The Curse of Knowledge when Expanding your Team

If you are starting your journey of hiring in your business or you already have a team in place, you need to know about the one thing holding you back from taking on the CEO role in your business.

The Curse of Knowledge.

And it’s not what you think.

The curse of knowledge, is the phenomenon that says,

“It's hard to remember what it's like to not know how to do something once you've learned it yourself.”

For example, if you’ve ever been frustrated with someone for not knowing how to do something that seemed so obvious to you - you have suffered from the curse of knowledge!

Or, you’ve thought that if you jumped in and do it yourself, it would get done.

When you first started your business journey, you were learning new things. You didn’t have a team to rely on or have the resources to hire someone to do it.

So you learned it yourself.

Prior, you didn’t know how to do these things either.

This isn’t saying that your new VA or team member isn’t versed in their business or niche, but it’s not the way ‘you do things’.

That’s okay.

No new hire will understand or do things the way you do them at the same level until they are familiar with you, your business, and process.  You should also be open to change and new direction if your business needs it.

I'm telling you this for one important reason. The Curse of Knowledge is going to come into play and become especially important to overcome when you are creating a team under you, hiring out tasks to free up time in your life, or teaching someone how to do something.

If you don’t pay attention to how you handle it, you not only put yourself in a position to having a high turnover rate, micromanaging, and end up wasting more time and money when you should be saving time and money.  

The reason why you decided to hire was to let go of tasks that you were either:

1. Not very good at

2. Dislike doing

So don’t put them back on your plate, when you should be using that time to create and design new ideas in your business and serve your audience at your best capacity.

So let’s talk about the 3 steps you can take when delegating to someone new or steps you can take with your current team:

Break it down

For each task you are hiring out, you should have a process that goes with it. This allows the person that you bring onboard can hop right in and take over immediately with less questions. It will save you from having to train someone new each time you expand your team and you cut out the amount of back and forth questions while they are learning the scope of work.

1. Task Objective: When you first break down a task, you should identify what the objective and end goal of the task. Is this for your visibility? Does this help you with sales or marketing?

2. Record task - I always start off by taking a Loom video recording of my screen doing the task, you can also use zoom for this.  You don’t have to create any extra work for yourself, as you can just hit record as you start a task and talk out loud all the steps you are taking during the process.

3. Outline each step - Once you have your recording, you can then outline each step by watching the video back. This  is now the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in your business!

4. Supporting documents - Add Screenshots and other relevant links to related SOPs or tools needed to complete the task

5. Store in google drive or project management tool for each access to team members and new hires.

Let them mess up

Let them know it’s okay for them to be self-sufficient and look for the answers but also okay to ask questions when they’ve done what they could and still need assistance.

Here’s the thing - it doesn’t matter what you outsource, even if you’re outsourcing to the ultimate pro at first. When you first hire out a task that you are used to doing, you’ll notice every single thing that comes up up that isn’t the way you would have done it.  You’ll also notice the time it takes as you may or may not underestimate what goes into the process.

Back to the curse of knowledge.

You can't expect someone to come in and know how you do it without any missteps. When you hire, you will have to invest in training them or onboarding them into your business so they understand your mission and values and can support you in the way you need.

The best way for a new contractor to learn your processes, is to let them try it and see what happens. If you have your SOP ready for them to follow, you should be able to sit back and allow the task to be taken off your hands.

The only thing you should be focused on in this area is making sure you take note and understand the questions that do come up or mistakes that happen that can be clarified in the SOP and updated for future reference.

Keep your processes updated

Always keep your standard operating procedures updated. SOP’s are living documents and should have a specific owner and recurring task that the owner of the task reviews and updates for changes and clarifications.  

Now that you're updated on your processes, you'll be better prepared the next time you hire! You won't have so curse of knowledge so bad because you know the process will get done exactly how you planned!