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To teach and educate, and to change behavior, you have to first grab your co-worker’s attention. How you do it this is a deeply cultural issue.

Do you depend on grabbing their attention by creating urgency? If yes, you know that after a while it becomes more and more difficult to find ways to raise urgency. When “urgency fatigue” sets in, you know that people have wised up to your lack of planning and tendency to escalate needlessly.

Do you tend to grab their attention by presenting facts and logic? If yes, then you know co-workers are like “tourists,” they will look, listen, applaud, and then move on. The assumption is “someone else will take action.”

The best way to grab attention is to make an important message deeply personal and tie it to each person’s success. If your co-worker can see how they stand to gain or lose, they will not only pay attention, they will reach out and take initiative.

Time to stop being the “town crier,” get in there into the trenches and whisper the message into your co-workers ears. This is difficult to do even in small companies, really hard to do in large enterprises. You just have to figure out a creative way to do it well.