Has experience lost its value?

I have always thought experience was rather overvalued. I spent some time working in a German business environment, where it seemed that qualification and experience were everything, performance track record almost nothing. I saw the results – an intensely hierarchical workplace filled with snobbery, dead wood and underpaid youngsters.

It was not so different in the Netherlands, especially in technical fields.  I used to sit on a contracts board for a business that hired contract engineers. Often the specification would require a ridiculous period of experience in the field, such as twenty-five years. I used to wonder, aloud, what possible extra value that twenty-fifth year might have brought to make one candidate qualified and another not. I learned that it was often a ruse, akin to a closed shop, to make sure the same individuals were hired again and again. Some people didn’t like seeing me on that contracts board!

But then I could support an argument that, say, ten years of experience in a field might be a reasonable requirement. After all, a professional will not experience all the possible situations very often, and certainly not in a classroom. It takes someone of experience to recognize a rare situation and to react in an appropriate and measured way.

But even ten years of experience in a narrow field can raise red flags. How have methods changed since the person was trained, and has he or she kept up to date? Have they become stale or jaundiced, or make lazy assumptions? How well will they respond to authority, and to unusual team environments?

As so often, we can find some good examples from the world of sport. Among players, experience is noticeable in someone who is calm, who intuitively reacts to a situation before it matures, and who avoids rash mistakes. Sadly for professional athletes, that advantage is all too quickly outweighed by physical limitations. Notice how the most influential player in the recent soccer world cup was Mbappe, a raw nineteen-year-old with electrifying pace.

Soccer managers have a longer life cycle, but even here experience is not everything. Look at poor old Arsene Wenger, twenty-two years in the same job and plainly overmatched for the last third of his reign. Ferguson did not suffer the same fate – perhaps he was more prepared to update his skills and methods, and perhaps, for all his cussedness, he was a better delegator.

Jose Mourinho is another example. Arguably his methods have become less outdated than Wenger’s, but there is a problem with his attitude. He was always arrogant, but experience has made him intolerably so, at a time when relations between coach and player have changed. And he has become stale. Manchester United should cut their losses as soon as possible.

Then again, it is rare that a first time manager is immediately successful. They need experience. Without it they make mistakes, fail to see trends and struggle to build up respect.

So, experience has value, up to a point, and a degree of experience is a requirement for success. What I am wondering is whether the value of experience compared with other attributes is less than it was before, and whether the required degree of experience has reduced.

I came to this thought by considering choir conductors. I have had the benefit of working with several in recent years, and have been involved in some conductor searches as well. I believe I have noticed some trends.

Firstly, the overall standard has massively improved. When I think of the conductors I worked with ten years ago, their flaws are obvious. Nowadays, nearly everyone is technically strong. There is a range, but the low, median and high points of the range have all gone up.

But the other trend might be more surprising. Most of the best conductors I work with nowadays seem also to be the least experienced, so long as they have had a full training and at least a year or so working on the human side. This contrasts with just five years ago. I remember a particular conductor search. There were some tired candidates who had not kept up with modern methods. But there were also many held back by lack of experience, rather raw, just as rookie soccer players can be – locked into one or two dominant methods, afraid to improvise, prone to errors and immature with leading elders. This seems to have changed with the next cohort, many of whom exhibit none of those weaknesses.

So why might that be? I can think of several reasons, many of which feel compelling to me. College teachers have improved. This may be because they can use smarter tools, explore what works and learn from peers around the world, all supported by video and audio technology. Their pupils can learn more quickly, mainly because their opportunity to practice and get feedback has exploded because of the same media. Perhaps both groups have also improved their relationship skills – there may be less hierarchy and fewer dogmatic approaches, as well as greater curiosity and respect and ability to assimilate feedback. All of this will apply after college as well. The developing conductor can travel to observe more, can use youtube to observe themselves and others, and practice in more diverse situations. It is possible that we elders have improved as well, more ready to offer respect to a new generation.

Meanwhile, some conductors with experience can be shown up in comparison. Choristers needs have progressed, in repertoire and in rehearsal methods, and we have shorter attention spans and value technology aids. In this new environment, tried and trusted methods can suddenly appear rigid and less effective.

So the faster pace of change, improved teaching, and technology-assisted practical learning may have partially inverted the experience curve, or at least moved its tipping point. The emerging conductors can now develop more quickly, so that they can aim to be as effective in a year or two as their predecessors could be only after ten or more years of experience. And the value of those ten years may also be diminishing, as good practices change more quickly. I observe this every week; now I can start to understand what lies behind it.

But of course these trends are not restricted to the field of choir conducting, but affect almost any professional field. Whether it is surgeons requiring keyhole expertise, or engineers using internet-enabled instruments, or accountants challenged by globalization, most fields are changing quickly, while new cohorts have the opportunity to develop more rapidly. Such universal skills as research and line management have changed beyond recognition, and the kids are showing the way forward.

The consequences are exciting but unsettling too. Overall, progress will be quicker. But we can see how my generation is protecting its positions and how that slows progress down and creates conflict. Many countries still have labour laws and practices that leave people in charge who are no longer the optimal choices. Whole industries are losing out as a result – whose management team do you trust to win the war over self-driving cars, Ford’s or Google’s? Go even wider, and you can extend this to countries – Italy or China?

And when the next recession comes, as it will, and automation drives more holes into the model of regular employment, there will be social tensions. Still, overall we should celebrate; the inversion of the experience model only accelerates progress further. And I’ll continue my policy of looking out for younger conductors to work with.

Sickness Benefits

I’ve been operating at less than 100% for a whole month now. It is very frustrating, but I sense it is nearly over, and I have enough energy to learn a few lessons.

It started in Toronto. Perhaps because I got myself a bit sunburned, I picked up a cold-like bug somewhere with excessive air conditioning. It might have become worse on the plane home, but in any case it lingered, as summer bugs can with all that stale and recycled air. The Princeton choir festival became hard work, even though my vocal chords were more or less OK. The long drives, strange beds and required focus all took their toll. Perhaps because of all that, I ran awkwardly to get out of a rainstorm and tweaked a knee, and I am still favouring one side today as a result. That surely contributed to falling down the stairs a week later, bruising a rib and my tailbone and causing more lingering pain. All these things have healed slowly. The relentless humidity and consequent disturbed sleep will not have helped.

It could have been worse. I could sing at Princeton. I had poor control of some bodily functions there, but was rescued by a spare pair of pants. I managed to leave my credit card at a restaurant and my phone somewhere else, but found both without consequences. The stairs were hard, but only a short block. I had a near mess driving home from Princeton, but hit nothing worse than a grass verge. Everything is healing.

Some of the lessons are rather obvious. Don’t sit too long in the sun. Recognise that everything takes longer to heal when you are a bit older, so don’t behave like a kid. Hold the handrail on staircases. Look after credit cards. Drive carefully. Get out of the city in summer. Make sure you have spare pants handy.

But there are somewhat deeper lessons too. First, it is not a coincidence that all these things followed from each other. One failure created vulnerability in other systems. It seems odd, but when you are sick, everything seems to go wrong more often. It becomes impossible to take something out of the fridge without a spillage, which then creates more work and more chance for things to go wrong. I found myself using extra care with everything, counting to ten often and going deliberately slowly. It is hard to break out of such a cycle.

All this gets into our heads. We get angry more easily. We become morose, and sometimes behave like victims or assign blame unreasonably. It feels like the cycle will only get worse and worse, which requires a conscious effort to respond with optimism and hope.

This positive attitude is one of things we need to work through times of sickness or vulnerability. Another one is help from others. Acts of kindness and love are such a relief. People not judging or complaining at least avoids making things worse.

That is where we can all learn the most from when we are sick. If we can remember how we feel when we are below par, it can help us deal with others when they are. This month has often reminded me of the two or three occasions when I have been really struggling to put one foot in front of the other, and of the critical help received during those times. I am lucky to be rarely sick. So that help can be me, whether at the local care home or supporting friends or simply being kind to people who need it. “Be kind”, said Henry James and others. Good advice indeed, and advice with the bonus that we always feel better when we are kind.

Such times also help me recall the role carers play in our society, and how carers are consistently undervalued, underpaid and under-rewarded. Give me a carer over a soldier any day.

Being sick also helped me reflect in a different way about the nature of human progress. For all of us, just getting through the day is hard, every single day. Whether it is dealing with pain, or managing relationships, or struggling through chores, or belittling ourselves to earn enough money, or handling mishaps, life is a road with many bumps.

When we are sick, we notice all those bumps rather more. It can stop us from devoting any of our energy onto things that might benefit others or society or lead to progress. If we are already vulnerable, being sick can lead us towards addiction, depression or even abuse or crime.

Now consider those for whom our sick day is like their regular day. That may be someone hungry, or in debt, or already addicted, or suffering abuse, or chronically disabled. If you think about it, that covers most of humanity. It is no wonder really that progress is so patchy, and driven only be a privileged minority, and that depression and abuse are so prevalent. If you can’t get through the day, and can’t see how things might improve, that becomes a likely outcome.

Perhaps 50 years ago, only 5% of us could devote maybe 5% of our energy, 5% of the time; to anything we might call progress. For the rest, there was no chance, and even for the lucky ones we needed a following wind. Conversely, for 20% of us had to devote at least 20% of energy 20% of the time fighting to avoid slipping into depression or another failing outcome.

Considering the whole of humanity, maybe those percentages were even less favourable. In the first batch, we could pretty well rule out India and Africa, as well as most women and most people over sixty.

Now, thanks to global progress on medicine, affluence, education and opportunity, both sets of percentages might have become 10%. If true, the impact on progress would have been to multiply its potential by 8, and the likelihood of the bad outcomes would have diminished by a factor of 8 as well. That is another way to explain the acceleration of progress described by Steven Pinker.

It also points a path forward. If the first group could become 20%, and the second one reduced to 5%, it would create two more eight-fold multipliers. Doesn’t that seem eminently achievable? Consider how China and other countries are taking millions out of poverty. Marvel at improvements in healthcare, not only saving lives but also offering a better quality of life. See how the next generation has a more useful education than the last, across more of the cohort. Understand that the recent drops in crime will only lead to further drops, as troubled districts pull themselves out of misery.

And what about more everyday advances? We all spend so much less of our lives shopping for groceries, or cooking, or waiting for home visits from utilities, or getting about, thanks to smartphones and google and all the other advances in technology. That percentage of our energy devoted to simply getting through our day has gone down, even though it seems we have replaced most of it with wasting time on facebook or games.

Luckily, I am rarely sick. I hate it, and I’m not a good patient, but I am blessed with kind people around me. I’m also blessed that sickness might take me out of the minority with energy to make progress, but there is plenty of margin before it risks pushing me to addiction or depression. It also has the benefit of letting me count my blessings, and also to count the blessings of a rapidly advancing world. Now, I just have to remember how it feels like to be sick for long enough that I can train myself to be more kind to others, more often. Oh, and never to forget those pants.          

Beware the Binary

I have come to be very wary of anything trying to sort items into definitive piles, especially human beings. Life is usually more nuanced than that, and binary sorting is at the root of many failures. As an individual though, it can be a promising strategy to try to work the cracks between binary-sorted groups.

The law often needs to set exact limits. It would make no sense to have a speed limit of “something near” 30mph, or to set an age of consent of “round about” 18, or to allow a “few” chemicals into food. We need baselines for many things, and binary sorting provides those baselines.

Even these cases are interesting though, and in an ideal world would allow for some nuance. Speed limits ought to take full account of prevailing road conditions, grooming of someone just above consent age by someone forty years older with power is plainly abuse, and as science progresses safe levels of chemicals can be adjusted. A good judge will take account of such nuances, and good law will enable that. “Three strikes and you are out” is not good law – and we can see the ramifications around the US penal system.

It is usually much more helpful to think of things as on a spectrum, especially when dealing with people. A classic example is sexuality. Two generations ago, people were considered either heterosexual or homosexual. Such a binary sorting had many implications, all of them bad. A binary sorting made it tempting for the law, and churches, to equate one sexuality with normality and the other with perversion. That led to persecution, and it also prevented any rational discourse. Kids and their parents grew up in fear and ignorance. Millions of people led unfulfilled lives in the closet, and coming out become a ritual of fear.

Let us not overlook how recently this all changed. I admitted to a group a couple of weeks ago that the first time a guy I knew as gay tried to hug me was less than twenty years ago, and my reaction was to recoil and attempt a nervous handshake. That is a legacy of binary sorting.

The key to moving forward was not changing the law, but of acknowledging sexuality as a spectrum, or even a series of spectra. We can be a- or bi- or many exotic combinations, and most of us have the potential to reside on different places on the spectrum depending on many factors. At a personal level, this helped everyone get away from the fear and shame and ignorance, and at a societal level it enabled us to move forwards. Young people nowadays don’t simply respect differences, but they are able to experiment in a bid to understand their own bodies. Well done David Beckham and the early metrosexuals, you did us all a great service.

Only recently did I start to understand that similar logic applies to gender itself. I had thought this to be a true a binary sorting, barring rare genetic special cases. But the whole flowering of modern gender types has shown this to be an ill-informed position, and slowly society learns to accept this and even to welcome it. Perhaps over time marriage can cease to be a binary sorting mechanism as well.

Another terrible example is the historic treatment of mental health. Based on sparse tests and arbitrary cut offs, people used to be condemned to a hopeless life, taken out of regular schools and often housed in prison-like conditions. This still happens in some countries, and was prevalent in the UK less than 50 years ago. And because it was a binary system, it made terrible mistakes and took too long to challenge.

Questions of race, nationality and citizenship are still fraught today; indeed they drive the ugly politics that we see in many countries. Living in New York, it all seems so out-dated. Most people nowadays are some combination of races, and in another generation it will be even more. An immigrant is a technical definition, binary yet confusing and arbitrary. Those who rail against immigrants should reflect that the Native Americans are probably the only ones with any sort of claim; yet are treated as harshly as ever. The Windrush debacle is a good example of where binary sorting leads. On citizenship, residence and tax residence, I struggle with forms every year and even lawyers and accountants are probably guessing. It all starts with binary sorting, admittedly some small part of it necessary, but all of it divisive and inhibiting of progress.

Binary thinking is not as directly harmful as binary sorting, but maybe just as dangerous. Just because I am a liberal (in the US sense) does not mean I blindly agree with all Democratic platforms. The attitude to trade, the obstruction of progress of some unions, the rejection of nuclear energy and the promotion of litigious behaviour are examples of bad policy. But in a polarised world, especially in countries with two main parties (i.e. a binary system), such thinking is not facilitated. Indeed, people appear almost blind to the failings of their own side these days, which partly explains how Trump can seem to ride lie after lie, calumny after calumny, without consequence. In a binary system, the winning strategy is to link the opponent with something your supporters can demonise – then they become blind to everything else.

Another example may be taxation policy. We have reached a point where we have sorted into a binary world of those who always seek to reduce tax, all the time, and those who always seek to solve societal problems with extra spending. The reality must be that each side is right some of the time, on some issues, and that the evidence may change over time.  

It is worse in foreign policy, with its weasel talk of allies and coalitions and enemies and “sponsors of state terrorism”. Time magazine last week had a disgraceful article on Iran, wholly lacking in nuance or evidence. This all starts with binary positions. It should be noted that in the same week Saudi Arabia slaughtered many innocent Yemenis and Israel passed what looks suspiciously like an apartheid law. In a binary world, such indiscretions are too easily overlooked. Of course, religion may have the most original sin when it comes to binary follies. Think heaven and hell, absolution and mortal sin, or infallible popes – no healthy starting points there.

Binary sorting exists throughout education and professions. Again, some is necessary: I would not like to be operated on by someone who thought they might be a doctor; and an education system should allow for specialisation and selection. But the tests of these systems are their flexibility and their practical limitations.

In Germany and the Netherlands, kids are sorted at 11 into streams that are mainly academic or mainly vocational. This has much merit. The world needs nurses and welders, and many of them don’t need to know the full academic background for their jobs, only to be good practitioners. But eleven is a very young age to make such a drastic sorting. It might be messy, but more blended classes, and more opportunities to move from one group to another would be more equitable and lead to stronger outcomes.

In England, we persist with something less obvious but equally limiting. Medicine at Cambridge and Oxford has almost no practical component at all. This originated because “gentlemen” were never supposed to get their hands dirty. But the result is longer qualification times, wasted talent and doctors who may be brainy but who should never be allowed near a patient. It also leads to false hierarchies, arrogance and resistance to change.

In business, I frequently found opportunity in mining the seams between specialisms. The most obvious example was finance. In most companies, finance is an island. People inside have their own qualifications, language, career paths and practices. People outside are given little opportunity to develop financial acumen, and are viewed with suspicion by finance insiders. The result is obvious. In reality, almost every business decision is better informed by financial acumen, and the rare person who is not a finance specialist but is finance-literate has huge value, which only increases with seniority. Think of a CEO who knows nothing of finance; and then one who knows nothing but finance. Sadly, both examples are all too common.

This is only the most obvious of many such chasms. Technical people with commercial acumen and operational people who can run a team well are two other rare gems. I found that it was often swimming against the tide to become such a person, but that the reward usually made it worthwhile. I often lacked a home base in my career, yet I also often found that I had unique perspectives of value.

Rejecting a binary world can be lonely and challenging. Simplicity and certainty are always nice to have. But nuance and innovation are not served well by binary systems, and nor is equity. We will be better individuals and create a better society if we make a habit of challenging the binary.