"This is not my first rodeo."

We've all heard someone say it. The implication is that experience has taught them what to do, what not to do, and what to expect. Maybe so. But experience doesn't automatically make someone wiser. Sometimes it makes them overconfident, resistant to change, or reluctant to try something new. In fact, experience can become a liability.

When I taught entrepreneurship, I used a simple metaphor of a door to explain an advantage that a twentysomething entrepreneur might have over a seasoned veteran. Imagine a closed door.

The young entrepreneurs approach the door, turns the handle, and walks through. Why not? They don't know any better. They have no history with that door and no reason to believe they shouldn't open it.

Now imagine experienced entrepreneurs approaching the same door. They hesitate. They've opened doors before. Some led to wonderful opportunities. Others led to expensive mistakes, disappointment, or outright failure. Experience tells them to be careful. Perhaps they decide not to open the door at all.

And that's the potential advantage of youth and inexperience. Sometimes not knowing what can't be done is precisely why something gets done. Of course, young entrepreneurs might walk straight into disaster. But they might also discover something remarkable that the experienced entrepreneur never gets to see. Experience shapes our expectations. Success teaches us what works. Failure teaches us what to avoid. Or does it?

What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. What failed ten years ago might succeed today. Yet experienced people can become so confident in their accumulated knowledge that they stop questioning their assumptions. They've seen it before. They know how it ends. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't.

We often hear that failure is a great teacher. Not necessarily. Failure creates an opportunity to learn. So does success. But neither guarantees wisdom. Someone can have 30 years of experience or one year of experience repeated 30 times.

Wisdom requires reflection, learning, and the humility to recognize that circumstances change. Information becomes knowledge. Experience tests that knowledge. Reflection helps us understand what happened. Learning allows us to adapt and apply those lessons in new situations. And then the process begins again.

I'm not suggesting that inexperience is better than experience. Experience is enormously valuable, provided we don't become prisoners of it. The young entrepreneur may underestimate the risks. The experienced entrepreneur may underestimate the possibilities. Wisdom requires recognizing both.

The real danger isn't what experience has taught us. It's believing that what we've learned is all we need to know.

John Bradley Jackson

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P.S. Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction.