What Rambo Taught Me About Experience
We often think experience accumulates into value automatically. But Rambo shows it doesn’t work that way. I recently rewatched Rambo: First Blood. Like many action films from the 1980s, it’s filled with explosions, car chases and classic one-liners. I’ve probably seen Rambo four or five times. This time I started watching for some easy entertainment, […]
What Trainspotting Taught Me About Experience
When two people are standing side-by-side watching the same event, is our experience the same? My brother loves trainspotting. And to be honest, I never understood why. Unlike birdwatching, where you never know what species you’ll see, trains are predictable. They run on tracks and they run on timetables. This means you know where they […]
What an Anthropologist Taught Me About Experience
Most people think experience is all about having seen something before. But what if it’s not? In the first conversation in my On Experience series, I sat down with corporate anthropologist Michael Henderson. I expected that our entire talk would be about organisational culture. Some of it was, but for most of it we ended up […]
What the Socceroos Penalty Shootout taught me about Experience
Sometimes we see problems through the lens of age or skill, when the real issue is experience. Previously, I wrote about Tony Popovic’s dilemma: Do you back the experienced veteran, or the rookie who is in outstanding form? Just before the penalty shootout against Egypt, Popovic substituted Patrick Beach for veteran goalkeeper Mat Ryan. It […]