Experience Answers Questions the Present May No Longer Be Asking

Executive Field Note 033

Experience is valuable because something happened before.

A pattern was encountered.

A consequence observed.

A lesson learned.

That knowledge becomes available when something similar appears again.

But similarity can conceal difference.

The present may resemble the past closely enough to activate experience while differing in precisely the way that matters.

Experience provides an answer.

Recognition determines whether the question is still the same.

Which lesson from the past are you applying to a situation that only looks familiar?

Published by Executive Insights. A publication of Axiom Research Press