20/80 Rule
I became aware of the '20/80' rule quite a few years ago... seems it was always mentioned in motivation and sales books... I've noticed there are different variations of it, but basically , my take on it is as follows.
Two ways of looking at this . In a pure Sales sense, 20% of your Customer Base Equals 80% of your Revenue. This is true many times; For me, I find that if I put 80% of my effort into 20% of my total customer base, this comes out the other end as 51-80% of my total Revenue. So, I tend to focus on several customers and the others enter the 'queue' . It's all about Time Management. Why waste 50% of my total time one week for someone that comes to me once every several years, for low budget projects? It's a tough decision and hard to balance sometimes, because you don't want to turn business away.
Now, the way I tend to apply this knowledge nowadays is towards people themselves. After 35 years in the workforce ( OK, some of that was as a teenager working for pennies), I feel more than qualified to make this statement! 20% of the people get 80% of the jobs done. Time and time again I've seen this happen. I've found this true is most situations; the more you understand and believe it, the more productive you become as a manager.
Sadly, I've become more pessimistic as I've gotten older and been around people of all walks of life. The last 10 years, I've leaned more towards this statistics.
Fifty percent of the all people are "Slackers". Period. This Group consists of the bums of society, those that mooch off Welfare and abuse ( abuse and in need are two different things) social programs such as Social Security, mooch off family members, etc. It's a long list! Generally, we don't associate with these people , but they are among us everywhere we look! Many of these folks are in our workforce. They stumble to work, sometimes late, rarely care, run for the door at closing time, and simply want a paycheck for sub-par work many times.
The next 25% tend to be those that do the basics in life, doing the bare minimum to get by. They tend to go to work 5-6 days a week, earn a paycheck, possibly take care of their families, and are the backbone of most Companies. We depend on them daily, but they rarely do anything over and beyond their basic duties. There is NOTHING wrong with the folks in this group, but I believe it's important to note they 'exist.'. Those in this group may be do a great job when at work. However, they don't go over and beyond. They don't pursue additional training. They don't pursue educational opportunities. They don't examine what is needed to get, or even want, to be promoted. Most of the people we tend to deal with daily through work or friendships , fall into this category. Again, nothing wrong with this, but important to be aware of.
That leaves...... the final 25 % This is the group that tends to want to be promoted. They want to lead. They want to learn. They want to earn a higher wage. They've got dreams and goals. This is the group that we want to associate with in our free time as much as possible. This is the group you most likely are in, if you were motivated enough to read through this article to begin with (!). Me personally, I've found these are the folks I want to spend 100% of my time with whenever possible. I want to surround myself with these folks, share in their dreams and goals, and just importantly , share my dreams and goals with them.
But wait...., within that 25%; the 20/80 still applies to some degree. This is where the fun begins! But, I'll save that for a future blog.
Two ways of looking at this . In a pure Sales sense, 20% of your Customer Base Equals 80% of your Revenue. This is true many times; For me, I find that if I put 80% of my effort into 20% of my total customer base, this comes out the other end as 51-80% of my total Revenue. So, I tend to focus on several customers and the others enter the 'queue' . It's all about Time Management. Why waste 50% of my total time one week for someone that comes to me once every several years, for low budget projects? It's a tough decision and hard to balance sometimes, because you don't want to turn business away.
Now, the way I tend to apply this knowledge nowadays is towards people themselves. After 35 years in the workforce ( OK, some of that was as a teenager working for pennies), I feel more than qualified to make this statement! 20% of the people get 80% of the jobs done. Time and time again I've seen this happen. I've found this true is most situations; the more you understand and believe it, the more productive you become as a manager.
Sadly, I've become more pessimistic as I've gotten older and been around people of all walks of life. The last 10 years, I've leaned more towards this statistics.
Fifty percent of the all people are "Slackers". Period. This Group consists of the bums of society, those that mooch off Welfare and abuse ( abuse and in need are two different things) social programs such as Social Security, mooch off family members, etc. It's a long list! Generally, we don't associate with these people , but they are among us everywhere we look! Many of these folks are in our workforce. They stumble to work, sometimes late, rarely care, run for the door at closing time, and simply want a paycheck for sub-par work many times.
The next 25% tend to be those that do the basics in life, doing the bare minimum to get by. They tend to go to work 5-6 days a week, earn a paycheck, possibly take care of their families, and are the backbone of most Companies. We depend on them daily, but they rarely do anything over and beyond their basic duties. There is NOTHING wrong with the folks in this group, but I believe it's important to note they 'exist.'. Those in this group may be do a great job when at work. However, they don't go over and beyond. They don't pursue additional training. They don't pursue educational opportunities. They don't examine what is needed to get, or even want, to be promoted. Most of the people we tend to deal with daily through work or friendships , fall into this category. Again, nothing wrong with this, but important to be aware of.
That leaves...... the final 25 % This is the group that tends to want to be promoted. They want to lead. They want to learn. They want to earn a higher wage. They've got dreams and goals. This is the group that we want to associate with in our free time as much as possible. This is the group you most likely are in, if you were motivated enough to read through this article to begin with (!). Me personally, I've found these are the folks I want to spend 100% of my time with whenever possible. I want to surround myself with these folks, share in their dreams and goals, and just importantly , share my dreams and goals with them.
But wait...., within that 25%; the 20/80 still applies to some degree. This is where the fun begins! But, I'll save that for a future blog.
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