Curse of Knowledge and its impact on Teams. Here is how to fix it.
“When we are given knowledge, it is impossible to imagine what it’s like to LACK that knowledge.” — said Chip Heath, an Organizational Psychologist from Stanford Business School. In my experience as a Product Owner in all these years, I observed that when I transfer and translate the process requirements to the technology team, one of the frequent feedback I hear from the team is that they need more information. They need more context. I miss sharing such additional information which I usually have because I either incorrectly assume that the technology team already has this information or they may not need such information.
Another Stanford Psychology expert says — “The problem is that once we know something — say, the melody of a song — we find it hard to imagine not knowing it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. We have difficulty sharing it with others because we can’t readily re-create their state of mind”. So in the team environment, it is easy to underestimate the fact the team might not have the same information as the team leads or the executives. This results in vague objectives, ambiguous communication of requirements, and lack of clarity in directions.
For that matter, this is one of the problems in parenting and teaching young kids too. We inherently assume the kids know certain information when we teach them complex topics or even simple ones. For example, when my mom tells me cooking recipes over the phone, she says things like ‘Add little flour to the dish, until you feel its right’, or ‘You will smell it when it is right’. Now my mom does not intend to abstract things or maintain secrecy. However, she misses giving clear direction here. I am certain I do this with my child too.
So it is important in all dimensions to overcome this curse of knowledge so that we can be better parents and better leaders in our organization.
How can we as leaders and as parents ensure we don’t fall for this curse and not give vague objectives and directions? We can try these:
1. Don’t assume
The first step to tackle this bias is to be aware that we can fall for this bias. This means as a leader/parent, we should not assume that our audience knows all the information surrounding the topic we are communicating. We should be aware of the list of steps on how we got to a certain level and articulate those details.
In the traditional waterfall process, the process of requirement gathering, requirement analysis, development, and testing are very distinct and indeed time-consuming. In an agile environment, however, a Product owner might try to collapse and consolidate certain steps such as requirement gathering and requirement analysis; which is what I did. There is one side effect of this consolidation. We might end up thinking of the feasibility of the solution in the business discussions which results in narrowing down the business perspective of the requirement. So it's important that leaders should not assume that everyone in the team has a broader narrative in such cases.
2. Empathize — i.e. know your child / know your team
This is a critical step. Understand your audience’s thought structure, mimic that, and come up with a process that helps everyone in the team. Give directions in that language.
In the example above in the first point, it would be useful to still narrate that broader perspective in technical terms.
3. Use stories — Give context and examples
Storytelling is an age-old but powerful tool. This is the best strategy to describe the context of a topic you are covering.
For example, when you tell a child slow and steady wins a race he might not understand why. However, when you give Hare and tortoise story, he would.
This technique applies to both parenting children and leading teams.
4. Breakdown the tasks
Try to breakdown the tasks in a chunk of easily understandable information. Cover these topics separately and connect all these topics last eventually. It is important to note that there is a fine line here between breaking down the tasks and being patronizing. Know the audience here and don’t cross that line.
If you break this curse of knowledge, with the strategies mentioned above, there is a high chance you would be on the right track to being a more expressive and articulate leader. We can expect to see empowered teams who can take ownership, increased engagement, and higher satisfaction because of increased learning and development.
P.S: All opinions are mine, and strictly made in a personal capacity. This does not represent any firms or individuals with whom I work.
