The Stupid Gap™: The Business Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

By Dr. Trudy Beerman, DSL — Published September 5, 2026

Every good story needs a villain. I recently found the name for one that has been lurking in business for a very long time: The Stupid Gap™.

No, I am not calling your customers, employees or prospects stupid.

The Stupid Gap™ is the distance between what someone currently knows, understands, believes or knows how to do and what they need to know, understand, believe or know how to do to achieve the desired result, making success harder than it needs to be.

The person isn't stupid. The gap is. The Stupid Gap™ isn't necessarily sinister. It is often accidental friction.

How the Stupid Gap™ Shows Up

Think about the prospect who lands on a website and cannot figure out what the company actually does. The business owner knows. The marketing team knows. The prospect is somehow expected to figure it out.

There is a Stupid Gap™.

A manager gives an employee a task without explaining what a successful outcome looks like. The employee completes it incorrectly, and the manager wonders, How could they not know that?

There is a Stupid Gap™.

A knowledgeable expert has years of experience, impressive credentials and a proven methodology, but very little of that evidence is discoverable online. The expert wonders why Google, AI systems, journalists or prospective clients fail to recognize their authority.

Again, there is a Stupid Gap™.

As I often say in my work with REACHology®, the algorithm cannot evaluate what it cannot discover. We cannot expect people or machines to fill in information we have failed to provide.

Before blaming the person for failing to cross the gap, inspect the bridge you gave them.

Great Systems Close the Gap

One reason franchises can be so appealing is that the franchisee is not expected to reinvent the business from scratch. Much of the intelligence required to operate the business has already been embedded into processes, training, standards, technology, checklists and systems.

That is what good systems do. They reduce the amount of extraordinary intuition required to produce a consistently good result.

The same principle applies far beyond operations. A good sales process closes gaps in understanding. Good branding closes gaps between the value you possess and the value the market perceives. Good leadership closes gaps between what the leader knows and what the team needs to know. Good customer experience closes gaps between buying a solution and successfully benefiting from it.

The objective is not to make people smarter before they can work with us. It is to stop making success unnecessarily difficult.

“Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.”

Proverbs 4:26, NIV

In business, part of giving careful thought to the path is examining the obstacles we have unnecessarily left in someone else's way.

Every Gap Is an Opportunity

This is why I have started looking at business problems differently.

When someone isn't buying, understanding, executing, adopting or progressing, before assuming something is wrong with the person, ask:

What are we expecting them to magically figure out for themselves?

That question can expose an unclear message, missing belief, undocumented process, confusing customer journey, weak training system or assumption that has been hiding in plain sight.

Find the gap.

Then build the bridge.

I will be exploring The Stupid Gap™ across sales, branding, leadership, systems, AI, customer experience and other areas of business in upcoming articles and videos.

Because every story needs a villain.

We found one of ours.