Too Much is Just Right
On the curse of knowledge
If you’ve read a business book in the last couple of decades, you’ve surely heard about the “curse of knowledge.”
It’s often illustrated with this little experiment you can run yourself.
Get a friend, and ask them to choose a piece of music without telling you what it is. Then, ask them to tap out the music with their hand on a table or against their leg. Can you guess what they’ve chosen?
More than likely, you can’t, which can be surprising for the person tapping out the music. But you, the listener, can’t hear what’s playing in their head. If you’re the tapper, you’re probably mentally playing back “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” or Brahms’s second piano concerto — a bunch of extra context the listener doesn’t have with only the rhythm.
I was reminded of this recently working with the founder of a new venture. At first, they seemed baffled — even slightly annoyed — that I suggested spending a bunch of time to make sure their strategy was extremely well-documented. And that their entire team actually read it, understood it, and were willing to attend multiple meetings to have it explained verbally.
They thought all this was a waste of time. Wasn’t explaining it once enough?
This attitude fails to understand the “curse of knowledge.”
When you’re tapping out that piece of music, you don’t appreciate how much context you have that your listener or listeners might not when you’re explaining something. And so, when you fail to do so, you leave your audience confused or frustrated.
So too in the workplace when leaders give instructions without explaining why. Or who give a quick explanation once in passing, and are then surprised when people have no memory of it a few days or weeks later when you ask why someone’s lost the plot.
When it comes to explaining strategy and goals, too much is just enough.
Tasks and requests that may seem obviously connected and obviously tied to the strategy in your head as a leader may not be so obviously tied together to the rest of your team. These requests and decisions can come across as arbitrary, capricious, and inconsistent, giving people a sense of whiplash.
Moreover, you’re really holding your team back by not empowering them to see these through lines. If someone needs constant task-level babysitting, that’s a problem. But it may be your problem as a leader if you’re not giving them the context and information to understand how to see the bigger pattern.
If you’re frequently intervening and finessing what people are doing — because it’s not in line with the strategy— that may be as much your unsuccessful attempts to explain your strategy as it is their inability to grasp it.
Fortunately, I think fixing this is pretty easy.
When you think you’ve made your point too much, that’s probably when you’re doing it enough. In other words, explain the why and the context until you’re blue in the face and people are sick of hearing about it.
Having one meeting where you unveil your strategy for the year is not enough. Not nearly enough. You need to repeat the strategy at every chance you get. When people sigh, roll their eyes, or start making jokes about how many times you’ve repeated the framing and the background for that strategy, you know you’ve succeeded.
Probably the best analogue for this comes from the world of politics.
People who are glued to CNN or Meet the Press often complain that political operators repeat themselves over and over again. Your favorite MC1 (if she’s any good) is using the same soundbite for weeks in every interview. You’ll hear that a given law “sets a dangerous precedent” or “does what’s right for families” endlessly until the vote happens and the matter is closed out.
But that’s not most people. The typical citizen dips in and out of news. For the politician, you have to repeat something so often and so much that it winds up in hundreds of different news clips. So that you can be sure the one of the hundreds of bulletins — or Instagram stories or TikTok posts — your potential voters does see gets your message across.
The same goes for your team as a leader. You’re living, breathing, and thinking about strategy and how all the pieces fit together all the time. Your team probably isn’t. They’re busy putting together marketing collateral, building features, or talking to users to research pain points.
It’s really easy to forget how much context we have. Whether that’s trying to convey a piece of music or getting everyone on your team to understand strategy. As much as we’d like to think and hope we’re the most captivating speakers who convey information perfectly, that’s not reality. When it comes to getting your message across, too much is about the right amount.
Enjoy this? Have an idea for something you’d like a perspective on? Drop me a line: I’d love to hear from you.
As in “Member of Congress” in the style of “Member of Parliament.”Yes, I know I’m trying to make fetch happen — but I got this from some serious political scientists!