Most people have heard of the Pareto principle, this is the principle thats states 80% of the results can be delivered with 20% of the effort.
It also states the the remaining 20% of the results, which is needed to get to 100%, requires 80% of the effort.
In my experience, more often than not that remaining 20% of results isn’t always needed, and is often not delivered even if people try to provide the remaining 80% of effort.
So anything above 20% effort doesn’t deliver anything and is just wasted effort.
What I try and get my teams to do is to focus on spending 20% of the effort that delivers 80% of the results, ensuring that the critical items are delivered, and then move on to the next big thing.
If they take this approach it means that with 100% effort we can deliver 400% of results.
This is a great return on investment, as we have quadrupled our output for no additional effort.
I know this sounds unbelievable, but it can be done, it requires us to understand whats critical, to focus on ensuring those are delivered, and then moving on.
It takes discipline to do that, too often it’s actually easier to continue with the 80% effort for no return, thinking that we are doing something important, rather than moving on to the next task.
It takes time and practice to get to close 400% but achieving 200% or even 300% can easily be achieved and is well worth risk in trying.
So my advice is, stop spending 100% of the effort on one topic to achieve 100% results.
As soon as you feel that your switching from to 20% effort/80% result to 80% effort/20% results and all the critical components are delivered, then this is the time to stop and move on.
Go on give it a try, you’ll never know what you can achieve!
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