Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
I did my first graduate thesis on the relationship of experience to job performance. I found (stunningly), that cognitive ability, rather than experience, is the single best predictor of future performance. In simplistic terms - smart people are better at almost everything.
This fits to my experiences as and with consultant(s).

We usually got tasks which we never had done before and proceeded to embarrass very experienced employees who had been in and failed on their job for years. They had failed to do what we succeeded to do in a matter of weeks.

Most of them were rather simple minds who weren't able to think unconventionally, creatively or even to raise their own level of expectation high enough to recognize obvious problems. Some recited what they were told, completely devoid of own thinking. Some were even too dumb to grasp what they were told.
Others were very experienced at one or two tasks - and failed every time when the application of their very narrow experience mislead them.

Once I even got into trouble because I wasn't able to hold back my astonishment when I was asked in response to an extremely stupid question. All I had done wrong was to ask why they hadn't thought about this consequence before their action (they had violated a rule and expected me to help them cover up their mess).

I'll never forget how I once solved a mystery for a corporation's medium-level management with a half-time effort over only three weeks. They had been clueless for years (they fell prey to several conflicting lies and half-truths). All I had to do was to use my university education, google, the phone, an intern, pen & paper and the brain.