The Benefits of Experience

As I reflect upon a career, which now spans over four decades, I have certainly seen a lot of changes to the way that business processes and technology have changed many businesses in the economy. There are, however, some things that have not changed during this time. In this article, I want to pick out one of those areas that I don’t believe that there has been much change, nor will there be much change in the future. The area of how often a little experience can often be the difference between success and failure.

When I was a much younger accountant, in the 1980s, corporate Australia decided that the best way to increase profits was to make many of their older staff redundant – improving bottom line wage costs. There was, however, a serious under-estimating of how much older people, within the unspoken fabric within those organisations, knew when it came to fixing day-to-day problems.

From my extensive business experience, it is apparent that problems come in many different sizes and many different forms. That is, it is very rare that one very large problem derails an organisation. It is typically a series of decisions made to not address small problems in your organisation.

Anyway, getting back to the 1980s. After about a year or two, some Australian corporates came to realise that those older, experienced people actually may need to re-employed back as consultants to help deal with the problems which came up since they left. In fact, this created a whole new wave of consulting companies, some of which are still consulting and fixing problems to this day.

So, what am I trying to say with this? If you have experienced people, who are becoming a little older and who perhaps need a little more time off throughout the year or other flexible arrangements, try to facilitate this to ensure that their knowledge is kept within the business. Remember, it is their value in handling businesses’ real-life problems which gives their value later on in their careers.

Some other points about the benefits of keeping your experienced people in your organisations which may be of benefit are as follows:

• With maturity, comes relationship building and problem-solving skills. It’s amazing how many problems are created in a business environment by things like not ringing people back, setting unrealistic expectations and not admitting it when you are wrong.
• An experienced person can solve in 5 mins what may take an inexperienced person many months.
• An experienced person may be able extract what your people are not telling you. I’m sure we have all been in a position as business leaders where it was what we didn’t know that caused all the problems.
• An experienced person knows that there are no cookie cutter models to solve an organisation’s challenges. Each organisation must be looked at as a unique, vibrant organism, where the building blocks to create success are different depending on the personalities and skills of the people involved.

Remember, value your experienced people and always seek out wise counsel to assist you in solving your problems.