Ep 2. Beware the Curse of Knowledge

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The Hidden Barrier to Great Communication

In this article we’re diving into the second of our four guiding principles for navigating The Chaos of Scale: “Beware the Curse of Knowledge.”

Click here to read about our first principle, Pause for Quality — the simple but powerful idea that slowing down often helps you move faster and better.

In this article we’re tackling another invisible force that can trip up even the best teams and leaders: the Curse of Knowledge.

What Is the Curse of Knowledge?

Back in the 1990s, a Stanford researcher named Elizabeth Newton ran a fascinating experiment. Participants were split into two groups: tappers and listeners. The tappers had to tap out the rhythm of a well-known song — say, Happy Birthday — while the listeners tried to guess what song it was.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, not exactly. Listeners only guessed correctly 2.5% of the time.

For the tappers, it was so obvious — they could “hear” the melody in their heads as they tapped. But for the listeners? It was just random, garbled Morse code.

That’s the Curse of Knowledge in action. Once we know something, we forget what it’s like not to know it. We assume that what’s clear and obvious to us is equally clear and obvious to everyone else. Spoiler: it’s not.

And that gap — between what we know and what others don’t — can wreak havoc on communication.

The Trap We All Fall Into

Here’s how this plays out at work: we’re deep in a project, we understand the context, the backstory, the reasons behind every decision. Then we brief someone else — and they look confused or fail to deliver what we expected. We roll our eyes and think, “But I told them!”

Did we, though? Or did we assume they knew things we never actually shared?

It’s like we’re operating with a full-color, 3D image in our heads, while they’re working from a blank page or a faint pencil sketch. And we don’t even notice.

I learned this lesson early in my career, and it stuck. I was running an employee experience survey for a scale-up, and one piece of feedback came up over and over: people hated the rigid start time. The commute was brutal — gridlocked traffic in Johannesburg, South Africa, no public transport — and they just wanted some flexibility.

So I took this to the management team and suggested they rethink the policy.

They stared at me, baffled. “What policy?” they asked. “We don’t have a rule about start times.”

Turns out, the leadership team all lived nearby and had a standing meeting at 8:15 a.m. It suited them fine. Over time, staff saw them arriving at that time and assumed it was a rule. Management assumed everyone knew it wasn’t.

They were victims of the Curse of Knowledge. What was obvious to them simply wasn’t obvious to anyone else.

Why It Matters — Especially When You’re Scaling

This isn’t just a quirky communication gap. It can seriously derail teams, especially in fast-growing companies where information moves fast and people join at different stages.

I see it all the time:

• A team lead briefs their team without realizing half the context is stuck in their own head.

• An HR business partner assumes hiring managers understand a process as well as they do.

• An exec team thinks they’ve communicated the company strategy clearly — because they discuss it every day — but the rest of the organization is still asking, “What’s our plan?”

  
  

It’s not that anyone’s doing anything wrong. They’re just blinded by their own knowledge.

And the more experienced or senior you are, the more likely you are to fall into this trap — because the more you know, the harder it is to imagine not knowing it.

How to Break the Curse

So how do we fight back against the Curse of Knowledge? Here are two simple things you can do starting tomorrow:

1. Pause and check your assumptions

Before your next email, meeting, or update, stop and ask yourself:

• What do I know that they don’t?

• What context might I be taking for granted?

• What background would help them move faster and do better work?

It might feel like you’re over-explaining — but for them, that extra context could be the difference between confusion and clarity.

2. Communicate for their context, not yours

This is the big one. Most of us communicate based on what’s easiest for us to say. Instead, flip it: communicate based on what they need to hear.

That means thinking about the listener’s starting point, not your own. What’s obvious to you might not even be on their radar.

Remember the Tappers and the Listeners

When you’re next explaining something, remember that tapping experiment. You might be hearing a crystal-clear Happy Birthday in your head — but to them, it’s just random tapping. Your job is to bridge that gap.

Because once you do, everything changes. Work moves faster. Output improves. People feel more confident and less frustrated. Communication becomes a tool for clarity, not confusion.

Your Action Item

Here’s your challenge: look for your own Curse of Knowledge this week. Where might you be assuming people know more than they do? Where could you add a bit more context? Try it once — even in just one email — and watch the difference it makes.

Business growth is messy. The human side doesn’t have to be.

Until next time, stay curious — and Beware the Curse of Knowledge.

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Beware the Curse of Knowledge