Dangerous Ideas

This week I found a new book entitled “What is your dangerous idea?” Over one hundred scientists were asked to describe an idea that, if true, would have profound, and probably unpopular, effects on society. David Lykken, for example, suggested that parenting, like driving, should require a license. Sam Harris suggested that science must destroy religion.

The main point of the book is that dangerous ideas are worth considering, even if they are unpopular and even if they turn out to be wrong.

This book got me thinking about dangerous ideas around the workplace. I’d like to go ahead and throw out one of my own. I believe that experience is overrated.

Employers place a great deal of value on experience. Take a look at today’s employment ads and you’ll see that most job openings require some level of experience. Employers pay more to hire experienced workers and they give raises to employees as they accumulate experience. All of this is based on the assumption that experienced workers are more valuable than less experienced.

What if that’s not true?

I’d like to suggest that experience, per se, offers very little value. And just to add fuel to the fire, I’ll also argue that, in some cases, experienced workers actually perform worse than those with little or no experience.

Evidence supporting this idea comes from a variety of areas, but I have a few favorite examples. One deals with the ability to detect deception. Many studies have been done on the ability of people to determine if another person is lying. Some of those studies compare the accuracy of different groups. In a recent summary of this research, college students were found to have an average accuracy rate of 54%. Police officers and detectives, who presumably have more experience detecting deception, had an average accuracy rate of 53%.

In the realm of employment interviews, research shows that experienced interviewers exhibit the same types of biases as inexperienced interviewers.

A study in the United Kingdom found that experienced loan officers performed worse than college students at predicting loan defaults.

In sports, there is no evidence that coaches with more experience lead their teams to greater success. Major League Baseball’s most experienced manager, Tony LaRussa, has a losing record this season despite having a team loaded with talent.

The underlying problem with valuing experience is that we tend to equate experience with knowledge and knowledge with job performance. I do believe that more job knowledge usually leads to better performance. But I don’t believe that people automatically learn more just by existing in their jobs.

Instead, learning requires active effort and deliberate practice. Some people do this and can learn new things about their jobs very quickly. Others, however, do not make an active effort to learn and are able to survive in their jobs by doing just enough to get by.

If this dangerous idea turns out to be true, there are three primary things that organizations should do differently. First, they should rely less on experience during the selection process and rely more on applicant intelligence or ability to learn. Second, organizations should attempt to create more deliberate learning experiences. Finally, organizations should reward learning more and reward hanging around less.

This idea won’t be popular. But at least I’m not suggesting that we destroy religion.