Curse of knowledge

My Friday Thought: It is hard to balance cognitive bias (curse of knowledge) against lecturing (*splaining)

Sometimes it’s easy to think, that’s so simple because you understand it. It’s much harder to look at something objectively once you get it. Conversely you don't want to come across as condescending, patronising or lecturing - over explaining something that is already fully understood.

Avoiding the curse of knowledge can be harder with long standing teams, teams who provide services to others and when you're an expert in a topic.

Within long standing teams

• This can be harder when the context has been gained over time
• Limited rotation of people can make documentation out of date/hard to maintain
• Holistic organisation knowledge is hard to consider in your thinking

For teams who provide service to others

• The day to day to them can be brand new to others
• They can forget to use their services as their tenants would
• There needs to be a balance between supportive and doing the work for them

Where people hold expertise

• Some people can assume that as they understand it, others in a similar role can/do
• Collaborating with other experts without domain knowledge can cause you to overlook what you know

Overall it is a difficult balance not coming across as ignoring the expertise of others (often referred to as mansplaining) but avoiding the curse of knowledge (a cognitive bias). No answers here, as I am still trying to get the balance right - maybe I always will have to.