What makes you stop in the street and stare?

Regular readers will know I’m (more than) a bit obsessive about road cycling. I will walk past the shiniest, most expensive motorbike without a glance, but if there’s a carbon fibre road bike locked to a railing beside it, I will stop. Doesn’t matter if I’m running late for something, I will pause and admire.

A motorbike fanatic would think I’m mad. They’d stop at the motorbike and admire the power, the transmission or the chrome before striding past the carbon fibre object of my desire without noticing it. An aero seat post or a Di2 derailleur would mean nothing to them, just as much as the latest supercharger (or whatever) would mean nothing to me.

This shows how the filters in our brain act so we ignore the vast majority of the world around us. The filters only draw our attention to what is important to each of us. This has critical implications for engaging people in Sustainability: if someone is already ambivalent to sustainability, then their mental filters will block out (almost) every sustainability message you throw at them.

Green Jujitsu is the art of finding the overlap between what turns your audience on and the Sustainability agenda – and starting engagement there. Because you are packaging Sustainability with their interests, the message will get past their filters – and you get engagement. So, if you want to engage an engineer in Sustainability, then challenge them to solve Sustainability problems. Engineers love solving problems, so the message gets through their filters. And, if you’re really good at this, you’ll find their filters start to open and let more and more sustainability stuff through.