Janna Szangolies
Image made in Midjourney --Sref 3898137712
The Hidden Challenge of Translation
Every business owner has experienced the same awkward moment. Someone asks you to explain how you really do your work, not the polished version for investors, not the bullet-pointed process you’d put in a handbook, but the lived, everyday way you make things happen.
And you stumble.
“Well, it depends…”
“Usually I just…”
“I don’t know, I just do it.”
The struggle isn’t because you’re confused. It’s because you’re good. Over time, you’ve internalised so much experience that the work has become instinctive. You don’t consciously narrate how you route a client’s request, or why you handle a budget conversation one way and not another, any more than a sprinter thinks about each individual muscle firing when they run. You just run.
But that instinct, your strength, is also what makes it so hard to explain. It’s invisible to others. It doesn’t surface in checklists. Even you can’t easily articulate it until something goes wrong.
This is what we call the translation barrier: the gap between the inner world of intuition, experience, and judgement, and the outer world of systems, documentation, and delegation. Crossing it feels uncomfortable, sometimes even silly. Talking through why you’re saving a file here or structuring a pitch that way can feel stilted and obvious, like overexplaining what you already know by heart. But once you cross that barrier, once your brain has contextualised what the task really is, the skies open. Your expertise becomes visible, transferable, and scalable.
Why Explaining Feels So Impossible
One reason this feels so hard is that people don’t all experience thought in the same way.
Russell Hurlburt at the University of Nevada has studied inner monologues and found they’re far from universal. Some people live with a running commentary in their head. Others rarely hear such a voice, thinking instead in images, sensations, or abstract patterns.
Temple Grandin, the scientist and autism advocate, describes her thinking as “like Google Images.” She doesn’t think in words first, but in exact visual scenes and textures. Psychologist Allan Paivio called this dual-coding: we process meaning through both verbal and nonverbal systems, and people lean on them differently.
Culture shapes this too. Richard Nisbett’s cross-cultural studies showed that East Asian participants saw wholes and relationships, while Western participants fixated on isolated objects. A 2025 Namibian study found that rural participants literally perceived a visual illusion differently from urban Europeans. Seeing circles where others saw rectangles. Even our environments influence perception.
All of this means there is no universal “default” inner world. The way you think, in words, images, or gut feels, may not match how your colleague or your software “expects” you to think. When you try to explain what you do, you’re not just writing steps. You’re translating across fundamentally different modes of thought.
The Three Layers of Translation
In our work with business owners, we've found it useful to describe translation in three layers: mechanical, contextual, and cognitive. This framework sits at the centre of how we approach operational diagnosis: understanding which layer a problem lives in determines what kind of work is actually needed to solve it.
The Mechanical Layer
This is the surface: the keystrokes, the clicks, the visible moves. Open this file. Save it here. Send this email.
It’s the easiest layer to capture, and most documentation stops here. But it’s brittle. The moment a condition changes or judgement is required, the script breaks.
The Contextual Layer
The next layer is when and who. What triggered this step? Who’s downstream? What breaks if it’s skipped?
This layer surfaces dependencies. The invisible glue that actually makes work flow. Without it, instructions float in isolation. With it, they connect into a living system.
The Cognitive Layer
The deepest and most important layer is the why. This isn’t about motions; it’s about meaning.
It’s where an architect rotates a building ten degrees off axis because of morning light. Where a media agency founder sets a pitch budget to win a big account without undermining long-term margin. Where a clinician designs a patient schedule to balance access with wellbeing. Where a product lead chooses not to build the most requested feature because it dilutes positioning.
These decisions aren’t captured in “click here, save there.” They’re the sum of guiding principles, decision guides, working patterns, and go-to moves. They’re the real work. The difference between someone going through motions and someone practicing a craft.
This is the hardest layer to surface. It can feel silly to narrate what you know so well. But it’s also the most valuable. Without it, you create robots, not teammates. With it, you preserve your business’s DNA while making it teachable.
From Motions to Meaning: A Way to Capture Judgement
How do you document not just what you did, but why you did it? We use a simple four-part frame to help business owners translate expert calls into something reusable:
The Frame — What were you optimising for? What competing goods were at play (time vs. quality, margin vs. win rate)?
The Signals — What did you notice that others might miss? A client’s tone, a data trend, a site constraint?
The Decision Guide — What go-to move or working principle did you apply? Phrase it in a way you could hand to a junior.
The Boundary — When would you make the opposite call? Where does the guide break?
Capturing these four elements alongside the steps turns brittle SOPs into durable playbooks.
Architecture
Frame: Balance thermal comfort with budget.
Signals: Winter sun blocked at 3pm; client’s daily routine; zoning limits.
Decision Guide: “Rotate 8–12° east if afternoon sun is compromised. Shift spend from west facing glass to north facing high windows for light.”
Boundary: “If client prioritises view over comfort and funds high-performance glazing, accept western exposure with shading.”
Media Agency
Frame: Maximise win probability while protecting delivery margin.
Signals: Fragmented brief owners; procurement present early.
Decision Guide: “Price the credible middle; show efficiency after month three.”
Boundary: “If a single exec owns KPI and offers autonomy, lead with premium scope.”
Clinical Practice
Frame: Keep access high without burning clinicians.
Signals: No-show rates by time of day; case-mix patterns.
Decision Guide: “Cluster complex cases in the morning; buffer every third session.”
Boundary: “If no-shows drop below 5%, compress buffers temporarily.”
Product Leadership
Frame: Strengthen positioning over shipping volume.
Signals: Competitors converging; win/loss notes mentioning clarity.
Decision Guide: “Gate parity features as add-ons; invest fully in wedge features.”
Boundary: “If enterprise client requires parity to land, offer it with guardrails.”
Each of these captures what motions miss: expert judgement.
Tools for Crossing the Barrier
Capturing the cognitive layer doesn’t have to be heavy. Here are lightweight ways to practice:
Narrate While Doing — Record yourself explaining not just steps, but reasons. It may feel silly at first, but it surfaces instincts you didn’t know you had.
Last-Time Storytelling — Instead of “how do we do this?” ask, “what happened the last time we did this?” Real episodes reveal hidden calls.
Principle Tagging — Add a one-line principle to each decision: “Clarity over speed.” “Protect margin first.”
New Hire Simulation — Explain a task to an imagined new team member. Notice where your words falter — that’s where instinct lives.
Constraint Logging — Write down the non-negotiables shaping your calls: regulation, brand guardrails, client psychology.
At first, narrating yourself this way can feel stilted. Once you cross that barrier, your brain recognises what the task actually is: not just doing the work, but teaching the why.
The Bigger Picture: Why This Work Matters
It’s not about replacing instinct. It’s about translating it so others can learn, adapt, and carry it forward.
In the end, the reason to articulate and document not just the what of your work but the why is simple: it’s the only way to replicate yourself.
As long as the reasoning lives only in your head, you remain the bottleneck. Every decision routes through you, every escalation waits on you, every judgement call sits on your shoulders. That weight is unsustainable. And it makes your business fragile.
But when you capture your principles, your decision guides, your go-to moves, something powerful happens. You remove yourself as the barrier. You make it possible for others to think like you, not just mimic your steps. That’s how you scale.
And more than that: that’s how you reclaim your life. Translation isn’t busywork. It’s the path to being able to take a real holiday. To sleep through the night without dreading what’s waiting in your inbox. To package your business in a way that makes it transferable, whether to a buyer, a successor, or a team that can finally run without you.
Articulating the what and the why is the bridge from instinct to freedom. That is worth the discomfort of crossing it.
Closing Thought
Your instincts are your strength. They are the reason the business exists at all - why you could move fast, read situations accurately, and keep so much running in your head when no one else could. That is worth recognising.
The work of translation doesn't diminish any of that. It protects it. It means the thing you built on instinct doesn't depend on your continuous presence to survive. That your best thinking outlasts any single decision, any single day, any single version of you being available.
Your instincts got you here. Translation is how they carry forward.
Further Reading & Sources
Topic | Source & Link | Why It's Included |
|---|---|---|
Variability of Inner Monologue | Summarises Russell Hurlburt’s findings (Descriptive Experience Sampling), showing that how “inner speech” manifests varies dramatically among individuals. | |
Visual Thinking (Temple Grandin) | “How Should We Think About Our Different Styles of Thinking?” (The New Yorker) | Features Temple Grandin’s description of visual thinking, which is an intuitive, image-first cognitive style. |
Dual-Coding Theory | “Allan Paivio and His Dual Coding Theory” (Exploring Your Mind) | Introduces the idea that we encode meaning both verbally and visually, which is key to understanding multi-modal thinking. |
Picture Superiority Effect | Explains why visuals tend to be more memorable than words, especially relevant for visual thinkers. | |
Cross-Cultural Cognition | “The Influence of Culture: Holistic versus Analytic Perception” (Nisbett & Miyamoto) | Documents how East Asian vs. Western cognition differs, seeing context versus isolating objects. |
Visual Illusion & Cultural Perception | “Major urban–rural differences in perception of a visual illusion” (pre-print) | Shows how rural Namibians perceive the “Coffer illusion” as circles, not rectangles, unlike UK/US subjects, evidence of environment shaping perception. |
Linguistic Relativity & Cognition | Surveys how language influences thought across cultures, reinforcing the need for translation, not assuming universality. |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the translation barrier in business?
The translation barrier is the gap between what an experienced person knows and what they can actually explain. Most people who are good at their work have internalised it so deeply that it no longer feels like knowledge — it just feels like doing. The problem is that what feels obvious to you is invisible to everyone else. When that gap isn't crossed, businesses become dependent on specific people, delegation stays shallow, and the same questions keep coming back to the same desk. Crossing the translation barrier means making your expertise visible enough that others can carry it — without losing what makes it yours.
Why is it so hard to explain how you do your job?
Because the better you are at something, the less consciously you do it. Expertise works by compressing experience into instinct — your brain stops narrating each step and simply acts. That's efficient, but it means the knowledge has gone underground. When someone asks you to explain it, you're being asked to surface something your mind has spent years learning to run automatically. The difficulty isn't a sign that you don't know. It's a sign that you know too well. The work of translation is deliberately slowing down to find the steps your expertise has learned to skip.
What is tacit knowledge and why does it matter for business operations?
Tacit knowledge is the term used for the things you know through experience but can't easily write down — the judgment calls, the pattern recognition, the decisions that feel instinctive because you've made them a hundred times before. It's the difference between knowing the rules of chess and knowing how to play well. In business operations, tacit knowledge is usually the most valuable thing a business holds and the most fragile. When it lives only in one person's head, that person becomes a bottleneck. Every decision routes through them, every uncertainty waits on them, and if they leave, the knowledge leaves with them. Making tacit knowledge explicit — giving it language, structure, and context — is how businesses stop being dependent on any single person.
What are the three layers of knowledge that make up how an expert really works?
Most expertise operates on three levels at once, even though only one of them is usually visible. The first is the mechanical layer — the visible steps, the sequence, the procedure. This is what most documentation captures. The second is the contextual layer — the why behind the steps. What triggers this action, who depends on the output, what goes wrong downstream if it's skipped. This layer is rarely written down but is often what makes the difference between a step being done correctly and a step being done usefully. The third is the cognitive layer — the judgment. The principles an expert applies, the patterns they've learned to read, the decisions they make differently depending on the situation. This is the hardest layer to surface and the most valuable to capture. When all three layers are documented, you have something people can actually learn from. When only the first is captured, you have a checklist that breaks the moment something unexpected happens.
Why do most process documents fail to capture how work actually gets done?
Because they only record the surface — the steps, the clicks, the sequence. They miss two deeper layers that are just as important. The first is context: what triggers each step, who depends on the output, what breaks if it's skipped. The second is judgment: why this particular approach, what you're weighing up when you decide, when you'd do it differently. A document that only captures steps gives someone the motions without the understanding. That's why people follow a process correctly and still produce the wrong result — and why the same questions keep coming back to you even after you've written things down.
What is the difference between a process and a playbook?
A process tells people what to do. A playbook tells people what to do, why, when to deviate, and how to think when the situation doesn't match the script. The difference matters most when things don't go to plan — which, in most businesses, is most of the time. A process-trained person follows steps until the steps don't fit and then stops. A playbook-trained person understands the reasoning well enough to adapt. Building playbooks rather than processes is how you transfer expertise rather than just procedure — and it's the difference between a team that can work independently and one that still needs you in the room.
How do you document the way an expert makes decisions?
The most practical approach is to break each decision down into four parts. What were you trying to achieve — what were you optimising for? What did you notice that a less experienced person might have missed? What principle or go-to move did you apply, and how would you phrase it as a rule someone else could follow? And finally, when would you do the opposite — where does the rule break down? Capturing these four elements alongside the steps turns a rigid procedure into something that can be understood, taught, and adapted. The goal isn't to eliminate judgment. It's to make the logic behind it visible enough that others can start developing their own.
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