Locations and drill bits

A few years ago, when we were house hunting, a friend gave me a piece of advice I still use. Better to buy a house that needs work in a good location than a perfect house in a bad one. You can renovate a house. But you can’t move it. The location is the one thing you’re stuck with, so it had better be the part worth keeping. The more I sat with it, the more places it turned up. Hiring is the obvious one. Better to work with a sprinter who has bad technique than someone with good technique and average potential. Technique you can coach. Raw speed you can’t. It’s hiring for slope, not just intercept. Then there’s choosing which company to join. Think of it like drilling for oil. Better to be at place that’s struck oil but is drilling with a terrible bit than somewhere with a beautiful bit and no oil under it. You can always swap the bit. The funny part is that all three analogies – the house, the sprinter, the drill bit – came from the same friend. Maybe that’s the real lesson. The best…