When we came out of school we were blessed with so many tools and knowledge that we just knew that the world was waiting for us to apply it. Then a funny thing happened that scared us. The plant we entered was filled with “experience” that we did not know about. After a few attempts at telling someone our ideas and they continually told us “you don’t have any experience with your education” we recognized the unfairness of the situation. In fact some people are educated above their intelligence level!
As we moved from one job to the next, we found that some of the leadership skills we learned were “transportable”. Their real impact was it didn’t take as long to accomplish the same things on the next assignment. Perhaps we were getting some experience to go with our knowledge. Now we were seeing and valuing experience also. Experience is like fishing in the same shoreline. We see the deep hole we remember that harbored the nice trout. Our experience told us what lure to cast and where the most likely place the fish was hiding.
Experience and knowledge really pays off when the two curves cross and your leadership pulls everyone else to a new level of competency. Remember, nothing happens until someone touches something. The most efficient process in the world is always limited to the experience AND knowledge of the person who starts it. Leadership assures that person always inputs the proper skills to the task.
