"Experience Matters!!!"

You know how they say in real estate,
"Location! Location! Location!"
Well, I feel the same way about experience,
"Experience! Experience! Experience!"
As I have said before, I believe that experience is the best teacher.
As I listened to Obama defend himself for being the candidate with the least experience in the race, I was reminded of several situations where the lack or abundance of experience made the difference.
As you know, I am prior military and police. I have been in some really crazy situations where experience or the lack there of made the difference in the outcome.
Please allow me to give you a few examples.
Example 1:
Many years ago I took a flight across country. It was a clear beautiful day. The pilot was a young guy who met all the passengers at the door with a smile. We had a smooth take off and a comfortable flight. I believe the roughest part of any flight has to be the landing. So as we began to come in for a landing I was surprised at the roughness of this landing on such a beautiful day. The plane at first seem to be in a steep fast down turn. A lot of the passengers began to look concerned. Then it seemed that the plane was traveling slightly sideways. At this time I became very concerned myself. When we did finally touch down, we bounced off the runway several times before coming to a very hard stop. After we finally stopped an older voice came over the loud speaker and said, "We apologize for the shaky landing, this is his first time landing with passengers on board." I guess we were unknowing "guinea pigs" for this young pilot to get some experience.
I am sure that the young pilot needed to get experience landing with real passengers on board but I just did not feel comfortable with him learning at my expence.
"Experience Matters!!!"

Example 2:
I was an officer in the field Artillery. We fired the big howitzers. On a training mission in Fort Bragg NC one hot summer day we had a planned visit by the Brigade Commander. So at the planned time we cancelled all firing to allow his chopper to land directly in front of our gun line. As fate would have it as the chopper was approaching some smart young soldier decided to do what was called a "check fire" command to ensure that no one fired a round while the chopper was landing. Now remember we fired the big guns that could take out a city block with one round. Because of the lack of experience this young soldier did not think about the delay between the click of the the mic and him speaking the command. Therefore, instead of his command being "Check-Fire (meaning don't fire), the only part that was transmitted was "Fire!" (and we know what that means!!!) All the gun commanders on the line realized his mistake except one. Almost immediately after we heard the command over the radio we heard,

"Boom!!!"

Yes ladies and gentlemen, a live round went out of the tube directly toward the chopper bringing in the Brigade Commander. We were horrified as we looked to see what was going to happen. At approximately the same time the round went out of the tube the chopper pilot turned directly into the direction of the round coming at him. The round missed (but not by much).
When the chopper finally landed, needless to say several people had very high "pucker values!!!" The Brigade Commander seemed unaffected by the events that had just transpired and carried on with his review. As the commander gave his parting speech, he made the comment that it was a good thing he had an experienced chopper pilot with several years of combat flight time. When we saw the round coming at us he turned into it to make us a smaller target. The pilot's experience saved their lives. Needless to say the "Check-Fire" command was changed Army wide to "Check-Firing" to prevent this from happening again.
"Experience Matters!!!"

Last Example 3:
Again as a young officer, who was commissioned through OCS, I had a lot of prior experience in artillery. One of my jobs was as a safety officer. You can imagine when you can make an unsafe act and kill several people (which I have seen done), safety is very important. One night at approx. 0200 hours (2 am for you civilians) on Fort Bragg during a training mission, I walked into my Brigade HHC. As I passed by a safety chart, that a young soldier was setting up, I realized he had set it up backwards. His south was north and vise verse. A common mistake when you are tired. I stopped and pointed out his mistake. To my surprise this young soldier disputed my correction and proceeded to compute data using this chart. I reminded him that I was the safety officer and he was to immediately cease and stand down. The young soldier was obviously tired and fed up. He began to tell me that he had checked this chart several times and it was correct. Now this young soldier had really upset me and in my hast to shut down the mission until this matter was resolved (lives were at stake) I used the wrong radio transmitter. Instead of only communication with my Brigade Units I had transmitted over Range Control's Frequency. Needless to say, all hell broke loose. Yes, I had done the right thing just in a grand fashion. It seemed that every star, bird, clover, and bar on Fort Bragg heard my transmission all at once. Choppers were in the air. Commanders were awakened. Flares were being fired off and I am not exaggerating. So here I am standing there nose to nose with a young soldier when the Battalion Commander walked in and demands to know what idiot dropped the range. I said, "That idiot was me sir, because this hardheaded idiot (referring to the young soldier) is about to get a lot of people killed." By this time the Brigade Commander walks in half asleep. "What in hell is going on?" was the first thing out of his mouth. I explained what was happening. He looked at me and said, "Lt, you had better be right." I said, "sir I will bet my career of several years of experience on it." He said, "that's good because if you are wrong your career is over." I probably would have been sweating if I had not made the same mistake myself many times over the years (experience matters.) About that time a drowsy chief computer came rushing in. Before asking what was the matter, he glanced at the chart and said, "that's wrong!" This computer like myself had several years of experience setting up safety charts therefore it is easy to see this mistake.

As you can see in all these situations, peoples lives were at stake.
If it had not been for the experienced people involve there outcomes could have been tragic.
I know that a fresh change is important but change without experience is a recipe for failure.
"Experience matters!!!"