Experience versus wisdom

I’ve noticed a pattern…

This morning a colleague of mine complained to me that he was confused by the fact that the builder who is doing his house renovations has 30 years experience but appears to be completely useless.

Last week during the Churchill Club function on Clarity of Thought, the homicide detective on the panel mentioned how he likes to develop a culture in his teams where people are regularly challenged, own up to mistakes quickly and easily and then move on.

Last week I was at a meeting of a community group I am involved in and praise was heaped upon a departing member, because it was considered the polite thing to do, not because they were any good – in fact quite the reverse.

So what’s the common thread here?

It’s understanding that experience doesn’t provide wisdom unless you learn lessons around what works, what doesn’t and what can be done better.

Endlessly I meet people that:

• Think it’s helpful to only provide positive feedback rather than honest. This is a terrible shame because it means the target of their feedback can never learn from their mistakes, eg. it would be horrible to get told you stink in a job interview, but much worse to go through life thinking it was just bad luck you didn’t get the job.
• Never acknowledge a mistake is theirs. They think it’s so important that their personal brand is associated with being right or winning that they will never ever, even to themselves, acknowledge their part in failure. They tend to say things like “the market wasn’t ready for us” or “it was the idiots that handled the execution, as my strategy was spot on”.

People who don’t learn from mistakes are incredibly dangerous. Never take their advice as their “wisdom” is non-existent and their intuition is faulty. Unfortunately though they are normally very good at bragging about their extensive successful experience.

Some call intelligence the ability to make finer distinctions. I say that when you have a job candidate that represents to you that they have 15 years experience on the job, don’t assume anything other than that’s how they spent their time. Find out what they failed at and what they learned from their failure.

I’d also recommend, as our homicide squad detective did, create a culture within your organisation where mistakes and failures are recognised early and easily – and are learnt from.

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Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded: Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club, Flinders Pacific and L2i Technology Advisory. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia and Vietnam. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve.