This New Year, Listen to Your Heart

If you’ve been doing something for years, you eventually become very good at it. You become known for it. 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕’𝒔 𝒆𝒙𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒎 𝒃𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒔.

Because while you continue to grow: take courses, earn more degrees, reskill, upskill, learn entirely new domains: at the workplace, you’re often still seen doing 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈.

You could be an accountant who understands strategy.

A finance professional pursuing marketing.

Someone with years of experience and a fresh, trending perspective.

However, within the organisation, the label persists.

Organisations still tend to view people in fixed boxes based on what they 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒏𝒆, rather than what they 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆.

Experience, ironically, becomes a box instead of a bridge.

In India, we often discuss the demographic dividend, emphasizing the need for opportunities among young professionals.

Yet a large number of experienced professionals in their 30s, 40s, 50s are often under-utilised, not under-qualified.

Over 53% of graduates and 36% of postgraduates are underemployed in jobs below their qualifications.

Only about 4.7% of the workforce has formal skill training, contributing to an underutilised labour force.

Even after retirement, many senior citizens still want to contribute meaningfully.

They have decades of institutional memory, decision-making wisdom, and problem-solving skills.

However, the system mostly asks them to step aside instead of taking a different approach.

When organisations don’t tap into the full potential of experience, they lose twice: once by not leveraging what people already know; and again by ignoring what they are still capable of becoming.

Yes, experience 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 be your biggest asset.

But when it becomes the only lens through which you’re seen, it quietly turns into a limitation.

According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Work Change Report, by 2030 as much as 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change, reshaping how organisations view talent, roles and experience in the future.

This means that experience shouldn’t be a label that limits you, it should be a foundation for ongoing evolution: the kind that helps you grow horizontally as well as vertically in your career.

If 2025 offered us a Big Idea for 2026, it is that the future of work won’t be defined by what you’ve always done, but by what you can keep becoming.

Growth sometimes simply means being allowed to evolve within one.

Talent doesn’t expire. It just gets quieter when it’s not heard.

PS: This New Year, listen to your heart.