Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable.
I keep coming back to the phrase "Dance with the system" - not just march onwards no matter what happens.
The post-Second World War simple system of social democracy and organized labour has fragmented massively, but just because people aren't organized in workplace trade unions doesn't mean they aren't in associations with other people - work-based, place-based, culture-based, sport-based, faith-based - there's a bit of an old rainbow coalition argument.
Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get the growth and everybody benefits. And they'll just repeat that, because if you're a minister or a senior civil servant, you don't have time to read anything anymore. You get very fixed in your views.
You have a huge number of people who spend their time writing papers which show that migrants pay more to the country than they take out in benefits, and they say, "Why don't you approve of migration? Why don't you open up borders?" They're not able to empathize with how people feel about migration.
What you don't do is just say, "I've got all the ideas and all the knowledge, and listen to me."
If you were disabled in Russia, you had to re-register every year, and it took up to six months to re-register, so people who lost limbs in Afghanistan had to prove that their leg hadn't grown back.
There are always pressures on decision-makers other than just what is right or what is wrong.
Somewhere like Russia or China, decision-makers have far fewer constraints on acting than in more open systems.
When we do work in places like China and Vietnam, research tends to be really effective as a way of getting change, whereas in more open places, mobilization and the creation of public pressure through the media often seem to be the things we try.
Lots of people in the open system are very determined to try and strengthen evidence-based policy.
To be effective at selling ideas, at being a lobbyist, influencing other people, you have to be very sure of yourself.
I see [activists] getting really angry that people won't just do what the evidence tells them, and that's not very helpful. You need to actually think why that is.
There's no point in just hankering for the big trade unions of the 1950s or '60s.
I sound like a church nut, but look at the role of the churches in the civil rights movement in the States. People are brought together in other ways that can become drivers of change.
In any system, there will be change happening without you.
People are saying, "I have a right to my opinion. Don't just keep condescending, telling me what to think." There's something slightly liberating about that, but also it lends itself to being taken advantage of, because in come the demagogues.
The death of deference seems to be general at the moment, so everybody has to earn their reputation and trust all over again. You don't just get it by virtue of being a professor or a politician or anybody else.
There's a tendency for people who believe passionately in something to be so convinced of their rightness that if they just repeat themselves a lot at the person, that will convince them. And that hasn't worked on things like immigration or trade deals.
I have to be sure of myself - in a conditional way, always being open to the possibility that I'm wrong.
When you get talking to people in positions of power, you find that often their worldview is framed either in terms of their disciplinary studies at university and/or the country where they first got interest in development.
The magic formula is there is no magic formula.
Some kinds of activists are more willing to try stuff out, see if works and think on their feet, but some of the people who are working on [change] find that very difficult: They've been schooled into thinking you have to come up with the perfect plan in advance. It has become a bit technocratic.
In the end, that's a blind alley - we have to get back to being able to think on our feet and react.
People think there's a single solution to complex problems, and the solution is often making an enemy of a group of people - pulling back and rejecting the other.
