If nobody's listening - stop talking.

I'm afraid I've got some bad news.

It's mostly for the Lean manufacturing people out there, as well as some of the Change Management people.

But, it could also be for you. I don't know.

But here it is:

I'm afraid nobody's listening to what you're saying.

I don't mean on here, or in life in general, I'm sure you're very interesting.

You certainly have an interesting job. I should know, I've been doing it for a while now, and I love it.

Which is why I start to head very rapidly toward the state of apoplexy when people aren't listening... AND YOU KEEP ON TALKING.

There are some very intelligent people out there, far more so than I.

So I become somewhat flabbergasted when they start to wax lyrical about the benefits of Process Flow Analysis (or Yamazumi's or whatever), and a couple of minutes into the conversation I look at the audience and think:

'No, you've lost them mate, back up...

Seriously, stop. They're not interested anymore'.

But, nope. It took you ages to learn this stuff and they're going hear what you've got to say.

The speakers out there will know what I'm talking about.

There's a certain kind of thinking, maybe it's intuition or, as James Altucher said:

"The best speakers are those that have spent 10,000 hours LISTENING".

I say this from a good place, a mildly frustrated, but good, place:

If you're not engaged with them, they won't engage with you. So, save your breath.