The Dunning-Kruger effect and influencers

There is a chart that explains most of the business advice on your feed. Confidence on one axis, competence on the other. The line rockets up to a summit called the Peak of Ignorance, crashes into the Valley of Despair, then climbs slowly — much more slowly — toward actual expertise.

Content is made at the peak

The Peak of Ignorance is where the posting happens. It is the most confident place on the curve, and confidence is what the algorithm sells. Someone who ran one process improvement event at one company will happily produce a 12-part framework. The person who has done it two hundred times mostly says “it depends,” which performs terribly as content.

Real expertise is quiet because it is busy. The Valley of Despair does not post.

A field guide

• Beware of frameworks with no scars attached — ask what went wrong the last time they used it.
• Trust people who tell you what they don’t know. That sentence is the price of admission to the right side of the chart.
• “It depends” followed by good questions beats a confident answer, every single time.

None of this makes influencers evil. Most are at a stage of the curve everyone passes through. Just check where on the chart your advice is coming from before you reorganize your plant around it.