This week in one of our 6:00 AM business coaches Meetings at the Thrivetime Show Offices, Clay was talking to everyone about the importance of having a best practice path for your employees to follow. Whenever you hire someone onto your staff to do something specific, you have to get it out of your head, onto something physical, and into the hands of your employees. If you have ever tried to explain how to do a job to someone with only using your words, you probably have run into a few difficulties. It may sound easy to understand in your mind and be frustrating at the same time because they can’t comprehend what you want them to do. This is called the curse of knowledge.
The curse of knowledge is when you know a specific procedure, fact, or have any piece of knowledge that the other party does not have and that hinders you from communicating with them. Business coach Clay used the example of assuming that Moses from the Bible knows what Spotify is. Not only would Moses not know what Spotify is, but he also wouldn’t know what an app is. The fact that Spotify exists is common knowledge to you and me but not to Moses and therefore, we can’t just assume that he knows what we are talking about.
You have to explain in great detail what you are trying to communicate to the other party. In this case, you would have to explain to Moses what electricity is, what satellites are, what the internet is, what a “Touch Screen” is, what a phone is, and what an app is (just to name a few). You want the other party to comprehend what you want them to do so well that they can not only repeat back to you the process but also physically show you how to do the process. The way you have to do this is by creating examples for them to look at, listen to, and watch. You have to create those examples in such detail that a third-grader could use them and be able to do and understand the task at hand.
The curse of knowledge is when you know a specific procedure, fact, or have any piece of knowledge that the other party does not have and that hinders you from communicating with them.
The curse of knowledge is something that is almost always undetectable to us so we always have to assume that it is affecting us. We always have to break it down just like we are speaking to a third-grader. In order to become a better communicator, we as business coaches want to become more simple and speak in a common language. You can also use audio of best practice recorded phone calls, best practice videos from your security cameras, and easy to read scripts that you have created to train
