Expectations change how the same experience feels.
More quotesA zip sits in the middle of the table. Nobody may touch it yet.
At first the exercise seems insulting. Everyone knows how a zip works. Then people try to explain the teeth, slider and little wedge inside it. Their answers become shorter.
The same illusion appears in business. A director says the recommendation engine “uses behaviour”. Which behaviour? A strategist says the brand creates salience. By what exposure, for whom, at which buying moment? A product manager says the integration is straightforward, then lists the systems that must exchange data. Nobody present owns two of them.
Collective knowledge is useful precisely because specialisation lets us rely on other people. Problems arise when everybody nearby assumes someone else understands the mechanism and nobody accountable actually does.
There is a wonderfully cheap test.
Explain the sequence.
What changes first? What observes it? What happens if that component fails? Where does the data, money or decision go next?
The purpose is to locate the boundary between known, borrowed and guessed. At that boundary, confidence should reduce until evidence or expertise arrives.
Afterwards the sequence contains two manual steps and an unresolved dependency owned by a supplier. The team schedules time with the person responsible for that exchange. Someone finally picks up the zip and demonstrates the slider.