Pareto Rule: The Time you have is more than enough
In Corporate life, you can hear this phrase very often: “Even if it’s a bad time, it will pass. Your hard work will pay off.”
Yes, You are hardworking but if I tell you, you can achieve 80% of success just by applying 20% of the efforts.
That will be amazing, won’t it?
Being an executive, you are the Avenger of your company who has so many powers within which are responsible for your outcomes. You just need to split your Powers and give them to every part of your body in the most optimized way. To achieve this you may apply the power-law that is also known as Pareto distribution.
80/20: The Pareto Principle
Says that 80% of results come from 20% of the causes. In business, it’s designed to help you focus on the 20% of efforts that are directly linked to the outcomes that drive productivity, sales, revenue, and growth in your business.
“There are people who want to achieve — and then there are sane people.” ― Richard Koch (British management consultant & venture capitalist)
The inception of the 80\20 rule
The 80/20 Rule is the most effective technique and this idea will make your business grow exponentially. In 1895 Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist first wrote about this power-law. He noticed that our society can be naturally divided largely into 2 segments: “The vital few” who are the top 20% in the food chain and “The trivial Many” who is the bottom 80% of the food chain. He later discovered that his distribution can be found in every other economic activity in society.
80/20: In the 21st Century
In a meeting, a colleague came to me and inquired, “Should we start targeting our marketing campaigns to all the possible customers or should we go for the niche?”
These kinds of questions always come to our minds. In our case, we will get much better results targeting and strategizing for a specific target market & feature set, instead of trying to build for everyone and make everyone happy.
In the 1940s, the Father of quality, Joseph Moses Juran, The Romanian-American Engineer, applied the 80/20 rule for quality control. By observing he concluded that 80% of problems with products were caused by 20% of the production defects.
According to him if one focuses on 20% of production defects, overall quality could be increased. In Japan, he delivered a lecture on quality control issues that enhanced him as a Great personality.
Once Charles Gaudet- (CEO of Predictable Profits) asked Opher Brayer — (CEO of STAGES GLOBAL ACADEMY and CBM): What makes Elon Musk so successful?
And without any hesitation, Opher said: Elon has a natural Pareto brain. Elon focuses his time doing ONLY 20% of the stuff that produces 80% of the results.
He manages his workday( down to 5-minute increments) to make sure he maximizes every ounce of productivity possible.
This conversation can help you understand that efforts and results aren’t directly proportional, and how you can leverage this knowledge to be more productive.
We all are aware of the story of Netflix, they focused on optimizing their product. In 1997 when people used to buy the DVD for movies, Netflix preferred the customers a platform to see movies. Netflix made a 20% effort to sell the product in the market and as a result, we all know Netflix is the leading company in the OTT segment in 2021.
“Don’t get so busy cutting trees that you don’t take time to sharpen your axe”.
You may also be successful like Dr. Joseph Juran and Elon Musk by working on your time management skills and discovering & concentrating upon the 20% of activities that generate 80% of your business.
Practicing the 80/20 rule will increase your productivity so that you can coordinate your responsibilities and thrive in your business.