Why she has not learned yet

A great many adults in Jeddah cannot swim, and they live a few minutes from the sea.

Ask them and most will say they would like to. Ask what they would like, exactly, and the answer is rarely about technique. They want to wade in past their knees on a family day out without making an excuse. They want to stop sitting on the sand holding everyone's phones while the children play.

That is the first half of the work: understanding what someone actually wants, in their own words, which is usually smaller and more personal than the product being sold to them.

The second half gets skipped. If she wants it, and the water is right there, why has she not done it already?

Usually it is not money, and it is not time. It is the thought of being the only grown woman in a pool full of eight-year-olds, splashing badly while somebody's mother watches from the side. It is not knowing whether there is a women's hour, or a coach who will not make a show of her. It is the question of what to wear, which nobody ever seems to answer in advance.

A school that only sells the dream, with photographs of confident swimmers in open water, is talking to the half of her that has already agreed. The half that is stuck never hears from it.

A school that says, plainly, adults only, women taught by women, a closed pool, a first lesson in the shallow end with nobody watching, has not made her want anything new. It has moved the thing standing in the way.

I think most of what gets called persuasion is this second step done badly. People are rarely short of desire. They are short of a path that does not cost them their dignity, and they turn up the week somebody clears one.