Experience holds much promise. When you want to grow, experience can accelerate it. When you are facing challenges that overwhelm you, experience can solve it.
What does experience look like?
Grey hair, time in the game, a fancy car, connections and networks, a string of degrees, Harvard, titles and the list goes on. Is that the experience you want?
Onboarding experience into your business to grow or solve problems is valuable only if you get it right. It will otherwise be a costly mistake.
Listen to this podcast from The Money Show where Pavlo Phitidis breaks down what elements of experience you need to look for, to achieve clear outcomes.
How do you evaluate experience?
Time – Does someone who’s been in business for 20 years have more relevant experience than someone who has been in business for 5 years? Think of driving to understand the value of time. When you first learn to drive, there’s a massive, steep learning curve and within a few months, you quickly get the hang of it! Since then, how much have you improved your driving? Sometimes we don’t even remember driving to the shop – it’s automatic. And would you like to be driven to the shops by your 95 year old grandpa? No, even though he has 80 years of driving experience, it doesn’t make him a better driver.
But think of Lewis Hamilton, who spends every single day working on his driving. He’s got far fewer years in the driving seat but his constant attention to it sees him improve every day.
Context – Does the experience come from government, corporate, university or the school of hard knocks and is that relevant to your business?
Position – Chairman, CEO, CMO and everything else, what does their experience actually look like, what do you need them to achieve.
Function – Strategy, sales, ops or admin – where is your biggest need?
Activity – Were they alone, in a team, led by the team or leading the team, saying or doing?
Outcome – How is success and failure communicated, evidenced and truthfully expressed
How do you value it?
Onboarding experience should be preceded by need.
A need to grow – remember if you are not growing you are dying.
A need to solve challenges – some come from complacency, others come from growth.
Define what the problem or opportunity is. This means give it context, description, shape, and form and ultimately a measured outcome. Hire the right experience to deliver on that, and value it at the resolution of opportunity or solution to the problem.
If you are not seeking the outcome of experience in your business, it might be time to question your ambitions or purpose. Nobody knows it all and wisdom, the sum of insight and foresight, will never leave a growth mindset comfortable or complacent on status quo. It can always be better. You can always be better. If that’s the case, why not be better. Experience, well placed, can constantly close that never closed gap at being the best you can be!
