Experience is an asset; context is queen.

One of the biggest skills we gain with experience is a depth of situational awareness. We begin to identify:

A and B are TRUE; therefore C.

This pattern recognition and solutionising is invaluable to accelerating progress – it can prevent mistakes and bad decisions; ignite new strategies; spark creativity and maximise our overall effectiveness. It is why we seek to augment our own individual experience with that of others — by building diverse teams; through mentors and advisors; or investing heavily in learning what has been done by our peers. However, such pattern matching and rote application has limitations and can create more problems than it was intended to solve.

Throughout my career, I have successfully leveraged my own experience to solve particular problems. I have also actively looked to utilise other’s experience to find original solutions. And I actively encourage everyone to do the same. Yet, I have also experienced, and been responsible for, some large-scale failures:

• The introduction of OKRs resulted in 6–12 months of pain that removed autonomy rather than maximised it.
• Adopting the writing of short briefbacks for teams to confirm their expected outcomes with the intention of maximising alignment instead produced a 28 page document and a 90 minute, 30+ person disaster of a review meeting.
• The use of a particular CMS via a vendor to implement basic editorial content. This resulted in 4x expected project length and a multi-year operational nightmare for the internal team.

When I reflect and learn from this list — and the many examples not listed here— they each have unique characteristics but have a common thread: What worked previously or elsewhere, was introduced without consideration of our unique circumstance and context. This has, in part, led me to recognise and work with this simple principle:

What worked for us yesterday, Is painful today, Will be broken tomorrow.

While it may be obvious and, to many of us, common sense, in the heat of the moment we will often fallback to what we already know. How many times do we think to ourselves ‘I’ve seen this before, we just need to do X’ or ‘this is the exact solution for Y’ and launch ourselves in? Or have advisors, leaders or guides tell us ‘You just need to do Z’?

While experience is an extremely valuable, critical asset, it can only generate successful outcomes when it has been critically considered, thoughtfully applied and, often, validated in a smaller scale test. When a solution or initiative isn’t consciously reflective of the whole context, when vastly increase the chance of failure.

Next time, take a moment, reflect on that proverbial silver bullet of a solution and consider your whole context before acting. Experience is an asset; context is queen.