Zig Ziglar, in one of his talks, loosely quotes Andrew Carnegie’s philosophy about developing executives. The quote in full is:
Men are developed the same way gold is mined. When gold is mined, several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn’t go into the mine looking for dirt — one goes in looking for the gold.”
I’m thinking about this when it comes to managing. You’re unlikely to find anyone who is pure gold. (Fool’s gold, maybe.) The question isn’t whether you’ll be moving tons of rock and gravel, but how much dross has to be hauled out before you get to the value beneath it all.
The individual prospector can operate quite profitably without finding much gold because his overhead is low — he only needs to keep himself alive. Larger mines need to operate at scale, using machinery to pulverize and wash out tons of dirt and rock in order to find enough ore to justify the expense of it all.
What this comes down to is net value. Are you spending more finding the shiny stuff than it’s worth in the end? At the individual level, panning even just for gold dust is nearly always worth the trouble. Larger mining concerns, with more at stake, require greater discernment.
What’s worth remembering is that it’s often the solo prospectors who appear to be wasting their time mucking around in creeks who end up discovering the best spots for the bigger digs to operate.