Ways to Engage the Elephant

So, how do you attract and engage the elephant?

• Tell it stories

• Surprise it

• Show it shiny things

• Tell it all the other elephants are doing it

• Leverage the elephant’s habits

Tell It Stories

Read the following story about a friend of mine:

My friend Karen can’t tell left from right. Just can’t do it. When she really needs to know, she still holds up both hands to see which one forms the “L” for left.

As you might imagine, this is a bit of a problem while she’s driving. She has a hard time following directions, and meeting another car at a four-way stop is practically cause for a panic attack.

She knows that the driver on the right gets to go first, but between the difficulty of figuring out which one is on the right, and the inevitable second-guessing of that, she ends up doing a dance of start-stop-staaaart-stop-STOP until she winds up waving the other driver through regardless of who actually had the right of way.