dispatches from the new world of work

If You Want To Find Oil, You Must Drill Wells

(The "Do It" Imperative)

Was on the treadmill yesterday. (Hey, it was -5ºF outside.) My straining eye caught the cover of a book I'd surveyed for In Search of Excellence; it's The Hunters, by John Masters, a successful Canadian O & G wildcatter. Here are some of the excerpts I underlined 25 years ago:

"This is so simple it sounds stupid, but it is amazing how few oil people really understand that you only find oil if you drill wells. You may think you're finding it when you're drawing maps and studying logs, but you have to drill."

NB: BUT YOU HAVE TO DRILL!

"I don't know what it is that makes an oil finder. But while I can't define it, I can generally recognize it when I see it. Mostly, it's attitude. Focus. Intensity. It seems to be associated with a fierce desire to know everything, to rub your nose in every piece of information. And yet there is a playfulness about the expert finders. A sense of fun. Beware of the too serious man."

"A really new idea at first has only one believer."

(Selfishly, I cherish the book's inscription that I also reread, "To Tom Peters, who knows all about these ideas of how to make a company work." Thanks, John. Wow!)

Tom Peters posted this on 01/18/05.

Comments

Reminds me of what I once heard my dad, an architect say: "Architecture isn't abouting drawing designs for buildings on paper. It's about getting buildings built."
Ideas aren't worth much if you can't get them off the literal drawing board.
Of course that realization from 2D to 3D takes an entirely other set of skills than mere design. Those skills are just as important though.

Posted by Kirk Samuels at January 18, 2005 12:42 PM

The counsel to drill wells reminded me of using that logic to describe luck.

One day as I complimented a co worker on her new masters, promotion, engagement, and new home I said I bet she felt very luck - terrible choice of words. She replied she'd worked very hard for these benefits, it got very quiet.

In an effort to bail myself out; knowing that she was a techy, I explained I meant â€œLuckyâ€ in the context of "Gray's Law"; explaining that luck was the area under the curve bounded by: preparation, opportunity, and persistence. You go to high school, then college, then grad, etc., etc. You try a task, then another, & another. And you do it again, & again, & again. The more you prepared & "drilled" the luckier you get.

Always liked that counsel to drill

Posted by bob gray at January 19, 2005 10:05 AM