Reflection 003 |

Experience Creates Blind Spots

Experience is one of the most valuable things we can bring into complex work.

It helps us recognize patterns earlier. It helps us see risk before it becomes visible to everyone else. It helps us ask questions that come from years of seeing what can happen when assumptions remain unchallenged.

But experience has another side. It can also create blind spots.

Not because experience is wrong. Often, the risks we see through experience are very real. The problem is that experience can determine what we notice first. And what we notice first can influence what we almost miss.

I learned this clearly when I was asked to support a company in Turkey that wanted to build a radiopharmaceutical facility.

At first, that sounded exciting.

Then I learned more.

The company had no radiopharmaceutical background. No pharmaceutical background. The initiative came from the brother of a physician who wanted to improve access to radiopharmaceuticals. And when I asked what the company did at the time, the answer I heard was something like: a weaving company.

My first internal reaction was not my finest moment.

A weaving company wants to build a radiopharmaceutical facility?

My experience immediately started listing the risks.

Radiopharmaceutical manufacturing is not simple. It requires GMP understanding, quality systems, radiation protection, validation, regulatory approvals, trained people, controlled operations, suitable facilities, reliable processes, and the ability to connect technical, operational, and quality requirements into one working system.

So my concerns were not irrational. They were valid. But they were not complete.

Because there was another story in front of me that I did not see clearly enough at first.

This company had started in textiles. Then they learned how to create more value by colouring and finishing those textiles themselves. When reliable power supply became a limitation, they did not simply accept it. They built their own power plant.

That power plant produced carbon dioxide. Many companies would have treated that as a waste stream. Instead, they learned that Dutch greenhouse operators used CO₂ to improve crop production. So they travelled there to understand it. They learned. They built greenhouses. They started growing produce. Part of it was used for employee meals. The rest was sold.

Looking back, the pattern was obvious.

This was not only a company without radiopharmaceutical experience.

This was a company with a repeated history of encountering constraints, learning new capabilities, and turning limitations into new possibilities.

I saw the missing experience first.

I almost missed the capability to learn.

And that is where the lesson became more uncomfortable.

Because the project did not become the difficult project my first reaction had prepared me for.

It became one of the fastest, most efficient, and best projects I had worked on until then.

Not because there were no risks. The risks were real.

But because the team had something that can be even more important than having done the exact same thing before: they knew how to learn.

• They were curious.
• They asked questions.
• They listened.
• They accepted what they did not know.
• They used the experience available to them.
• They built capability quickly.
• They did not waste energy pretending to be experts before they were.
• They focused on understanding and execution.

In the end, the thing I had almost overlooked was one of the main reasons the project became successful.

That distinction matters.

In projects, quality systems, leadership, and organizational change, the things we see most easily are not always the most important things to see. Experience can help us recognize risk, but it can also make us look for familiar risks so quickly that we fail to see unfamiliar strengths.

The lesson was not that experience is bad.

Quite the opposite.

Experience is essential. But it becomes most powerful when it remains curious.

When it does not only ask: “Have I seen this before?”

But also:

“What am I seeing first because of my experience?”

“What does this situation remind me of?”

“And what might be different this time?”

Experience helps us recognize patterns.

Wisdom asks whether the pattern we recognize is the only one present.