Pareto’s Principle the 80/20 Rule
Chapter 3 of Gerbyshak’s “10 Ways to Make it Great” book is about the 80/20 Rule.
The 80/20 Rule also known as Pareto’s Principle. The 80/20 Rule says that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results. Twenty percent of the agents sell eighty percent of the properties; twenty percent of the products have eighty percent of the flaws. Quality Management pioneer, Dr. Joseph Juran, called the phenomenon “vital few and trivial many”. The article Pareto’s Principle - The 80-20 Rule explains the 80/20 Rule in more detail and tells how you can use it to more effectively manage many different aspects of your life.
About.com author John Reh says, “Use caution when you apply this principle. Remember it is a “principle” not a “law”, but it is a good way for managers to stay focused on the few important issues and not get lost in the volume of information and tasks that try to take over our days.”Â
Gerbyshak in his “make it great” book invites the reader to review the rule, create a list of our activities and identify the 20% that generate the 80% of most desireable results. Then to make sure that we spend most of our time focusing on those activities.Â
March 26th, 2009 at 11:05 am
This reminded me of the Peter Brady episode where we started his first job as a bicycle repairman for Mr. Martinelli.
He worked very hard on one bike for 2 weeks – it was the best running bike in the shop! However he was fired as he was not producing enough results.
Moral – make sure you are working on the “important stuff†and not spending a ton of time of things that are not for whatever reason… Work smart on the right things!