Are experience and time on the job/industry related?
It’s been a couple of months since my last post because of Ideasphere client work and some vacation, but I am back to share some ideas and continue this on-going dialogue with those of you who e-mail me about these musings. Recently, one of our clients asked me to help him assess two executives he was considering for a promotion to a very important job leading a major transformation initiative we had suggested to the company. That was not an unusual request, since evaluating people is one of the three components of our People, Process & Systems approach to company transformations. What was unusual was that one of them was a ten year veteran in the company and had almost twenty years of total experience as a senior executive in their industry, while the other had come from six years in a completely different industry and only had three years with this company. Both executives were considered solid performers and valuable players on the executive team.
After we went through all the standard assessments, 360 Interviews, Harrison Profile, Observation on the job, etc. our assessment was that the executive with the less time in the industry and with the company was actually more knowledgeable, respected, and appropriate for the new position. Which, prompted this blog entry…
Is time on the job, or an industry, the same as experience? I believe not! Take the two executives I mentioned for example.
The executive with the most years, although competent, a nice fella and likeable guy, seemed to be stuck in the business model he learned twenty years ago and unable to grasp the new market realities. It seemed to me, rather than twenty years of experience, he had the same one year of experience repeated twenty times. When I brought up the subject of continuous education for executives, his attitude was that everything he needed to know he learned on the job in the last twenty years, and by “being in the trenches.” As far as ideas for innovation or personal growth, he read only one industry publication and had no subscriptions to, let alone read, any general management periodicals. He had heard of Social Networks such as Plaxo, LinkedIn, and Facebook but never participated and he was adamant that participating in any industry associations was a waste of his time and more appropriate for sales folks and junior managers.
Now consider the other executive. When we discussed the industry status, not only was she familiar with all the major innovations in the space, she had a well thought out position on which innovations would be appropriate for their company and how they could be implemented. She actively met with managers of other departments in the company and networked with industry executives. She attended one industry conference a year, read the industry periodicals, and subscribed to at least two general management periodicals, which based on our conversations on recent articles she actually read. When we talked about her industry, she was able to bring up examples from her previous industry and discuss their correlation with the challenges facing her current industry. In all she had 20 years of experience as an executive and three solid years of experience in the company and the new industry.
So what do you think? As always, you can reach me at c.papageorgiou@ideasphere.com