OK Leader! - When Knowledge is a Curse

➔ Leadership in practice

In 1990, a Stanford student named Elizabeth Newton ran an experiment that should haunt many of you. 

She split people into two groups, tappers and listeners. The tappers picked a famous song, such as "Happy Birthday," or "The Star-Spangled Banner," and tapped out the rhythm on a table. The listeners tried to guess the song.

Before they started, Newton asked the tappers to predict their success rate. They guessed 50%. They would get it right one time in two. But the actual success rate was dramatically lower at just 2.5%. Out of 120 songs tapped, listeners only guessed three correctly.

Here’s what was happening. When the tappers tapped, they heard the full song in their heads, the melody, the lyrics, the whole thing. They couldn’t not hear it. To them, the rhythm was obvious.

The listeners, on the other hand, heard disconnected knocks on a table, nothing recognisable. The tappers couldn’t believe how stupid the listeners seemed. The listeners couldn’t understand what the tappers were doing.

This is called the Curse of Knowledge. Once you know something, you cannot imagine not knowing it. Your brain will not let you go back.

We all do this to some degree. You assume everyone has the same context, so you skip steps, speak in shorthand, and overestimate how clear you’re being. When you present, you hear the full symphony, but your audience only hears tapping.

To break the curse and make your communications more effective, always encourage questions and discussion. Where possible, show, don’t tell. And relate complex concepts to familiar experiences using analogies and metaphors.

The song in your head will always sound perfect. Your job is making sure everyone else hears it too.

The thread running through this week’s newsletter is communication.

Enjoy,

Hugh

Go deeper:

• The Decision Lab - The Curse of Knowledge

• 5 ways to bridge the knowledge gap from Anne-Laure Le Cunff

• Tim Harford - The power of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes

Notes:

#1 In a similar test, ‘writers’ predicted ‘readers’ would score almost 100% in spotting sarcasm in written statements. The result was closer to just 20%.

#2 The catastrophic charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War in 1854 was essentially the result of ambiguous orders being misinterpreted.

#3 In a landmark 1956 cognitive psychology paper, researcher George Miller summarised several different experiments that investigated how many separate pieces of information people could remember or work with simultaneously. The answer was 7.

OK Systems! - Shared Consciousness

➔ Systems and frameworks for thinking

General Stanley McChrystal had every advantage and was still losing.

In 2004, commanding the world’s most powerful military against Al Qaeda in Iraq, McChrystal’s special operations teams were lethal individually. They had the best intelligence, the fastest jets, and the most elite soldiers. Yet the enemy was more agile, quicker to adapt, closer to the ground.

The problem was not skill or courage. It was communication. His 7,000 people across 76 bases were working in silos. Information moved up and down the chain of command, but by the time decisions were made, the battlefield had shifted.

To fix it, McChrystal built what he called Shared Consciousness. His daily briefing had once been a small meeting for senior officers at headquarters, who then filtered updates down the line. He replaced it with a 90-minute global video conference linking every base and unit so that thousands of people could see the same picture in real time.

In 2004, this required leaping major technical and logistical hurdles that would challenge even the most modern organisations. But the real change was the conversation it enabled.

Instead of scripted reports, McChrystal’s Operations and Intelligence sessions encouraged short updates followed by open discussion. He thought aloud. He explained how he reached decisions, including the difficult ones, so that others could understand his reasoning as well as his results.

Gradually, everyone held the same mental map of the battlefield. Teams no longer needed to ask permission; they already knew what mattered and why.

This is the creative leader’s edge. You sit in strategy meetings while your team is out executing. You see the gap between plan and reality; they do not. Some leaders broadcast the plan, but McChrystal’s lesson is simpler: share the thinking, not just the thought.

Go deeper:

• How a 4-star general transformed America's elite forces 

• Stanley McChrystal on how to succeed in a rapidly changing environment

• Adam Grant: encourage a culture of enquiry

Notes:

#1 McChrystal’s daily live streams required custom infrastructure, reliable satellite links, and cultural change to share real-time intelligence across military and intelligence agencies.

#2 Despite transforming communications for the Joint Special Operations Command, McChrystal resigned in 2010 after a Rolling Stone article attributed unflattering remarks about Vice President Joe Biden to him. Overshared consciousness perhaps?

#3 Studies show that information becomes shorter, more inaccurate, and more divergent as it’s passed along a chain.

OK Brain! - The Prediction Error Edition

➔ Lifting the lid on what’s happening inside our brains when we do creative work

Every year, about a dozen Japanese tourists arrive in Paris and end up needing psychiatric evacuation. The Japanese embassy even runs a 24-hour hotline. It’s called Paris Syndrome.

Japanese culture romanticises Paris: films, fashion, and literature. Tourists arrive expecting elegance and courtesy. They get brusque locals, smelly metros, and dog mess on the pavements.

Your brain is a prediction engine. Every second, it forecasts what is about to happen - how people will behave, what situations mean, how safe or uncertain you are. When the world behaves as expected, your brain relaxes. When it doesn’t, a small alarm goes off in the anterior cingulate cortex, your internal error detector.

A small gap between expectation and reality is easy to adjust to. A big one isn’t. Your brain constantly tries to reconcile what it expects with what is happening. Each mismatch burns mental energy, like a battery powering a machine that never switches off. Over time, it becomes exhausting. Your attention feels stretched. Decisions feel harder. Small mistakes loom larger. Your brain is alert but tired, always scanning for the next gap it has to fix.

This is what happens in organisations when leaders say one thing and do another. You talk empowerment, but act through control. You celebrate innovation, but punish risk. You preach openness, but filter information. Each inconsistency creates a tiny spike of uncertainty. A Paris moment.

When it becomes the pattern, you stop expecting consistency at all. That is when motivation quietly collapses.

So look back at some of your big communication moments of the last 6 months. Then look at what you’ve done. If the two don’t match, your team’s brains might be in Paris.

Go deeper:

• Why you can’t tickle yourself

• Your brain predicts almost everything that you do

• How to manage your mental energy

• Paris Syndrome: A first-class problem for a first-class vacation

Notes:

#1 A 2014 Condé Nast Traveller study named Paris the world's fourth most unfriendly city. A 2020 study by CEOWORLD magazine awarded Paris the title of rudest city in Europe. And a 2021 survey by InterNations, concluded that Paris is Europe's third-least-friendly city for expats.

#2 Predictive Dissonance is a kind of mental friction where the brain is working overtime to close the information gap but never quite can.

#3 When something is truly novel and breaks all predictions, the huge prediction error triggers the hippocampus (the memory hub) to instantly form a strong, detailed memory. The bigger the surprise, the stickier the memory.

➔ Things to read, watch, listen, and buy

Google's chief marketing officer, Lorraine Twohill, on being an EQ person in an IQ world - This short interview is packed with insight from Google’s chief storyteller. She talks about her own insecurities and why women should put their hands up more, why you shouldn’t sacrifice your health for work, why taste is hugely important, whether you can learn EQ and why you should only go deep in three things at one time. Phew! That’s a lot in just 13 minutes. (13 min watch)

Pixar’s Culture Design Canvas - The Culture Design Canvas is a tool for mapping and evolving a workplace culture. You can download it here and see how Pixar’s culture looks mapped across the canvas. (framework)

Every decision has an energy cost. Learn how to manage your budget - Studies have found that we have a daily threshold for making decisions, and an extended period of decision-making can lead to cognitive exhaustion. The video explores the psychology of decision fatigue and ways you can avoid it. The theme of newsletter 002 was decision-making. (5 min watch)

Great leaders ask great questions: Here are 3 steps to up your questioning game - A good read on how great questions help nurture cultures of inclusion and inquisitiveness.

The hidden role of hormones in teamwork - Testosterone is a crucial hormone that affects more than just physical traits like muscle and bone density. It significantly influences social behaviour, including dominance, competitiveness, and social standing. For teams, achieving the right balance of testosterone and status is essential for success. (3 min watch)

You want to be boss. You probably won’t be good at it - A new study pinpoints two measures that predict effective managers: “We found that people with the greatest preference for being in charge are, on average, worse than randomly assigned managers.” - Via Ash Man (4 min read)

When Focus Breaks: the brain’s hidden pathway back to clarity - A fascinating new study has revealed that when you get distracted, your brain doesn’t just go blank and then suddenly refocus. Instead, it follows a very specific recovery sequence. A wave of coordinated activity moves across your brain, helping different areas get back in sync with each other. That “foggy” feeling right after being distracted is actually your brain’s way of reorganising itself. (6 min read)

What are you all reading/watching/listening to? Send me your links. I’d love to know what’s stretched your thinking recently.

The Rules - Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules of Creative Writing

➔ Rules for work, play, and life

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. His work is dark yet funny, classic yet counter-culture. His approach to storytelling is captured in his 8 rules of Creative Writing 101, which he included in his short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.

Vonnegut said, “The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor. She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.”

Bookshelf

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