Are You Experienced?

Are You Experienced?

Many of you will recognize this as a line from a Jimi Hendrix song but are you experienced? I have been involved with a few troubled programs and projects over the years.  The recovery almost always involves some or, sometimes a lot changes in the team.  Why?  They weren't experienced or, at least they didn't have the right experience.

I have seen this come in a couple of flavors. I led an organization through a turnaround a little while ago.  When I showed up they had a project plan that didn't close, their program management wasn't managing the contract and they had a host of manufacturing and supply chain problems.  As I started cataloging the problems I was surprised at some of the very fundamental mistakes that had been made and that they seemed to be falling into some well worn traps.  I started looking at the team and came to realize that although they were some of the smartest and best talented folks you could ask for, they didn't have a shred of experience.  The leadership team operated under the misconception that if they hired the best and brightest, they could conquer anything and they probably could.  Eventually.

The more common thing I see is organizations that are very monolithic.  They have tons of experience but its the same experience.  That would be fine if the world were kind enough to stand still.  As my dad used to say the only constant is change.  Time marches on and change comes with it.  In these cases the organization wakes up one day to find itself irrelevant and struggling.  

Recently I used the following analogy with my leadership team.  The team has found itself having to fight for its life in a radically different market.  It has blamed corporate for lack of investment and customers for being unreasonable but the fact is that it has fought the winds of change.  In trying to get them see the nature of the problem I pointed to two companies.  First IBM.  IBM started making typewriters, moved on to main frames, then PCs and today has a thriving consultancy.  It has reinvented itself many times and continued to thrive.  In contrast Silicon Graphics (SGI) the darling of the late 90's.  SGI experienced a meteoric rise of the workstation market and led the way with blazing speeds and eye catching graphics.  SGI failed to see that PC's were closing the gap in performance at much smaller price point and within a decade was sold for cents on the dollar for bits and pieces of technology.

In both of the above scenarios leaders need to constantly evaluate the experience of the team and make sure that the organization has the proper breadth and depth of RELEVANT experience.  This will force hard decisions about your leadership team but sometimes you have to let go of the past to reach the future.