The "80/20" Rule...

You've probably heard of the "80/20" rule. If not, it simply means that if you apply the 80/20 rule to something, you'll probably get it right. Example: 80% of your business probably comes from 20% of your product line. Other examples would be 80% of your sales from 20% of your sales force, etc.

What most people don't realize, is that you can probably apply this to almost anything if you really think it through. For example, if you could do 20 things 80,000 times, you'd probably be better off than if you did 20,000 different things 80 times. You get my drift...

An interesting twist to this is that in theory, incoming CEOs usually replace 80% of the team with their own people, keeping 20% of the current team that worked under the old administration. (No different than in politics; only in that case, it's usually a "clean sweep" approach.)

I made the fatal mistake of keeping 80% of the old team and dismissing 20. Since my record was stellar at management development, I had the silly notion that I could take people who were loyal to the old administration or under-qualified, and either bring them around or groom them to their potential. This was naive, and a monumental waste of time and resource.

I have two pieces of advice for you if you are in management and newly appointed. The first is to make sure that your new team is on board with your vision for the company/task/project/department - whatever. (The obvious is to make sure that everyone on the team is fully qualified to do their job. You'll have time for "grooming" later.)

The second is to evaluate the entire organization based on the 80/20 rule. This will give you a starting point toward success. Identify where you are doing things right, and where the 80/20 rule has proven itself to be true. Then take a look at what is failing and see if applying the 80/20 rule could improve the outcome. (This evaluation could be flawed if you haven't applied my first recommendation.)

Best wishes for a beautiful and prosperous New Year.