Ryan's Rules #19: Don't explain your job away, the less certain people know, the better!

I originally wrote this rule in August 2006, almost twenty years ago. Fifty years after artificial intelligence was put on the map. Now, with news emerging of companies tracking every mouse-click, keystroke and eye movement of departing employees to train their AI replacements, this rule has taken on a meaning I didn’t anticipate.

Imagine this scenario. You’re having a chat with your manager. It should be a 1:1 (where you do the talking), but instead it's an alignment meeting, one where you'll be listening. Behind the scenes maybe a management meeting happened where your role was questioned during an examination of overall headcount. Your manager drops a clanger:

We’re going to need you to write down everything you know.

A simple enough request. Easy to explain away by saying “it will provide coverage for when you’re unavailable.” Or you might be told it’ll mean you don’t get a call or a text with a "quick question" on one of your valuable days off. Maybe you know too much that isn’t actually written down and hold tribal knowledge that others would benefit from. People rely on you. When you’re not available and things go wrong, they’re up a creek.

Before you might have worried that this documentation would mean someone else was coming up behind you. Nowadays, you’re still worried about losing your job but the cause is something else. For the past while, an intrusive thought keeps plaguing you, the anxious question "Is AI going to replace me?"

Back to the chat with your manager. Sure, you’ll write everything down. But… your instinct is to over-explain, to prove your value through transparency. Your mind races. You can’t be replaced! Not even if they took a memory dump of your brain and put it on a USB stick!! This turns into you responding by launching into a litany of everything you do. You list the tools, the processes, the hours, the complexity. In fairness to you, you do make a brilliant case. On a fundamental level though, that instinct just worked against you.

Why We Over-Explain

For some of us, this isn’t an issue. However, if that was the case for everyone, you wouldn’t be reading this. It’s a rare person that doesn’t need some form of connection, recognition or validation. In school, it’s hammered into you that showing your work earns you marks while at the same time we’re told not to be a show off, don’t brag, be gracious. Then, when we transition from full time learning into our careers these things can serve us very well to begin with. "Your new hire is alright. They get the job done, no complaints, no showboating." Demonstrating competence early on means telling people your process, inviting their feedback, and making your effort appreciable.

Along the way, as your career changes, the rules change. Nobody will ever tell you these unwritten rules. Not ever. They're not "the rules that nobody talks about." The kindness of others doesn’t lead to an explanation. You’ve got to figure them out for yourself. Needless to say, this usually comes well after the fact. And in rare cases, when you can’t figure them out, the only conclusion you will come to is so ludicrous that saying it out loud would cost you.

Over-explaining is often a problem caused by underconfidence rather than poor communication. When we feel insecure about our value, we try to compensate. We try to make our work visible to everyone, hoping the detail will justify us. Those who have things together, however, don’t feel the need to justify. They state outcomes and showcase results. They don't feel uncomfortable talking about their achievements or taking credit for impactful results.  Usually their achievements speak for themselves. More than that, people just have a gut feel that they are good. Half from remembered experience, half assumed by their confidence.

The less you explain, the more authority you will project. People read between the lines and draw their own conclusions. Authority is the result of a track record of small wins over time and the gut feel that accumulates within the people around you. Do they believe that you have this authority? For those that don’t know you, social proof informs them. They go along with the beliefs of the crowd.

When you over-explain to those who don't need technical detail, you make hard work look easy. "Right, so it's just a series of spreadsheet formulas and a weekly check-in?" Suddenly the complexity you worked hard to manage sounds like something anyone could handle. Before you know it the next infuriating comment that comes your way is "Why couldn't you get that done in a day, then?"

Authority is most visible in the gap between what you deliver and what people understand about how you got there.

Mystery and expertise are deeply linked in how people assign value. Unless they are teaching, a surgeon does not narrate every incision they make. Architects won't attempt to explain the feedback from a structural engineer to their clients. They just alter the design to accommodate. The building needs it, they say. Think of anyone doing a job that requires skill and thinking. They can’t and won’t explain everything they know. All you need to know is that the expected result is possible and happens. There’s a good reason for this.

Selective Transparency

Make no mistake, we are in an age where AI is being used as an excuse to downsize the workforce. These cuts are about profit margins and stock values. Innovative AI is the trendy excuse to disguise cost-cutting as progress. In the event that AI doesn't deliver, the replacement will be someone willing to do the same work for less.

AI is making an impact though. Because you are no longer required to show your work people are using it to great effect. You already see this every day, in colleagues who respond without really thinking, because something else did the thinking for them. The people not explaining themselves, not in the literal firing line, are using AI to boost sentiment.

At this point, you already know not to hand over everything but how much do we hand over? You have heard of selective hearing before. In Irish, we call it Bodhaire Uí Laoghaire (O'Leary's Deafness, and before you try... that’s not pronounced anything like you think it is). O’Leary was apparently a genius at electing not to hear what didn’t work for him. You should be no different. Selective transparency is the same instinct applied to what you share. Mentoring a junior colleague and engaging with a competitor where trade secrets are at play need different approaches.

None of your expertise came easy, so choose wisely who you give an easier path to. There's a significant difference between explaining your work to a direct manager who needs the nuts and bolts of everything and explaining it to an executive who wants confidence that the outcome will be achieved. The latter group doesn't need to know how the engine works. They just need to know that the car will cross the finish line first.

Before any briefing or report, ask yourself: Does this person need to understand how I do this, or do they need to trust that I do it well?

Once you have practiced asking this question, change it to be your default communication style. Lead with the outcome. Follow with the implications. Include process when asked, or when it adds credibility. Sometimes it does. Otherwise you can give a nod to the process by stating "There are some moving parts I manage behind the scenes" which is more powerful than a ten-minute walkthrough of those parts.

The difference should be immediate:

Over-explaining	Outcome-led
Every Monday morning I pull data from four separate platforms. I then reconcile any discrepancies manually. I use a pivot table, cross-referenced with last quarter's figures. What you get is a formatted summary.	The performance summary helps the team make faster decisions. Last quarter, that flagged a 14% budget variance three weeks before it would have surfaced otherwise.

The same underlying task with two very different perceptions.

Guard Your Craft

There's a reason the best creatives show their work without narrating the process. Value lives partly in mystery. Not deception or arrogance.

Show me someone who delivers results and doesn't feel compelled to demystify themselves for every audience, and I'll show you someone who exudes confidence. They still show some people the details. They just choose their audience.

So the next time you're tempted to walk someone through your entire process, pause. Ask yourself whether that explanation serves them, or whether it's serving your own need for validation. Often, the most powerful thing you can say is less than you think.