Old folks know a ton. Leverage on their contacts for the win.

Young people always like to scorn the wisdom of older people. But there is no reason why they, or anyone, should think they know it all.

The wisdom of older people is not wisdom in the usual sense. It doesn't have a single truth. It is built on a lifetime of experience, and that is not the same as experience. A lifetime of experience is not the same thing as experience. Experience consists of having lots of different things happen to you. Expertise consists of having lots of different things happen to you at just the right moment.

Expertise is based on what, in old people, used to be called experience, but which is just now called life. Old people are more experienced than young people. That doesn't mean they are better. Experience can be deceptive, and young people have more of it. That doesn't mean they are better.

But experience can be important. You learn from experience, and your learning is affected by experience. Experience tends to build expertise. And experience lets you build on what you already know.

Tapping on the knowledge of people

There's a classic example. When Dr. Alfred P. Sloan took over at General Motors in 1919, he was 43 years old. He took over the car company that had been around since 1908, and his task was clear: Save the 39-year-old company from collapse.

He succeeded, of course, but not by reinventing the company. So what did he do? He simply asked his coworkers what they knew. He specifically asked them what they knew about how other people built cars, about marketing, about finance, about manufacturing. He asked their advice, and he listened.

Years later, Sloan wrote, "I discovered what I soon discovered was the jewel in the crown, the knowledge that was stored up in the brains of our workers. . . . It was their years of experience. . . . This knowledge was the key to our success."

At 46, Sloan became chief executive of the Ford Motor Co. But he kept asking his coworkers what they knew. He built Ford's "brain trust" of thousands of personal contacts. And he tapped in to Ford's vast store of knowledge, accumulated over decades.

What Sloan learned was how to use his workers' connections to lower the cost of manufacturing. He helped Ford become the world's No. 1 car company.

The key to success was not Sloan's intelligence or his management ability. It was his willingness to tap into the knowledge of his workers, to learn from them, and to turn them into assets. He was 43.

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