Chip and Dan Heath were recently interviewed by Guy Kawasaki about their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. There’s an interesting part where they discuss “the Curse of Knowledge.”
People tend to think that having a great idea is enough, and they think the communication part will come naturally. We are in deep denial about the difficulty of getting a thought out of our own heads and into the heads of others. It’s just not true that, “If you think it, it will stick.”
And that brings us to the villain of our book: The Curse of Knowledge. Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators. Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.
Here’s the great cruelty of the Curse of Knowledge: The better we get at generating great ideas—new insights and novel solutions—in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse. But notice we said “unnatural,” not “impossible.” Experts just need to devote a little time to applying the basic principles of stickiness.
JFK dodged the Curse [with “put a man on the moon in a decade”]. If he’d been a modern-day politician or CEO, he’d probably have said, “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry, using our capacity for technological innovation to build a bridge towards humanity’s future.” That might have set a moon walk back fifteen years.
There’s also a bit about how General Mills cut costs and increased sales by eliminating some flavors of Hamburger Helper.
What they found was that moms didn’t care about variety of flavors. This was a shocking insight within the company: previous generations of marketers and food scientists had created thirty flavors of Hamburger Helper! On the other hand the moms did care about being able to find the same predictable flavor that their kids would actually eat. Using this concrete information, Studzinski’s team convinced people across General Mills to reduce the number of products. Costs went way down and sales went up.
brad
on 23 Jan 07I think it boils down to this: some people can put themselves in the shoes of a beginner or non-expert, and some people can’t. I don’t think there’s any generic “curse of knowledge” but rather an inability among many people to communicate their knowledge effectively to a range of audiences. The best communicators and educators know how to do this instinctively, and don’t assume any previous knowledge on the part of their audiences or students.
I have never played cards, and when people try to teach me a game like poker I tell them that I know nothing about playing cards. But even though I’ve told them that, they throw around terms such as “three of a kind,” or “a full house” and I’m always interrupting them to ask, “what’s three of a kind?” It’s amazing how many people assume that everyone knows these things. But an effective teacher will always ask first: “do you know what ‘three of a kind’ means?”
Luke
on 23 Jan 07A person’s abiliy to explainin something simply and clearly can often be an accurate measure of how well they understand it, although not categorically. It’s also worth noting that understanding something well is a different skill than being able to intuit or ascertain another person’s level of understanding in order to deliver an ‘audience-appropriate’ message.
Chris Brogan...
on 23 Jan 07Boy, this is the book of the moment, eh? I just bought it, and posted last night about Commander’s Intent. Clearly, it’s captured something in us.
The Curse of Knowledge part was a true eye-opening moment to me, or rather a re-awakening, as all good knowledge truly seems to be.
—Chris…
Jeff Carpenter
on 23 Jan 07If your profession is Human Factors or HCI, you probably know exactly how to “put [yourself] in the shoes of a beginner or non-expert”. This is obviously critical to the design process and usability of the product.
I still think there is a difference between placing yourself in that position, and explaining that perspective to others. When explaining new concepts to non-experts, it is sometimes more difficult, based on the method.
Having been a teacher, UI designer, and HF professional, I find it easy to express new concepts to novices, and educate them on new ideas when communication is in person. However, I struggle communicating in other ways.
When attempting to explain the value of a product in writing, web marketing or other mediums, I find the task more challenging and I often fall prey to the “curse of knowledge”.
Good reminder.
-Jeff Carpenter www.agilegraph.comRobert
on 23 Jan 07Totally.
I’d appreciate if more products were simplified. I don’t need 50 yards of toothpaste choices, I need the one I liked last week but you’ve changed the package design and the “ultra” tags.
I need the same set of tee shirts too.
I wouldn’t mind some consistency in jeans, or shoes. This doesn’t mean I wear sans-a-belts or Florsheims.
BlogReader
on 23 Jan 07I’d appreciate if more products were simplified. I don’t need 50 yards of toothpaste choices, I need the one I liked last week
And the next guy wants the same one he bought, etc, etc. You’ve fallen into the trap thinking your single choice is the best one for the marketplace and that should be all that anyone wants.
However I will agree that the toothpaste aisle is getting ridicuolous. Everything its “ultra” or fortified with something. I really doubt that putting liquid calcium on something that’s going to be in contact with my teeth for 20 seconds is going to help.
A good book on this is the “10 faces of Innovation” by Tom Kelley of IDEO.
Dan Boland
on 23 Jan 07I don’t need 50 yards of toothpaste choices, I need the one I liked last week but you’ve changed the package design and the “ultra” tags.
So true, though I feel the pain much more often with deodorant than toothpaste.
James
on 23 Jan 07Yeah, until about two years ago I used the same deoderant since I was 14 yeas old. It was simple, consistant and got the job done. In the past two years I’ve had to change twice because they’ve discontinued my favorite brand on favor of louder packaging that included all sorts of tags and bursts along with shiny metalic stickers and transparent lids. I didn’t need a deaderant package that looked like a toy, I just needed the one I grew up with that worked. Don’t even get me started on 5 blades and contour packaging and grips on shavers.
Kerri
on 23 Jan 07“The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz (published in January 2004) is a terrific book that addresses “The Hamburger Helper Moment”, except Schwartz uses blue jeans as his analogy. The point is, though, that it’s all about happiness.
His TED talk from is terrific.
http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=b_schwartz
Nick Dynice
on 23 Jan 07Dr. Moira Gunn interviewed Chip Heath for IT Conversations recently. http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1704.html
I went our right away and got the book after hearing it. Every writer, teacher, and marketer should read this book and have it on reference. The books is going to be featured on the Change This Manifesto in the next couple of weeks. It picks up where The Tipping Point leaves off.
Whitney
on 23 Jan 07I have always put a lot of effort into continually improving my ability to communicate clearly and effectively – it largely led to my decision to be a professional writing major in college. I love writing because it consciously forces you to consider every word you put down, and the manner in which you arrange those words, in an effort to have your ideas implant themselves in your reader’s mind. When people try to explain a new concept to someone and choose to use their own language in the explanation, isn’t it just a sign of laziness? It may be involuntary in that the brain wants to take the path of least resistance and so we have more immediate access to our own common vocabulary. But the way I see it, it’s really about effort. It’s easy to think about things in only one way – maybe this is why we repeat history, or why racism and all the other isms continue to run rampant. Considering things from another point of view is actually mentally taxing. It can be frustrating to flip through our mental thesauruses for more understandable terms and still come up empty. But shouldn’t we all be forced to try?
John Wesley
on 23 Jan 07In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I don’t think it can be said any better than that.
Andy
on 23 Jan 07It works both ways—curse of too little knowledge and not being able to communicate (or admit when necessary) what you don’t know. Consider being confronted by a requirement such as “attachments should be disallowed on outgoing email to keep people from sending our secret files” (whether this actually works or not as a security measure is left as an exercise for the reader), which is presented with an air of authority and knowledge. The implementor, who assumed (and/or wasn’t in a position to challenge this decree) that the person making the request knows and understands the ramifications of this, and has reviewed how this fits into the overall security plans. Is it the implmentor’s place to ensure that the requestor actually knows what they claim to know or appear to know (and doing so may convey an unfounded and unwarranted lack of trust). Because of this security policy change, it turns out that now the sales team can’t send vcards or marketing materials to prospective clients, and the implementor and help desk is then left holding the bag because of a bad decision from above.
Sometimes too little knowledge mixed with arrogance or fear of looking dumb leads people to not communicate effectively either. Or lack of an ability to delegate to experts may be the cause.
Adele
on 24 Jan 07Thanks for your post, Matt. I’ve found that most people can be taught to “think like their target audience” by developing a “persona” for each of the different types of people they need to influence. The persona serves as a proxy for a typical individual and can include extensive detail about the persona’s interests, preferences and attitudes. Technology developers sometimes build personas to help them identify product features—I say that marketers (or anyone for that matter) can use personas to get out of their own heads and identify the words and context that is important to someone they want to influence. Maybe this isn’t natural, but it can be learned and it does work. I just ordered the book, BTW.
Matthew
on 24 Jan 07I run a company that runs online A/B tests for a living and I can state with a great deal of confidence that none of us can reliably assume the point of view of the consumer of our communication.
Great communicators are great listeners. All communications is experimental, and the best way to get your ideas across is to seek feedback. The more you iterate, the more you will be understood.
Whether it is messaging, graphical display, or interface, you are on the right track if you seek to “find” the right mode of communication, not “design” it.
Sebhelyesfarku
on 24 Jan 07“JFK dodged the Curse”
But not the bullets.
Kevin
on 24 Jan 07This has been a great conversation and one that mirrors my inner dialogue daily. In my role as educational technology consultant at ESSDACK, I have to research new and emerging technologies and help bring these tools to classrooms through teachers. What has become clear to me is the need for balance between the exciting things I’m learning and the framing of these things in ways that teachers will not only understand but will gravitate toward. There are always pioneers and early-adopters and it is fun to work with them. This can also be dangerous because it can lead to a scewed view that the people who are waiting and resisting are somehow flawed and aren’t worth my trouble. What has helped greatly is for me to maintain daily contact with teachers and administrators and keep a “rubber meets the road” view to balance with my “change the world” view. It is sometimes exausting to keep these two approaches in balance but I think there is no way to create change without it. It feels like I’m sometimes moving at glacial speeds but in my field we must move at the speed of human tolerance and not just the tolerance of the pioneers who dig change. I have no answers but I keep looking!
This discussion is closed.