by Jeffrey Barrett*
A simple statement floated past my RSS feed recently, “Experience has a half life,” or a rate at which it constantly “halves” itself. In other words, a person’s experience, over time, has some rate of decay in relevancy. For some people it might be five minutes from now, five months from now, or even five years depending on the task at hand, the skills required, and how often they are used, among other attributing factors.
This week, the naked truth of this remark is fully apparent. Currently, I am collaborating with a third-party tech installation team, a landlord, and a building superintendent, as well as technical and management staffs. In the context of this particular project, “a half life of experience” is used in a generic way to represent a somewhat more complicated set of math.
Since most involved rarely handle such a project, and will most likely never need to do so again, it will be interesting to see how quickly the skills or experience they’ve acquired from the project will dissipate or if they once obtain the skills how much it they still retain.
Yet even with a long half life, one’s experience or knowledge can add a boatload of value or risk to a project. One of the keys to ensuring a slow rate of decline and successful completion of a project would be to identify which aspects of the person’s remaining experience is “ethereal” (or easily lost over time) and what is “innate” (or comes naturally) and how these two types of skills apply to the subject at hand. Additionally personality, intelligence, patience, and perspective influence a person’s experience and are factors to consider.
Depending on the nature of a given assignment and where a person falls on the experience half life continuum, one may face a challenge with exuberance or approach it with much fear. Conflicts arise when both types of individuals are forced to work on a project together.
A possible solution: appoint a team leader who not only exhibits the most current experience, but can also easily mitigate between the conflicting perspectives of those involved. From there you can begin to work towards accomplishing objectives and hitting key milestones. Without this sort of resolution, the conflicting experiences could prevent the successful completion of the project.
How is your own experience half life with technology and social media attributing to your PR effectiveness? I and the folks here at BurrellesLuce would like to know.
*Bio: Currently I am the chief architect of BurrellesLuce 2.0, the portal used by thousands of PR professionals to monitor, share, organize, and measure online and print news. I started as a web developer for Merck & Company and I am an accomplished technologist with a focus on large scale system architecture and implementation. With over ten years of experience designing and deploying technical solutions for a wide range of companies, I most recently managed web projects for NBC Universal, where I delivered social networking applications and supported high traffic applications. Prior to that, I served as director of technology for Silver Carrot, a marketing firm, creating and delivering the technology that powered high-performance online campaigns. In my spare time, I enjoy reading about economics and anything that has to do with modeling social interaction and social media. LinkedIn: Jeffrey Barrett; Twitter: @BurrellesLuce; Facebook: BurrellesLuce
