Experience Is A Double-Edged Sword

Experience is a double-edged sword, one edge used for cutting off by the swordsman or maybe it will cut him back.

On the 16th of April 1912 the famous Titanic ship sank in the sea, where its makers thought it would be impossible for it to sink, and that was after it hit an iceberg and most of its passengers drowned (over 2000 passengers).

There were many studies made to understand the reasons why the ship sank, and many analyzers direct the blame to the captain of the ship (Smith) and do not accept other excuses, as the captain has the higher hand and final decisions and any disobeying to his orders are punishable by law, so what are the captains mistakes in judgment on the dangers of icebergs and the required time to correct the distention once the iceberg is spotted? A question that still baffles many researchers even if though buy some researchers with their long experience that passed 40 years was one of the main mistakes.

How did that happen? How can experience work against its owner after it worked for him. Experience comes as a result of concluding lessons and examples from events and situations.

In the case of dealing with recurrent situations and events connected to collaborative theories and inputs thus concluding a pattern or an example to deal with similar situations and events in the future.

And with the increasing repeat of similar situations and events roots out extracted examples and patters to form an essential mental and psychological reference in decision making similar to a hard drive in a computer.

Experience plays a very efficient role in speeding the analysis of an event, situation or interaction to deal with through viewing and comparing formed examples and patterns to the decision making references, the similarity in an event of a situation in incidents and past experiences, provided a similar reaction, and here lies the danger, when a similar event or situation occurs in past experiments and events but is still different from them in the theory or inputs of it happening, or when a totally different event or situation occurs than previous experiments and events would overcome the decision makers psychological and mental references originated as a result of their long experience, and so they interact with the new events similar to the way they react to previous others assuming the ability of the new event or situation to respond to the previous reactions, and here where the disaster happens, and this is where analysis’s believe happened in the case of the sinking Titanic ship, where long experiences of captain smith was with totally different ships than this one, and depending on that experience he thought that the ship can correct its destination in case it sees any icebergs, but he misjudged, as this ship is not like the others he drove, different in its speed, size and manufacturing, and saw was cut by the other edge of the sword, where we mentioned that experience is a double-edged sword.

If we processed this disaster on the ships of our communities we can come up with valuable lessons.

The circumstances that governed the mid 70’s (the boom) in our communities left us with experiences that has roots controlled by special theories and inputs that are special to that period of time, and then came the 90’s and those theories and inputs have changed a lot from before, but the references that formed it and deepened by years of boom by people of experience was stronger that to change and so did not keep up with the rapid speed of change, and so situations and ships change, and they are only governed and supported to reached its goals from factors, reasons and motives, and its wheel is still driven with old references originated as an outcome from experiences of those booming years.

And to come closer to the essence of the subject, I will provide one of many examples.

In the boom days projects used to conduct less studies and with any cost the fastest way possible because it involved imaginary massive profits in any project, and so with time factor being the most important to succeed.

But today, the time factor should be hired in determining unique and clear strategies through detailed planning, and doing intense studies and concentrate of the development of activities to make projects operate and function its business and management after establishing it and search for experienced individuals to attract them and work toward the success of the project, and raising up the level of quality in performance, services and stand out from competitors.

Yes, Captain Smith’s long experience played a negative role, and instead of setting sail on port, it sat sail deep in the ocean bottom in a couple of hours.