A new 80/20 rule for your team
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
You're probably familiar with the “Pareto Principle” (sometimes referred to as “80/20 Rule”) that suggests that approximately 80% of all effects come from roughly 20% of the causes.
It seems like you can see a version of it in lots of different places - even bird watching! Apparently 80% of the birds that are seen belong to 20% of the species that were seen.
It's easy to think that this might be some law of nature. I don't know if it is, but 80/20 is an easy thing to keep in mind. For that reason alone, it can be useful to apply in your teams. Having guiding principles that your team can easily align to (and remember) allows them to make decisions and take actions better and faster. Here's a way that I'm planning on experimenting with the 80/20 rule in my team:
80% of the time, 80% of perfect is what we need
20% of the time, we need 100%
It's not quite the Pareto Principle, but that doesn't matter. It's a clear signal about what is important.
Most of the time, it's more important to get things out the door. While they can't be half baked, they also don't need to be perfect. For most things in my practice, getting something done on or ahead of time at a high standard will give a better experience to my clients or collaborators. For example, getting this note to you was more important than ensuring it was a world class piece of writing.
Some of the time (probably less than I think), it's important that we aim for the best possible outcome. This is where we can go above and beyond expectations and make the biggest impact with the work that we do. This could be about the experience that participants have in a workshop or certain aspects of hosting an event.
The key is identifying the right work that makes the biggest difference in your team's context. That will be different for different teams at different times. Of course, the numbers are arbirtary - it might be 90/10 or 70/30. Either way, it's a conversation worth having in your teams.
Here are a couple of questions for you to consider this week:
Would experimenting with a similar 80/20 principle in your teams be worthwhile?
What tasks in your team are sufficient at 80%
When does 100% make the biggest difference in your team?