You can meet a person who has “thirty years” in the field, and discover they have really lived one year… thirty times.

It is like the old fisherman in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

He could have gone out every morning, caught a few fish, and come home unchanged. But it is only when Santiago hooks the giant marlin, and that struggle nearly kills him, when he fails and loses it to the sharks, that he truly knows the sea.

Years alone do not teach you.

Big storms do.

People confuse familiarity with skill. Doing the same thing for years feels like expertise, but it is basically muscle memory, like a pianist who only ever plays Für Elise, unprepared for any other tune.

Compressed learning, on the other hand, is a thing: a short span filled with crises and change can be worth far more than decades of routine. Think of how soldiers can gain more leadership experience in one brutal campaign than many CEOs do in a career!

Finally, in corporate life, “thirty years” can mean these people knew more on how to avoid blame than on how to push boundaries. Longevity can be a sign of risk-aversion as much as competence…

I touched this subject in Beyond Slides, and I'd love to hear what you think about it…

Have you read the book yet?