The Curse of Knowledge

Have you been presenting to folks and getting not so good reviews? Do the stories you tell your friends some time falls flat ? Read on to find out the cure for that malady...

 

Here is the secret of how I overcame the same problem. "Made to Stick" by Chip & Dan Heath is an excellent book on how to make ideas stick in peoples mind. One of the aspects they talk about is the Curse of Knowledge where a "Tapper" has to tap out the rhythm of very popular songs on a table so as to get a "Listener" to identify it. The crux of the matter is that the tapper playing the song in his mind, tapped the table with the full confidence that the listener would understand it and identify the song. Meanwhile the listener without that knowledge has no clue what the song is and is unable to identify them !!

That story stuck to me ! Let me explain why and how it helped me with my issues ...

One of the problems I face when I make presentation to teams, is that sometimes I get the "glazed eye" look- Sheer boredom or folks fervently praying that I would not ask them questions and embarrass them in front of their peers.  Very frustrating right? Here I am putting my heart and soul into the presentation and I get this? In my mind I was explaining some basic concepts which everybody should get. Finally one of my mentors pulled me aside and had "The talk". He asked me pause and understand the audience - Take time to look at my presentation from the audience's level of knowledge. Some of the folks were business users and did not understand the techno speak. Or other did not understand that particular techno speak! So they did not have the context and they did not have the foundation to build on. Not their fault and here I was making a leap of faith that they are at a certain level of knowledge. The song was playing clearly in my mind. But the tapping did not make any sense to the audience ! 

Being me, It of course took multiple attempts to overcome my ego and make me get it. But when I did get it, I found that I was being understood better and was able to get a better agreement from the audience. Suddenly I was in demand as a presenter as well as a facilitator !

Makes sense does it not? So stop playing to the music in the mind. 

Try it out and let me know if you experience the same empowerment as I did 

Raghavan (Raj) Rajendran

Data Mining to Target your habits !

I just finished reading the book "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg ( A must read for everybody in my opinion. But more about that in a later post). There is an interesting anecdote in the book about how the giant retail store Target performs data mining that I wanted to share with you..

It starts with the Marketing team wanting to market to parents before their babies arrived. The data mining teams gets to work and comes up with an algorithm (Habits like buying lot of unscented lotions as well as increased purchase of vitamins  etc.) and Coupons started to be sent to families where there was somebody pregnant. Everything is fine till an irate father walked into the local store and complains that Target was sending his high school daughter coupons for baby cloths and cribs ! He was worried that Target was encouraging his daughter to be come pregnant ! The manager apologizes profusely and cools down the man. The manager call the man back a few days to make sure he was okay. The father confesses that his daughter had spoken to him and she was actually pregnant and due in Aug !

Just imagine what happened. A person who lives with his daughter 24x7 has no clue that she is pregnant  while a machine sitting thousand of miles away could figure that out.

So next time you use your frequent buyer card, remember, you are sharing  a lot more information than you think !

Suddenly, privacy is no longer something you can take for granted !!

Raghavan (Raj) Rajendran