October 2024 – The business experts with only 1.9 years of experience…!
Apparently, all you need is 1.9 years of real-world experience to be a living, breathing business expert. At least, that’s what PriSim’s pre-class surveys of participants in our aerospace and defense industry business simulation classes seem to indicate.
Participants in one of our client’s ‘leadership development programs’ with an average of 1.9 years of real world experience self-score their competencies exactly the same, on average, in six categories of business acumen as did participants in a ‘program leadership’ class for program managers with an average of 17.7 years of experience. The six categories of competence surveyed were: strategic thinking, business planning, plan execution, financials statements, financial ratios, and leadership.
And the highest score across all 6 categories for those with 1.9 years of experience was an average of 5 out of 5 compared to 4.8 for those with 17.7. Thus, the ‘best’ of the least experienced scored themselves higher than the ‘best’ of the most experienced. This is a generalized result that PriSim sees consistently across our classes.
Let’s break it gently to the 17-year business veterans – they’ve wasted 15.8 years gaining what appears to be useless experience. But wait a minute… if the 1.9-year group is already that good, why aren’t they sitting in the CEO’s chair?
Before we just accept the survey results at face value, we might want to, like any good 1.9-year business expert, ask a few questions:
- How could a ‘newbie’ with only 1.9 years of experience be a 5 out of 5 in any area of business acumen, much less across 6 areas? After all, the aerospace and defense industry has some pretty unique and complex dynamics that take time to absorb, such as Earned Value Management reporting. (Answer: maybe they’re not actually a 5 out 5)
- Does the fact that the participants self-scored themselves have something to do with the results? (Answer: yes)
- Is it possible that real life is imitating academic theory in the form of the Dunning-Kruger effect? On which we’ve previously posted, describing a common “cognitive bias whereby people with low…experience in a task or knowledge area tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.” (Answer: yes)
- If we can’t immediately promote them to be CEO of the company, can we at least elect them President of the United States? (Answer: to be announced on November 5, 2024)
After asking and answering these questions, it’s clear once again that just because somebody says it, doesn’t make it true. As Mark Twain might say, there are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and pre-class survey results…
And one nagging question remains – if the results are so biased, why has PriSim used pre-class surveys as a key part of our classes for over 20-years? Answer: Because we believe that they are an indispensable part of a business simulation class, even if the results are sometimes unbelievable. And we believe you should feel the same. Read more about how we structure and use pre-class surveys in our previous post Know Thy Audience – Pre-Class Surveys, which includes a sample pre-class survey.