Is Experience about adding years?

Here the thought is about something that all of us think that we possess and continue to gain every day, but rarely do we realize what it actually means – “Experience”.

The thought has been with me, ever since I came across a simple saying – “Experience is not what happens to you, Experience is what you do to what happens to you”. I have put together three examples, let’s take a look:

The management team of a retail company is sitting and trying to find out a solution to a problem. The problem is the global concern of recession. The early trends have shown that recession is here but nobody has any clue as to what level will Recession impact the company. The team sitting in the meeting is a heterogeneous team with various levels of experience and there is a lot of debate and discussion on this topic.

Abha, an executive from a premier B school, says “We need to take a hard look at all our costs and save money on them as sales are bound to fall. One of the areas of high cost in our operation is the manpower cost and we need to cut the same to manage our profits. I can only see layoffs as the way to go”. She drew a proximate sales drop chart which is expected and thus, how much costs will we need to save to reach break even. People in the meeting are obviously way too uncomfortable for this solution.

Mr. Juneja, having spent 15 years in the company objected upfront. “I have seen many ups and downs in my career. Such drastic steps at this stage are not required. We need to cut cost by maybe, reducing salaries and if required, laying off a few unproductive people. Also, we will get benefit by negotiating on rent in some of our properties. If we lose 15% sales, that can be compensated by taking these steps. I am sure all these steps will help us sail through recession period”. Everyone seemed to nod in affirmative.

After a little pause, Ashwin, another old hand, though not as experienced as Mr. Juneja, spoke up. He said, “I think besides managing the current, we should also think about the long term impacts. Therefore, we do need to understand what will be the impact 3-5 years down the line as well. First of all, it is a great time to book new properties for our stores. We will not get these prices in the near future and we will be able to command on the builders. At the same time, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to lay off people as right now, we can retain people at the same cost but during the boom period, when we will require these resources again, the same positions will at least come at a 30% higher cost. As far as the sales are concerned, as people in various teams will now have lesser work, we can try out some unconventional methods like maybe some of our staff can get involved in institutional sales and bulk enquiries, something which we have not tried until now”. People in the room had a ray of hope on their faces.

This is how experience differs. The first case, Abha, had little experience but she was backed up with education. She believed whatever she has studied in text books holds completely true in the real world and made projections similarly. But all of us know, Education is others’ experience, but what we need in the real world is our “own” experience and way of looking at things. If the world has done things in a certain way, not necessary that that is the right way only!  She was not able to think of alternatives and did not consider implications of actions. The second case, Mr. Juneja, as much as it sounds like experience, is a case of “conditioning”. We go through certain events in our life where we have taken certain steps and we continue to do the same on every occurrence of it. This is much like the “Pavlovian Theory”, where we are conditioned to respond to a certain event in a defined manner. This case is a little better than education as the learnings are our own and the set up is more “real”. However, this “conditioning”, results in the same experience always and there’s no value addition ever. Repeating once again – “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!”

And then, comes Ashwin. Even though he has lesser years of going through the grind than Mr. Juneja in his career, he is “experienced” enough to react to a particular situation in his own way. He learnt that what went wrong in the last recession and is now smart enough to take the right kind of actions upon each one of them, and each action impacting a fairly long period of time. That is what is called, the real experience!

Now you need to figure out for yourself, whether you are educated, conditioned or experienced. In most of the cases, we are “Conditioned”, as we believe that what we have done once in the past and was right, will continue to be right forever and we don’t need to break our heads every time into it. Education cannot replace Experience. Therefore, there is a lot of value to the "grey hair". But if someone believes that "grey hair" alone is experience, that is where the mistake starts. This is when we deride education, get closed to new ideas because we have "experience". To repeat, most of us confuse experience with conditioning. Experience is about internalising the events that unfold and have an even better plan of action for future.

Next time you think you have the experience, think again. Is your experience only conditioning?

Do let me know what you think about the write up.

You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.