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Experience or Leadership, what is more important

Look across your teams and the people you are trying to hire.  Where are you struggling?  Which teams look just like they did 2 years ago?  Which teams are excelling and providing the most value to your customer?

I bet you have a few teams that have very smart, experienced leaders that work hard.  They have been with you for years and your teams or tech would fail without them.  This is great right?

I propose that your teams are not the real problem.  The problem is the leadership of the teams.  Your team or organizational leaders should change every year or two.  Teams need to be pushed toward new tech, fresh ideas and improved processes.  Teams must be energized and motivated. 

I know an organization that has the same leadership from the top executive down to the team leads for over 10 years.  They now their customer and systems very well but very little innovation or improvements have come in years.  They are falling behind and are starting to lose business, quickly.  Their customers have lost confidence in them and their, "this is how we have always done it", mind set. 

It is changing rapidly.  Do your teams have SREs, are you doing the DevOps, are they using advanced monitoring solutions, are they very agile, are they embracing containers and cloud native architectures?  If not, bring in new tech leads that can help the leaders or even better, hire new leaders to bring that experience to your organization.

You will have to pay these new leaders well but the cost will pay off quickly.  If you not familiar with Good to Great, you should stop everything you are currently reading and read the book.  You need the right people on the bus and the Level 5 leaders to take you to the next level. 

In the end, leaders are going to grow your company (NetFlix).  Experience is going to make you fade away.(Blockbuster)

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