until you have looked in depth at the system and found out where women in Egypt are not being cut through female genital mutilation, or where kids in Vietnam are not malnourished, or where hospitals in America are getting rid of the superbugs anyway - unless you have that level of curiosity about what's going on without you, you will always come in with your great new recipe and just ignore what's going on, and that will make you much less effective at what you're trying to achieve.