Experience Is The Best Teacher ... Not

Bob Hertzog — Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:54:43 -0800

Hillary Clinton, in making her case that she would make a better president than Barak Obama, argues constantly that she has the experience necessary to make the correct presidential decisions. She says, at 3:00 in the morning when the red phone rings, we should want her answering rather than Obama, because she has the experience.

So, how important is experience in producing excellent performance. Experts say it is not very important. Scientists have been studying the experience issue for most of the 20^th century, but there have been several studies since the 1970s. The general finding of these studies has been that years of experience is not a very good predictor of excellent performance. One of these researchers, Anders Ericsson, says the experienced performers tend to be a bit better at the routine tasks of their profession, but when something unexpected happens, experienced people perform only a little better than novices.

I’m not sure what all this means when it comes to presidential performance, since that activity was not studied in Ericsson’s research. It does, however, give us pause over what Hillary Clinton says is her strongest argument.