the curse of knowledge?

“If I can’t understand it, it must be easy!” - Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss

a quickie here… a phenomenon that we might all want to think about…

the really short version:

1) Don’t assume that others know the same things you do. Even when they should.

2) Don’t assume you are an expert, unless you can prove it. (And certainly don’t claim to be.)

3) If you don’t have the expert mindset, never assume you are right. And maybe not even if you do, lol.

The “curse of knowledge” is …

that when we know something, we have a remarkable tendency to think that others know the same thing. Not black & white, mind you, but it’s such a strong tendency. It’s a short jump from “I know it” to “everyone knows that”.

Yet, we all know things that the others we deal with don’t. What do entrepreneurs know that they assume their customers, investors, etc. also know. (Or why you need to be crystal clear about your assumptions in your projections.)

This is akin to the bias we all have to assume that others think like we do - we know better, but….. LOL. (Add in a nice dose of narcissism and… gulp. College professors are the most narcissistic group on earth; feel my pain, LOL.)

Some of you know I harp on the importance of working toward a more expert mindset (and less novice). Experts may know different things, but they always structure that knowledge differently -and novices typically have no clue.

In fact, research is overwhelming that novices are, well, stupid. They don’t know how little they know - and given the above phenomena, they are far more prone to believing that they know enough. (Part of being expert is really knowing what you do & don’t know - and you can’t become an expert overnight**) Add in either that bit of narcissism OR a burning need (e.g., need to control it) to be an Expert, and you can will have a train wreck.

So whenever someone asserts they have expertise - ask them:

How do you know you are truly expert? And how many hours have you devoted directly to deliberate practice?

And whenever YOU are asserting expertise - ask yourself the same questions. Don’t be afraid to figure out what you do & don’t know. Go to the real experts & calibrate yourself.

Now going off to ask myself these….

** typically, 10,000 hours of deliberate practice - or, yes, it does take 10 years to be an overnight success, lol. (In some arenas, it might be closer to 20K hrs).

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