Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building and gola GV.
Speaker 1: This is the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host
Speaker 1: Paul Fellavaledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven seventy two. Today's episode is called Experience
Speaker 2: is a Competitive Advantage. There seems to be a race
Speaker 2: in today's business world. Everyone wants the newest technology, the
Speaker 2: newest software, the newest strategy, the newest app, and the
Speaker 2: newest trend. All of those things have value. There is
Speaker 2: one thing that many organizations are quietly giving away while
Speaker 2: chasing everything new, and that's experience. Experience has become one
Speaker 2: of the most undervalued assets inside organizations. The strange part
Speaker 2: is it's sitting in plain sight every single day. Think
Speaker 2: about the employee who has been with your company for
Speaker 2: twenty years. They walk into a room and notice something
Speaker 2: isn't right before anyone else does. They hear a customer
Speaker 2: complaint and already know what's about to happen next, they
Speaker 2: recognize the beginning of a staffing issue before schedules start
Speaker 2: falling apart. They aren't psychic, They've simply lived through enough
Speaker 2: situations to recognize the pattern. Experience isn't magic, it's pattern recognition.
Speaker 2: The longer you lead, the more patterns your brain collects.
Speaker 2: That's why an experienced paramedic can walk into a patient's
Speaker 2: home and notice subtle clues before a monitor is even attached.
Speaker 2: It's why an experienced pilot can hear a strange engine
Speaker 2: sound that a student pilot doesn't even notice. It's why
Speaker 2: an experienced restaurant manager knows the dinner rush is about
Speaker 2: to become chaos ten minutes before it actually does. Experience
Speaker 2: compresses decision making. You don't have to solve every problem
Speaker 2: from scratch because you've seen versions of it before. Now,
Speaker 2: let's be careful here. Experience in seniority are not always
Speaker 2: the same thing. Someone can work somewhere for twenty years
Speaker 2: and repeat the same year twenty times. Another person can
Speaker 2: spend five years intentionally learning, asking questions, making mistakes, improving
Speaker 2: and reflecting. That's real experience. Experience isn't measured by time,
Speaker 2: It's measured by lessons collected. This is where leaders have
Speaker 2: to be careful. Many organizations unknowingly create cultures where experience
Speaker 2: walks out the front door. The experienced employee retires, the
Speaker 2: experienced supervisor leaves, the experienced technician accepts another job. Everyone
Speaker 2: thanks them for their years of service, and then everyone
Speaker 2: realizes six months later that they weren't replacing a person.
Speaker 2: They were replacing thousands of decisions, thousands of conversations, thousands
Speaker 2: of observations, thousands of mistakes that no one else has
Speaker 2: to make because someone already learned from them. Institutional knowledge
Speaker 2: is one of the few business assets that disappears overnight.
Speaker 2: If you don't protect it, you cannot order it on Amazon,
Speaker 2: you cannot download it, you cannot install it. You have
Speaker 2: to intentionally transfer it. One of the smartest questions a
Speaker 2: leader can ask is this, what does this person know
Speaker 2: that isn't written down anywhere? Think about that. Every organization
Speaker 2: has people carrying knowledge that exists only inside their own heads.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's how to calm down an angry customer. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's knowing who to call during an emergency. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: understanding why a policy exists in the first place. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's recognizing a tiny warning sign before equipment fails. If
Speaker 2: that knowledge leaves with the employee, your organization starts over
Speaker 2: from zero, and that's expensive. Technology can store information, experience
Speaker 2: stores judgment. Those are two completely different things. Artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: can summarize policies. Experience knows when following the policy exactly
Speaker 2: might make the situation worse. AI can analyze thousands of
Speaker 2: data points. Experience knows when something simply doesn't feel right.
Speaker 2: The future doesn't belong to organizations that choose technology over experience.
Speaker 2: It belongs to organizations that combined both. Technology accelerates information,
Speaker 2: experience improves decisions. Together they're incredibly powerful, and as leaders,
Speaker 2: we also need to change the way we view experienced employees.
Speaker 2: They aren't obstacles to change, they're translators. They can explain
Speaker 2: why previous attempts failed. They can identify blind spots before
Speaker 2: they become expensive. They can help younger employees avoid mistakes
Speaker 2: that took years to understand. That's not resistance, that's wisdom.
Speaker 2: The best organizations don't create a battle between generations. They
Speaker 2: create partnerships. The younger employee brings curiosity, the experienced employee
Speaker 2: brings perspective. One supplies fresh eyes, the other supplies informed judgment.
Speaker 2: That's how great teams are built. And here's something I've
Speaker 2: learned from emergency services. Experience doesn't remove pressure. Experience changes
Speaker 2: how you respond to pressure. You become calmer, you become
Speaker 2: more selective, You stop reacting to every little problem because
Speaker 2: you've learned the difference between an inconvenience and a real emergency.
Speaker 2: That confidence isn't arrogance. It's earned. Every difficult conversation, every failure,
Speaker 2: every success, every long night, every crisis, every mistake becomes
Speaker 2: another page in your personal leadership manual. Nobody else has
Speaker 2: your manual. They have to write their own. So here's
Speaker 2: my challenge for you today. I just want you to
Speaker 2: look around your organization. Who has experience that is being shared,
Speaker 2: Who knows things that aren't written down, Who has stories
Speaker 2: that could save someone else years of frustration? Start capturing
Speaker 2: that knowledge. Start pairing experienced employees with newer employees. Start
Speaker 2: treating experience like the competitive advantage that it truly is.
Speaker 2: Because competitors can buy the same software, they can purchase
Speaker 2: the same equipment, they can even hire similar talent, experience
Speaker 2: takes years to build, and that's exactly why it remains
Speaker 2: one of the most valuable competitive advantages any leader will
Speaker 2: ever have. This has been the seven Minute Leadership Podcast,
Speaker 2: and I thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot
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