Why experience develops judgement better than information

When I was at school, I quite liked woodwork, but I wasn’t going to like it today.

We'd just finished our history lesson, followed by the five-minute walk to the workshop. Today, like most days, we’d spent forty minutes receiving information. The teacher sat at their desk and dictated. We wrote down what they said and they occasionally paused to check our understanding. There was always lots of information, but for me, not much of it would stick. Years later, I can't tell you what we learnt. I suspect I knew some of it well enough for a test, but the knowledge would slowly evaporate afterwards.

However, what happened in two minutes of woodwork has stayed with me for a lifetime.

In the workshop, we all had a box to make. It was to have dovetail joints, a hinged lid and a lock. Our first job was measuring and cutting pieces of wood to length. I’d cut the larger bits of wood in a vice and so far, so good. But patience wasn’t among my few virtues - I could see that if I held the smaller pieces of wood on the bench, they’d be quicker to cut through. I gripped the wood and started sawing, chatting with the friend next to me as I went.

I froze momentarily as the pain caught up with me. I’d just sawn through the wood and into my left thumb. A nice straight cut about 3mm deep, into the nail but luckily not the bone. I’m not sure what hurt most, the pain of the cut, or the embarrassment I felt being a great example of what not to do.

I don't remember what we covered in that history lesson. The information disappeared years ago. But the experience of sawing through my thumb has stayed with me ever since. And reflecting afterwards on why it happened - has shaped how I use tools.

Perhaps that's why experience is such a powerful teacher. Information tells us what might happen. Experience shows us what it feels like. And when we take time to reflect, it can change how we think and how we act in the future.

That's one of the principles behind the business simulations we design. We can't give people decades of commercial experience, but we can create commercially realistic experiences that make decisions feel like they matter. We can then make space for reflection and so help commercial judgement to develop.