The Curse of Knowledge
I love this phrase; I love what it represents. If you are aware of it, you can plan for it. The curse of knowledge (CoK) is a major source of business confusion, missed requirements, misunderstandings, and lost opportunities. It affects all personas within a business or at a customer site. Specifically for product management and marketing teams, it will result in products and features to not hit the mark for customers and missed customer expectations. For the April 2021 BPMA Product Executive Forum (PEF), the group discussed the curse of knowledge, how it manifests, and how to work around it.
Defined
So, what is the CoK? It is the idea that you are so steeped and experienced in a topic, it becomes difficult to communicate and share your knowledge with others. It is difficult to imagine what it would be like to lack that knowledge. This phrase was made popular in the book “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. Let’s take a simple example: Making a right-hand turn in a car. For an experienced driver having performed it thousands of times, right-hand turns are automatic and from muscle memory. Further, while you might not even think about, you scan crosswalks for people, search for a ‘No Turn on Red’ sign and myriad of other details like not oversteering and ensuring no one is turning left into your lane. So, when your 15- or 16-year-old goes out for a practice drive with you, simply saying, “Make a right hand turn,” is likely causing him or her heart palpitations and panic.
In Business
For Product Management and Product Marketing, CoK affects communications with customers, partners, and other employees on a daily basis. At the most fundamental it occurs and is exacerbated for two primary reasons:
The expert communicating to, for example, a customer, doesn’t want to dumb down their expertise for fear of coming off as unprofessional or a non-expert.
Similarly, the customer doesn’t want to ask a question that make them sound naïve.
What happens next can be a myriad of bad outcomes. For example:
The customer does not understand the product or its advantages.
The expert reporting back to management that he/she did a good job in selling, marketing servicing, or supporting a product or service.
Poor user research, requirements gathering, or other innovation engagement.
Missed shared understanding of the business problem.
This in turn can result in lost sales, poor product-market fit, or solutions that are late, incomplete, or miss the mark.
A Solution Framework
The first step is simple. Be aware of this issue in business exchanges and watch for it. You will be surprised in interactions with customers, partners, and colleagues, how much meeting time is consumed by the CoK.
With this in mind the Product Executive Forum discussed a simple framework* addressing the issue:
*Source of the framework is Baron Strategic Partners.
The X-Axis covers the expertise of the listener. Is your listener a new employee or someone from a different job-function? For instance, if your company is in the healthcare technology space, you cannot assume that all employees are equally versed in things like “Population Health”, “Hemoglobin A1c”, or “how CMS Rules affect Medicare reimbursement for Fee For Service procedures,” (that is a lot of CoK). So, first assess WHO you are talking to and understand that your audience may include IT specialists (non-domain experts) and physicians (medical domain experts) and then tailor your presentation.
The Y-Axis covers the urgency to communicate. If it is urgent (important), then depending on the listener type, you will either need to use the jargon or you will need to take the time to educate them. For example, engineers talking to engineers may have critical need to speak technically and specifically. While a new engineer may need to be educated before they can engage in these conversations. Finally, if the urgency for understanding is less critical or allows for more time, you can either avoid the jargon altogether or in the case of a sales call with multiple buyers, take the time to validate their level of knowledge before diving in.
In The End
Be aware that Curse of Knowledge issue exists. Whether you are creating sales presentations or product collateral, or you’re hosting a sales call or talking to a customer on the support line, the CoK can strike. Keep these four questions in mind as you communicate with others to avoid its trap:
How much does the listener know about this subject?
How critical or urgent is it to use talk using industry or domain jargon in completing the task?
What assumptions am I making about their level of expertise?
How can I validate my assumptions about their level of expertise?