When we look at some high level roles, it’s a safe assumption that to get there that individual spent years doing or learning a skillset. While this is true, we pigeonhole ourselves by thinking that experience is accrued in only one way.

An earlier podcast I recorded warned against relying solely on institutional knowledge, simply because it can create complex structures that are difficult to undo. Allow me to take it one step further: people who remain in an organization for over a decade pose a greater risk to the workforce than they realize. This is because growth only happens when we look beyond our immediate surroundings.

If you examine your current environment — your home, neighborhood, the route you take to work, and even your hobbies — there is a commonality: familiarity. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; however, we tend to rely on what’s comfortable to build our frame of reference. This comfort can limit our ability to adapt and innovate in a rapidly changing world.

All of our experiences shape us, but in the workplace, experience becomes a label — a way to identify whether someone has the ability to perform a task. More often than not, it’s a buzzword used to diminish or uplift someone based on perception.

This raises a question: is school experience?

Many job descriptions place education requirements as a prerequisite for a role. Is it then right to say there needs to be accrued experience on top of it? There is an argument on both sides, and there is nuance in that question. However, education — the four years of undergraduate work, learning, and understanding how to work in a field — certainly should factor in. The same applies to graduate school, where additional education becomes a choice to expand one’s knowledge base. The additional years for a master’s or certificate program are spent further immersing into a subject and refining expertise.

This leads to another question: is current knowledge better than past knowledge? If two people have the same degree, is one earned in 2024 more valuable than one earned in 2004? Does 20 years of experience automatically cancel out someone who is coming into a field or industry with a fresh perspective and modern training? These are all complicated questions that matter when building a team.

In 2024, people are no longer spending their entire careers in one place. The benefit for job hoppers is that they expand their knowledge base in multiple areas, allowing them to have an immediate impact. Conversely, organizational lifers may never get the chance to tap into new knowledge, partly because they contribute to the reason modern workers need to stay mobile with work.

Experience will need to be redefined in the next decade because workers now gain experience in diverse ways, contributing to the fields they want to work in. The idea of waiting 5, 10, or 15 years to get a coveted position doesn’t exist in the mind of the modern employee. Instead, it’s about having experiences to gain experience, and this is what the older workforce struggles to grapple with.

Redefining experience means embracing a broader and more dynamic understanding of what it means to be qualified and capable. Organizations must recognize the value of diverse experiences and adapt to the evolving expectations of the modern workforce. Only by doing so can we build teams that are not only skilled but also innovative and resilient in the face of change.