The Curse of Knowledge

It can be awfully frustrating to feel like you are explaining something to someone over and over again, and they just are not getting it. Are they deaf? Are they not very smart? What’s wrong with these people???

Well, it’s possible that you have the Curse of Knowledge.

What is the Curse of Knowledge? It occurs when you forget what it’s like not to know a lot about the subject. You may feel its effects when you have a great idea you have been developing for months, and when you try to explain it to someone, they just do not understand what you mean. It’s important to remember that they have NOT spent months thinking about this, so things that seem like common sense to you (perhaps because you have been thinking about them obsessively) are completely unknown to them.

We often see this in educational environments; professors, for example, need to remember that their students don’t have PhDs, an thus cannot be expected to know all the ins and outs of a subject. But as organizations encourage more communication about strategies and plans from the bosses to employees, and as companies seek the benefits of innovation, we are seeing the Curse more and more in commercial settings.

Think about it: as the boss, you have (hopefully) developed a vision, and a plan for achieving it. In doing so, you (again, hopefully) spent a lot of time thinking about what the company should do and how it should do it. When you (once again, hopefully) share your strategy with your employees, you have to remember they have not spent the time working on this that you have, and so the things you now take for granted may be totally unusual to them. Take your time to tell the story right, and walk them through your thought process rather than just fast-forwarding to the ending and expecting them to understand it all the first time. If you are going to empower your employees and count on them to come up with ways to accomplish your strategy, you need to ensure they really get it.

You can help your employees be better at this, too. Many companies are actively encouraging innovation by their employees, which means that at some point they are going to come pitch an idea to you or some other decision maker. Once again, they have been thinking about this a lot, while the person on the receiving end of the pitch may be hearing about it for the first time. t’s important to help your employees get better at storytelling so they can get buy0in from others and move their ideas forward.

The Curse of Knowledge can lead to some very frustrating communication, when people just don’t seem to understand what you mean. If it seems obvious to you, it’s natural to assume it’s obvious to everyone, but that’s often not the case. Take some time to step back and look at a subject from the perspective of someone who has not thought about it, and you will get your point across a lot more easily.