Being forever in 5th grade!

I talked about hiring with someone this week. He had looked at a candidate's resume, 12 years in the same function, and said:

"The question is not how long. The question is how deep."

That stuck with me.

It's easy to treat years doing something like a currency. More years = more value. A doctor with 25 years experience must be good, right?

Well, no. Not automatically.

Years of 'experience' without challenge are just... years. Like spending a decade in 5th grade in school. You get older, but you do not get BETTER.

I see this in leaders all the time. They have been in their roles for years, sometimes decades. They know their domain inside out. But when something new comes along - a shift in team dynamics, a different type of stakeholder, a new technology (like AI these days), they struggle. Not because they lack intelligence. Because they forgot what it feels like to stretch.

Here's what I personally believe: 5 years of deliberate challenge beats 20 years of comfortable repetition. Easily! I rather get treated by a doctor with 5 years of experience who constantly reads up on developments, improves themselves, than by one who has been stagnant for 20 years.

So here is something I invite you to ponder: In your current role, are you still in '5th grade'?