The Curse of Knowledge
I’ve had quite a few hobbies in my life. I have a wide variety of interests and a mind that says if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing a lot!
Have you ever described a hobby you know well to someone new to it? Even if you zoom out as far as you can, you can still end up assuming your listener knows something more than they do.
They might ask a clarifying question. Well yes, OBVIOUSLY, you might think. Except, to them, it wasn’t obvious.
If you’re not like me and don’t obsess over odd things, think about a project at work.
I bet someone mentioned a project or an initiative you’d never heard of, but they’d been working on for months. At first you let is slide, but at some point, you have to stop the conversation and ask what on earth they’re talking about.
It’s easy to blame the person speaking for this, but I bet you’ve done it without realizing it too. I know I have.
When we know things, we overestimate what other people know. We assume parts of the process are common knowledge, or self-explanatory, and we skip over them.
We communicate only a tiny fraction of the rich, vivid picture we have in our heads about what we’re saying. We use shortcuts, inside references, acronyms, and assume everyone understands. That everyone sees the same picture we see in our heads.
The problem is they don’t.
When we’re presenting a piece of analysis we’ve done, we know everything about it. We were there for the twists and turns, the false starts, the diversions and the spurious correlations. We have the background knowledge we learned from all the side quests.
We’ve also established a very clear “why?” To us, the why is obvious. The data led us to a conclusion, we know what that data tells us about the business, and why it’s important.
Our audience doesn’t know, and we have to tell them. If we don’t they’re missing a critical part of what ties our work together.
It’s important to state the obvious, because it’s not always obvious.
I talk a lot about stripping things away. Simplifying the message and streamlining the presentation to make it as easy to follow as possible. I stand by it. Getting rid of the fluff is critical for understanding.
It’s also critical you don’t strip away the connection between what you’re doing or suggesting and why it matters. It’s also critical you give your audience the background they need to follow your logic.
Go from introduction to conclusion directly and efficiently, but don’t skip any steps along the way. Explain everything that needs explaining, but nothing else.
This is a hard balance for any presentation, but the complexity of data-driven presentations can make it even harder than most. Learn where to trim the fat and where keep the meat, and your presentations will be much more effective.
This Week's Exercise:
Choose a recent data presentation or analysis you've created. Then:
Identify 3-5 key terms, concepts, or assumptions in your presentation that might not be familiar to all audience members.
For each item, write a brief, clear explanation as if you were describing it to someone with no background knowledge.
Review your presentation and mark places where you could insert these explanations without disrupting the flow.
Ask a colleague from a different department to review your presentation. Note any points where they ask for clarification or seem confused.
Reflection: How did this exercise change your perspective on what needs to be explained in your data presentations? What surprised you about the process?