Issue No. 118 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features an updated edition of a classic business book and according to the author, you only need to read about 20 percent of this eNews to get 80 percent of the value. And this reminder to check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
The 80/20 Principle
Over 100 years ago, Vilfredo Pareto “noted the consistently lopsided relationship between inputs and outputs” and ever since we’ve called it the 80/20 Principle. This statistical pattern that 20 percent of your effort produces 80 percent of the results is universal.
This year, Richard Koch wrote a new and updated edition of his 10-year-old business classic, The 80/20 Principle. It’s worth reading—or delegating to a team member to read and summarize at a staff meeting. The 80/20 principle is all around us:
• 20 percent of your donors give 80 percent of the budget
• 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers
• One-fifth of your time (equivalent to one day a week) produces 80 percent of your important work
• 80 percent of your people problems come from 20 percent of your staff
• 20 percent of your volunteers do 80 percent of the work
And how about your wardrobe—you likely wear 20 percent of your clothes about 80 percent of the time, right?
If you care about results (corporate and personal) and you’re not leveraging the 80/20 rule, you’re wasting a lot of time. For example, read Koch’s “Top-10 Low-Value Uses of Time” and pick two (20 percent) that tempt you often:
1) Things other people want you to do
2) Things that have always been done this way
3) Things you’re not unusually good at doing
4) Things you don’t enjoy doing
5) Things that are always interrupted
6) Things few other people are interested in
7) Things that have already taken twice as long as you originally expected
8) Things where your collaborators are unreliable or low quality
9) Things that have a predictable cycle
10) Answering the telephone
Two of his “Top 10 Highest-Value Uses of Time” include “things that you can get other people to do for you with relatively little effort on your part,” and “things for which it is now or never.” Can you relate?
Koch includes the science behind the concept and plenty of practical examples, including the top-10 business uses of the 80/20 Principle, such as how to negotiate. He also recommends imposing an impossible deadline to a project so the team will only do the highest value things.
To order this week’s book from Amazon, click on this title: The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More With Less, by Richard Koch.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Describe one of your annual goals and how it might reflect the 80/20 Principle.
2) So now the obvious question is—how do we abandon those things in the 80 percent arena that contribute only 20 percent of our results?
Top-20 Books - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to start a list of your Top-100 books. These are not books on your shelf—they are books you have actually read (or listened to). They are books you use to mentor others with niche chapters. Certainly this week’s book on the 80/20 Principle qualify for your Top-100 list.
But, as a new (or old) zealot of the 80/20 Principle, your first assignment is to identify your Top-20 list of books. For my Top-20 recommendations, read Chapter 5 or download Resource #5.2, “20 Books to Get You Started,” on the Book Bucket page of my website. This worksheet (and others) will help your team start the journey towards mastering the Management Buckets by reading.
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