Over the years, particularly in family businesses, I have noticed a pattern.

A young family member graduates from university and joins one of the family companies.

He is given responsibility. He performs well. Five years pass. Then ten. Then twenty.

Same company. Same position. Same market.

Twenty years later, we describe him as having 20 years of experience.

But does he?

I think it depends on what happened during those twenty years.

If someone spent twenty years leading a business and, during that time, transformed it, entered new markets, launched new products, built new capabilities, developed people, navigated crises or multiplied its scale, those twenty years may represent extraordinary experience.

But if the business, the position, the market and the challenges remained broadly the same, we should ask a more uncomfortable question:

Did that person gain 20 years of experience—or repeat similar experience for 20 years?

I am not suggesting long service is a weakness, or that every profession should be judged the same way.

Finance, audit, legal, engineering and other specialist functions can develop tremendous depth over long periods. Even there, responsibilities and complexity should ideally grow.

But leadership is different.

If someone tells me he has been a General Manager for twenty years, the number itself would not impress me.

I would ask:

What was the business when you took over—and what is it today?

For me, leadership experience should leave evidence.

This raises another question for family businesses.

When a young family member enters the business, he is still developing. The family has a responsibility not only to give him a position, but to build his capabilities.

Why leave him in the same company for twenty years?

After five or six years, could he have been moved to another business? Another industry? Another market? Given a turnaround? Asked to build something from scratch?

Sometimes we blame people for becoming comfortable when perhaps the organization created the comfort around them.

I think about my own career.

After four years in manufacturing, I felt I had given that role everything I could at that stage. When the opportunity came to move to Malaysia, I took it.

I spent many years there, but the environment never stood still: new markets, countries, manufacturing investments, larger volumes, different risks and increasingly complex decisions.

The years mattered because the challenges kept changing.

After 28 years of observing businesses and executives, I have become less interested in how long someone has held a title.

I am more interested in what happened while they held it.

For family businesses especially, perhaps the question is not only:

Are our family members employed?

It is:

Are we deliberately developing them?

Because years served and experience earned are not always the same thing.