“How big is the role, and how big is the person filling that role?” I asked the group. “Elliott calls this the size of can. How big is the can and how big is the person filling the can?”
“Well, certainly, experience is something we look at,” came a retort from the far corner of the table. “The more experience someone has, the larger role they can fill.”
“Experience is certainly something most managers look at,” I replied. “And how often does experience lead us astray. In fact, does someone have ten years’ experience or one year’s experience ten times? How many of you have placed someone, with experience, in a role, only to find them failing after a few short weeks? What did we miss by relying on experience as our determining factor?”
Experience is not measured by the number of years but it is measured by actual things that that the person have achieved and the knowledge he accumulated from his mistakes.
There are persons that have one been working by one way for a long time without learning from their mistakes or develop their ideas or tactics, therefore their experience will not be number of years But it will be the duration of one cycle of work repeated for many times.
For someone who is doing a routine job this may be accepted but in leadership positions we must be cautious when evaluating the experience it must take into consideration diversity and the work that the person had accomplishments.
Too often I have seen excellent technical people promoted to leadership positions where they fail miserably! Usually it is the person in the team that is oldest (experience?) who gets the opportunity. I have always wonder the same; If these people have been doing the same thing for a long time or have they showed leadership qualities to get into the new position.