The end of Experience?

"Experience" has for a very long time been seen as a prerequisite for senior management positions. In many respects however, it is now a hangover.

Much of what was gained in "experience" is now subverted by easy access to knowledge and other people. Back then, people could make an entire career by eking out the knowledge from undergraduate training inside highly structured bureaucracies, supplemented by training on how to run the machine that was the organisation.

With knowledge doubling every day, the challenge we face is not to accumulate it, but filter it. Learning what no longer serves us, and holds us back in a previous era is as important as being able to identify the signal in the tsunami of noise that is presented to us daily.

The certainty and regularity we have all been encouraged to seek no longer exists. The gentle paddle in the boating pond has been replaced by constant grade 5 white water and we have to go with the flow.

The nature of what constitutes important experience ha…