Unlike Professor X, we can't get into people's head and tell them what to do.

But there's something else we can do.

My first job as an avionics engineer was to update the embedded software of an Fighter's Electronic Warfare Equipment so it would store and manage data in FlashPROM instead of EEPROM. Sounds easy, just replace an electronic component with another, and boom it's done.

Well, that system was an existing and robust one, built more than a few decades back, and I could not use all the technological benefits of Moore's Law ... damn ! I was limited by an old programming language of the time, and other technical constraints. That's how the system was built, I had to respect those limitations or the upgrade wouldn't work.

This happens with us engineer-minds when we go to business. We have access to so much more information and knowledge, languages and new concepts (our software), but our biology and our the primitive part of our brain responsible for decision making when exposed to novel ideas, the unknown, a new person or a new offer. That part (our hardware) didn't evolve much for at least the past 50.000 years .

So, unless we fulfil the biological, emotional and psychological needs first of the person we are communicating to, all the amazing technology in the world won't make it past the first sensor. The brain will go "ignore", doesn't seem important to my survival.

The one thing that shifted how people respond to me, my conversations and my offerings is : addressing the emotional ❤️ needs first (the problem), then go into the rational 🧠 (our solution).

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