The War on Experience Has Already Started

If you’ve spent any time talking with professionals over 50 lately, you’ve probably heard some version of the same sentence.

“I never thought this would happen to me.”

I’ve heard it from former CEOs, sales leaders, teachers, engineers, communications executives, healthcare professionals and small business owners. Different industries. Different politics. Different stories. The common thread isn’t their résumé. It’s the quiet disbelief that after decades of building careers, many suddenly feel as though experience has become something they have to justify instead of something employers actively seek.

Sometimes I joke that we must have missed a meeting.

Not a Zoom meeting. Not an all-hands. The meeting where someone decided experience had quietly moved from the asset column to the liability column.

Nobody sent the calendar invite.

Over the past few months at RestlessUrban, we’ve explored career disruption, artificial intelligence, purpose, caregiving, reinvention and what work looks like after 50. At first, I thought those were separate conversations. I don’t anymore. They’re all asking the same question: How did something we spent decades building suddenly become something we feel obligated to explain?

What Changed?

I don’t believe experience suddenly became less valuable. I think the conversation changed.

Organizations are right to focus on AI, digital transformation and moving faster. They should. But somewhere along the way, speed started getting confused with wisdom, efficiency with judgment and potential with capability. In our excitement to build the future, we’ve started overlooking one of the greatest competitive advantages already sitting inside many organizations: people who’ve spent decades solving difficult problems, leading through uncertainty and learning what doesn’t show up in a spreadsheet.

One lesson has become impossible for me to ignore.

Experience without curiosity eventually becomes complacency.

Curiosity without experience can become incredibly expensive.

The organizations that thrive over the next decade won’t choose one over the other. They’ll build cultures where both exist at the same table.

You May Also Like

Bob Pearson: Staying CuriousBob Pearson shows how staying curious turns experience into leverage, impact, and freedom.

Read Story  (6 MIN)

Make the Business Case

The irony is that businesses already understand the value of this generation—just not always as employees.

According to the  ⁠AARP Longevity Economy Outlook, adults over 50 contribute approximately $12.5 trillion annually to the U.S. economy, representing roughly 43% of GDP. They support nearly 98 million jobs and account for more than half of consumer spending. Meanwhile, the  ⁠U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that workers 55 and older will remain one of the fastest-growing segments of the labor force over the coming decade.

Think about that for a moment.

Marketing teams understand this demographic. Healthcare companies understand it. Financial institutions understand it. Travel brands understand it. Entire industries are redesigning products and services around people over 50 because they recognize both their economic influence and their growing numbers.

Everyone wants the customer.

Far fewer seem interested in keeping the employee who understands that customer best.

That’s not just an HR issue.

It’s a business contradiction.

Artificial intelligence only makes that contradiction more obvious. AI will make organizations faster, automate routine work and improve productivity. What it won’t replace is judgment, trust, perspective or the instinct that comes from leading people through recessions, acquisitions, product failures, crises and reinvention. Those qualities aren’t downloaded. They’re earned.

That’s why I don’t believe the future belongs to younger workers.

I also don’t believe it belongs to older workers.

It belongs to organizations smart enough to stop treating those as competing ideas.

Every morning, my lifelong friend Andre Fuochi and I check in. We talk about family, life and whatever happened the day before. Eventually the conversation finds its way back to work—or more accurately, the lack of it. Some days we joke that we’ve become Willy Loman waiting for the phone to ring. Then one of us laughs because we both know that’s not really our story.

The phone may have become quieter.

The conversations certainly haven’t.

In fact, they’ve become louder than ever.

Andre still jokes that I should send my former boss and HR partner a thank-you card. After all, if they hadn’t decided I wasn’t the right fit, RestlessUrban probably wouldn’t exist. One has since retired. One appears to be thriving. And somehow the person they decided was expendable ended up having the most meaningful professional chapter of his life.

Life has a wicked sense of humor.

Sometimes the people who think they’re writing your final chapter are really just turning the page.

Join The Conversation 

One of the best parts of building RestlessUrban has been discovering that these stories aren’t just mine anymore. Every week, readers challenge my thinking, share their experiences and remind me that none of us is navigating this chapter alone.

So I’d like to ask you three questions.

Have you ever felt your experience was overlooked?

Has your organization found a better way to combine experience with emerging talent?

Or do you think we’re asking the wrong questions altogether?

Many of the conversations that become RestlessUrban stories begin exactly this way—with someone willing to say, “I’ve been thinking about this too.”

Maybe that’s how we change the conversation.

And maybe, just maybe, we stop missing the meetings that matter.