Breaking the Curse of Knowledge

Megan is standing on a stage, in the middle of the most important presentation of her career, facing a sea of perplexed and unengaged faces.

Megan is cursed. 

Fourteen months ago, because of her leadership, attention to detail, and meticulous planning, Megan was put in charge of orchestrating the rollout of her company’s flagship product.

And by every standard, she has exceeded expectations. 

Stop her in the hall and she can effortlessly recite details: product information, KPIs, migration benchmarks, and every action item from the two dozen planning meetings she’s led with the development team.

But now, she’s at a conference announcing the much-anticipated rollout to their customers...and it’s not going well.  The front row looks painfully confused, there’s a murmur of questions emanating from the back of the room, and, while it could be her imagination, she thinks her own team has slunk down in their chairs.

Megan’s cursed, not because she’s ill-prepared, but, rather, because she’s so well prepared. 

Megan is an expert, and therein lies the problem.

In their New York Times Bestseller Made to Stick[1], Chip and Dan Heath describe what they call the Curse of Knowledge.  Based on the dissertation research of Elizabeth Newton at Stanford University[2], the Heaths’ indicate that experts often struggle to make clear, effective presentations because it’s difficult for them to imagine what it’s like to not know what they know.

As a result, the Curse of Knowledge can befall experts in two opposite, but equally damaging ways:

1)    Present too much detail and drown your audience in a sea of extraneous information that detracts from the overall message.

2)    Present too little information and leave your audience struggling to understand what you’re saying.

Fortunately, there are 3 easy steps to break the Curse of Knowledge!

1.     Write Down Your Takeaways

Every time you present, you want your audience to recognize and remember specific things.  These are your takeaways.  Despite being the most important part of a presentation, takeaways often get lost or left to chance.  To ensure that your takeaways guide your presentation, get in the habit of writing down your exact takeaways before you start building your presentation.  What is it that you need your audience to understand and retain?  For more information on takeaways, please see our December 2020 Soundbite, The ‘Water Cooler Test’, and remember, you can’t have more than 4 takeaways!

2.     Perform An Audience Audit

While the goal isn’t to unlearn everything that makes you an expert, it is to be smarter about what you say to each audience.  You can more purposefully appreciate your audience’s vantage point if you carefully consider who they are and what they know.  We call this performing an audience audit, and it’s a series of specific questions that help you determine what level of detail and background information is required to maximize the effectiveness of your communication with them.  Each audience requires its own audience audit and, even if you’re speaking about the same subject, you may have to frame your content differently based on the results of each audience audit.  For more information on the audience audit, please see our August 2018 Soundbite, Pure Art! Pure Color! Pure Baseball!

3.     Be Aware of the Curse

The Curse of Knowledge relies on an unsuspecting victim—an expert who is so comfortable, familiar, and in-command of their information that it’s second nature to them.  The greater the expertise, the greater the threat of the Curse.  Only by acknowledging its existence and vetting your information—the detail, descriptions, jargon, and acronyms—through a lens of “will this make sense to someone other than me” can you hope to combat the Curse and deliver the perfect level of detail.  Performing a dry run with a non-expert and pointedly asking the question, “Does this really make sense?” can help.

While the puzzled looks on the faces of Megan’s audience could have been the result of being overwhelmed or lost, it all comes back to the Curse of Knowledge. 

Ensure that all your hard work, expertise, and experience go to good use by purposefully breaking the Curse of Knowledge when it comes to your communications.

[1] Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to Stick. Random House, 2007

[2] Newton, Elizabeth. The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions. 1990. Stanford University. PhD.