I got into a discussion the other day with a senior member of my think tank over the popular Pareto principle. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. It is also considered a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.”
If Pareto was true, I can discard the 80%, why can’t I discard the 80%?
If 20% of my staff will execute 80% of the work, why on earth do we have to keep the other 80% of the work force on the payroll?
I need to become the best blogger I can be. It is not enough to write everyday, I need to pay some attention to the parts of the business I don’t like, like you know: SEO, analytics, keyword research, and so on. But if I only focus on doing only 20% of the work: writing. Will we experience growth without ensuring the other 80% is handled??
If I cannot strictly choose which parts to focus on and which parts to discard as Pareto principle suggests, then I am better off doing the best work I can by getting myself involved in every detail of the business without bias.
