Get rid of the curse of knowledge curse
4 min reading time“The world around us is changing at a rapid pace. That is why it is essential that we continue to innovate. 2016 will be the year when we will really put the customer first.”
Could this be a sentence from your business plan? Then you'll want to read this blog!
Blood, sweat and tears
You've worked extremely hard on your plan for 2016. You've been working on it for months and have had dozens of conversations with employees and customers alike. Maybe you've sat on the moors with the team to get this plan just right on paper, or kept up with competitors and trends. Yes. Your vision for 2016 is solid and you stand firmly behind your message. And then that next step: How do you make sure that everyone that you share this story with actually understands what you mean by it?
The moment you really introduce people to the ideas you have in your head, your audience is more likely to guess what you are ‘tapping’. So challenge yourself to visualize what you mean by these words so that you can really convey the image to your audience. After all, your plan is much more likely to succeed if the people around you really understand what you mean.
Tap, tap, tap...
Elizabeth Newton, a graduate of Stanford University, proved "The Curse of Knowledge" in 1990 by conducting a simple experiment. In it, she gave her subjects one of two roles: tapper or listener. The tapper had the task of tapping out the rhythm of a familiar song (such as Happy Birthday). The listener then had to determine which song was being tapped on the table.
Before the listeners guessed, the tapper was asked how likely it was that the listeners would guess the correct song title. The tappers predicted that half of the song titles would be guessed correctly. A total of 120 songs were tapped out during Newton's study. Surprisingly, listeners were only able to guess three of the 120 songs correctly. That's only 2.5 percent! How do you explain something like that? It's actually quite simple: when a tapper taps, it is very clear to him what the song sounds like, while the listener only hears vague Morse code.
Do you see what I see?
So that's how it works when you present your plan and assume that everyone understands what you have in your head. When you talk about your plans for 2016, you want your audience to get the same picture with terms like innovation and customer centricity. What would happen if you could ensure that the image -which is very clear to you- also comes to life in the minds of your audience? Of course, there are several ways you can show your audience the ideas that exist in your head. As a storytelling expert at The Speech Republic, I thought it would be fun to set a creative challenge for you. Are you ready?
- Grab two sheets of paper and a pencil.
- Look at your plan and ask yourself this question: what is the essence/main theme? Write that word at the top of the sheet. Is it "customer focus," "innovation," "collaboration," etc.?
- What does this concept look like in practice? Draw three pictures showing what this concept might look like. What does "innovation" or "a different collaboration" look like in practice?
The moment you really introduce people to the ideas you have in your head, your audience is more likely to guess what you are ‘tapping’. So challenge yourself to visualize what you mean by these words so that you can really convey the image to your audience. After all, your plan is much more likely to succeed if the people around you really understand what you mean.