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A Word to Barack Obama: Why experience isn't what it's hyped to be

Jamie Wallace, a 19-year-old Seattle University student, speaking about why he is supporting Barack Obama, wrapped it up in one sentence: "Sometimes experience is not what you need. Sometimes, it takes a fresh eye to look at issues."

Absolutely.

We have heard a lot about experience these past few months, especially with relation to Barack Obama, the USA presidential candidate, and how little leadership experience he has compared to other people. But experience is often flaunted with little substance to back it up. Experience is also not a good thing to get results because experience has tradition at its core: dead men's solutions which suited their time, fear of risks and the constant grind of doing things in a certain way; a way which has been 'tried and tested' but which is guaranteed to produce the same, often debilitating, results.

Experience on its own keeps us in the past, saying the same old things, doing the same old actions, quoting the same old tired phrases, while a fresh mind opens new doors to possibilities and puts other options on the table. The trouble with this great 'experience' is that the more someone gets it, the more they believe they have all the answers and the less they seek to learn. Yet learning is the most important thing in our lives to widen our store of knowledge, to keep up with inevitable changes, to allow a new perspective and to prevent us being fossilised in the same ways of thinking and acting. One can be as experienced as one could be in dealing with people in America, but taking that experience to the UK or any other country will only be partially useful until one becomes more aware of the social and cultural norms that govern the new society one will be dealing with. A desire to learn and forget one's experience would be far more useful in that context. That is why America's reputation has suffered so dismally in that needless war with Iraq because it put its 'experience' of conflict in front of its ability to learn about the Iraqis and to use other untried methods and got stung in the process.

One of the strangest phenomenon in the world of work is getting experience and then how it is perceived by those who have it. Everyone, especially younger recruits, begin a new job all wide eyed and bushy tailed, eager to learn and to begin their journey on the career ladder. Ten years into that job, especially if the person hasn't moved away from it for other experiences,

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