The Pareto principle, which claims that 80% of results can be achieved with 20% of the effort, is an idea that most people are familiar with.
It also says that in order to get 100% of the outcomes, the final 20% requires 80% effort.
In my experience, the remaining 20% of results isn’t always needed and is often not delivered even if people try to provide the remaining 80% of the 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 what’s critical, to focus on ensuring those are delivered, and then move 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 to 400% but achieving 200% or even 300% can easily be achieved and is well worth the risk of trying.
So my advice is, to stop spending 100% of the effort on one topic to achieve 100% results.
As soon as you feel that you’re 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!
If you want to learn more about creating highly engaged teams or being a better leader click the link to make an appointment to talk about how I can help.
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