If you think you might be suffering from the curse at work, donāt feel too bad! As Dan and Chip Heath explain, youāve āhad years of immersion in the logic and conventions of businessā and so you are simply summarizing the wealth of data in your head.
I like how Stephen Pinker puts it in
his presentation in regards to written content:
It simply doesnāt occur to the writer that readers havenāt learned their jargon, donāt seem to know the intermediate steps that seem to them to be too obvious to mention, and canāt visualize a scene currently in the writerās mindās eye. And so the writer doesnāt bother to explain the jargon, or spell out the logic, or supply the concrete detailsā¦
This reminds me of some mental models we have already covered, such as
unconscious competence - where you perform something so well you donāt even have to think about it. It also
seems like a bit of a reverse Dunning Kruger effect - being too knowledgable to remember what it was like to be unknowledgeable!
Much of the advice to overcome the curse centers on maintaining awareness of the audienceās level of knowledge so you can communicate to their level. Thereās also suggestions to use concrete language as much as possible, and include stories. Itās also worth remembering to ātake them on the journeyā.
Iāll leave you with a little of Pinkerās advice:
The key is to assume that your readers are as intelligent and sophisticated as you are, but that they happen not to know something you know.
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