I read Made to Stick last week, an excellent new book by Chip and Dan Heath about why some ideas stick and others do not. There were a lot of great takeaways on a practical level of how to make ideas stickier but one larger concept really stuck out. It is a recurring theme they call “The Curse of Knowledge”, the idea that once you have become an expert on something you lose the ability to objectively express that idea to others. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the loss of ability to communicate clearly without using domain specific language to the complete misunderstanding of what actually is important to communicate. In marketing the curse manifests itself as jumbled messages that make sense internally but have little or no meaning to the external world because everyone else lacks the domain specific knowledge available within the organization.
I have noticed the same thing happening with startups in a different way. Many startups are the lives of those who create them, these founders eat, breathe, and sleep their companies. While this passion is inspiring it also puts them at risk to succumb to “The Curse of Knowledge.” Peter Drucker alluded to a similar situation in his famous book, The Effective Executive. Drucker states four major realities over which the executive has no control, the fourth being that “the executive is within an organization. Every executive…sees the inside - the organization - as close and immediate reality. He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lenses, if at all.” Startups must actively maintain an understanding of the external reality surrounding their business and use this information along with a firm understanding of their core values to understand their place in the ecosystem in which they exist. This information is necessary so that they may base decisions on how they can best add value in this environment. If the focus drifts too far the benefits the organization is generating may become too internally focused, a myopia which often seems to be an early step on the path to failure.
Keeping Drucker’s words in mind, “the organization is an abstraction…Even the largest organization is unreal compared to the reality of the environment in which it exists…there are no results within the organization. All the results are on the outside.”
Good points on inside looking out. Keeping perspective from any vantage is tricky. As a startup ourselves, and after reading the Made to Stick book it’s something that is more apparent than ever.
The good inverse parallel from the book; how in a conversation, demo, meeting, what have you–you’re trying to pass a few bricks of your foundation through.
You can’t possibly expect to show a person, or group, everything that makes your idea or company tick, and for them to “get it” like you do.
Now I try to intrigue and let certain ideas out that will root and cause more questions that will cause them to build bridges to insight which then in turn allows for some fertile ground for outsiders to see inside.
If only we could pass rotes of knowledge around.
Andy C
May 29th, 2007
Also, Peter Lynch in his book(?) described deworseification when a company does not understand the reality of their business or the reality of the outside world to such an extent that they would take the profits from the business they understood and go into other no related businesses and fail miserably.
John T.
May 30th, 2007
Great post! Just in time also. I’ve been considering the book and I may just get it after reading this. I have certainly worn the internal exec glasses and it becomes very hard to invite others to see your vision when they arn’t wearing them. I have been hanging out with a potential Angel Investor for a project I am currently working on (http://blog.8trk.com) and have run into a few walls talking to him because he has no experience with web entrepreneurship. I knew something wasn’t working but this post put it into a better frame of reference. Thank you.
Bryson N
June 3rd, 2007