Half a Genius

Some things just need two parts to work, and there’s no substitute for either.

A lock and key is a useful object. It can secure things, limiting access to only you. It’s handy! But a lock without a key and a key without a lock are both utterly useless chunks of metal.

If you have a key but no lock, it doesn’t matter how many more lockless keys you get. Still useless. Same with locks.

Some things just need their other half to be useful – and people are very often like this. No human is great at everything, nor wants to do everything. If you hire a very introverted but clever data scientist to run a whole company, she may enjoy some tasks more than others. Maybe she’s great at operations and lousy at sales. That problem won’t get fixed by hiring more introverted but clever data scientists!

It’s not just that you can’t do everything. It’s that a lot of what you can do isn’t valuable without the other piece. A battery doesn’t do anything on its own, and an electronic device doesn’t do anything without the battery.

Two (or more) people might come together and create absolute brilliance, but the key – pardon the pun – is in putting them together the right way. If you feel like you’re running in place, it might just mean you need to do exactly what you’re doing, but with someone new.