If you’re responsible for introducing customers to a company or a product for the first time, there’s something you need to watch out for. It’s called the curse of knowledge, and it can affect anyone who creates brand messaging, website copy, tutorials, or onboarding processes. The curse of knowledge is widely defined as: The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. The curse of knowledge means that the more familiar you are with something, the harder it is to put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s not familiar with that thing. You can’t unlearn what you’ve learned, and you can’t see it with fresh eyes anymore. Plus, you have a much harder time explaining the basics to people who are new to the subject because you can’t remember what questions you had when you were new to the subject.

1. Business
Communication
Presentation
By- Neetika Rao

3. How can a Knowledge
be a Curse ?

4. Overview
• Understand
• Issues
• Overcome

5. Cognitive

6. Cognitive
Mental process involved in
knowing, learning and
understanding things.

7. Hello Class, and
welcome to the
new semester! OK
one-by-one please
introduce
yourselves.
What’s
your
name? NAVEEN.

8. Ok.
Next? NAVEEN.
Oh!
Both Naveen’s
sitting together,
how interesting!
Next?
NAVEEN.

9. These guys
seem to be
playing a
prank on
me.
Wait, let me
guess. Your name
is also Naveen,
right?
No, I’m
GANESH.

10. BIAS

11. Bias
Strong inclination of the
mind or a preconceived
opinion about something
or someone.

12. Cognitive Bias
A mistake in reasoning, evaluating,
remembering, or other cognitive
process, often occurring as a result of
holding onto one's preferences and
beliefs regardless of contrary
information.

13. Curse of Knowledge
The more familiar you are with
something, the harder it is to
put yourself in the shoes of
someone who’s not familiar
with that thing.

14. Whom would you
prefer Jeff Bezos or
your economics
professor to teach
you on how to get
rich?

16. Chip Heath Dan Heath
Elizabeth Newton

17. Tappers and Listeners
Experiment

20. How our
teachers feel.

21. “You have my respect,
Stark. When I’m done half
of humanity will still be
alive. I hope they
remember you”
true genius is a burden,
because it enables one to
realize much more , and
think at a much deeper
level.. Plus The more you
know, the more you realize
you don't know. That can
be frightening.

22. Have you ever experienced talking with someone and, about
two minutes into the conversation, you realize that you have
no idea what they’re talking about?
If so, you’ve been on the receiving end of the “Curse of
Knowledge.”

23. Communication Problems in
the Workplace
Due to Curse of knowledge

24. Within companies, the curse of knowledge manifests itself in the
process of the internal communication between departments and in
relations between managers and employees. What is the point of
explaining things since they are obvious?

25. By such thinking, we tend to forget about providing with useful
information. As a consequence, our recipient does not have a
clear picture of the situation since he or she may not have the
same knowledge as we have, thus he/she is not convinced of
our idea, product or solution.

26. The Examples of Misunderstandings

27. “Don't blame me;
look at you”

28. “Better to say
nothing than be
misinterpreted”
In written form:
The first, simple, way this
manifests itself is one we all
encounter too frequently: Over-
Abbreviation. It’s when we’re
told to look up the date of the
SALT conference for MLA
sourcing on the HELMET system
after our STEM meeting.

29. “Please, no more meetings”

30. “Blame my technology”

31. “Blame my
technology”

32. “Excuse my
generation gap”

34. “Pardon me,
while I jump
to
conclusions”

35. “I'm trying my best to
impress you” &
“Saying more is
more”
In written form:
It Is ascribed that a
big source of messy
writing to a mental process
called chunking, in which
we package groups of
concepts into ever further
abstraction in order to save
space in our brain.

36. “Saying less is more”
In written form:
The Third obvious manifestation
is our overuse of technical
terms which the reader may or
may not have encountered
before. Don’t assume the
reader knows all of your jargon.

37. No matter how hard you try,
you can never escape the curse of knowledge;
you just have to be aware of it.

40. Best way to know you are miscommunicating
under curse of knowledge
• The biggest symptom is lack of
awareness about the audience’s
ability to follow what they’re
saying. Not only do the
communicators use complex
language, but they assume the
audience understands - and that’s
why the Curse of Knowledge is
such a problem.

42. “It is the curse of the powerful to be
blind to their own
faults.”
― Robert Fanney

43. 1. Simplicity
That stator control unit can reverse the polarity
long enough to disengage maglev that could…
Speak English!
… it will slow the
rotors to get me out !!!You see that red lever?

44. 2. Spell out everything
GTALNINFT!!!
“Gee, thanks a lot, now I’ll never finish that !!!”

45. But don’t “dumb down”
• Don’t make your audience members feel like
kindergartners.
• Start with a baseline and see where your
audience is.

46. But don’t “dumb down”(ctd)

47. 3. Drop the condescension
Just because you spend all day learning about a
topic, it doesn’t mean you are better than
everyone else.

48. 4. Concreteness
• Message should be specific.
• Always use facts and figures
General: I boarded a train
in the evening.
Specific: I boarded
'Taizgam' at 5:30 p.m.

49. 5. Emotions
• Smiling as you talk about an accomplishment
you are proud of
• Softening your voice as you reflect on a
personal loss
• Speaking with passion about issue you care
“The struggle of my life created empathy- I could relate to pain, being abandoned,
having people not love me.”

50. 6. Stories
• Human brain often don’t distinguish between
fiction and reality.
• So we immerse ourselves in stories as if we
were a part of them.
• Human beings are wired for them.

51. Storytelling by
Once in New York…… !!!!