The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Richard Koch
abuse.
Part Four: Crescendo—Progress Regained draws the themes together and positions the 80/20 Principle as the greatest secret engine of progress available to us all. It hints at the uses that could be made of the 80/20 Principle for the public good as well as for corporate wealth creation and personal advancement.
WHY THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE BRINGS GOOD NEWS
I want to end this introduction on a personal rather than a procedural note. I believe that the 80/20 Principle is enormously hopeful. Certainly, the principle brings home what may be evident anyway: that there is a tragic amount of waste everywhere, in the way that nature operates, in business, in society, and in our own lives. If the typical pattern is for 80 percent of results to come from 20 percent of inputs, it is necessarily typical too that 80 percent, the great majority, of inputs are having only a marginal—20 percent—impact.
The paradox is that such waste can be wonderful news, if we can use the 80/20 Principle creatively, not just to identify and castigate low productivity but to do something positive about it. There is enormous scope for improvement, by rearranging and redirecting both nature and our own lives. Improving on nature, refusing to accept the status quo, is the route of all progress: evolutionary, scientific, social, and personal. George Bernard Shaw put it well: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” 15
The implication of the 80/20 Principle is that output can be not just increased but multiplied, if we can make the low-productivity inputs nearly as productive as the high-productivity inputs. Successful experiments with the 80/20 Principle in the business arena suggest that, with creativity and determination, this leap in value can usually be made.
There are two routes to achieving this. One is to reallocate the resources from unproductive to productive uses, the secret of all entrepreneurs down the ages. Find a round hole for a round peg, a square hole for a square peg, and a perfect fit for any shape in between. Experience suggests that every resource has its ideal arena, where the resource can be tens or hundreds of times more effective than in most other arenas.
The other route to progress—the method of scientists, doctors, preachers, computer systems designers, educationalists, and trainers—is to find ways to make the unproductive resources more effective, even in their existing applications; to make the weak resources behave as though they were their more productive cousins; to mimic, if necessary by intricate rote-learning procedures, the highly productive resources.
The few things that work fantastically well should be identified, cultivated, nurtured, and multiplied. At the same time, the waste—the majority of things that will always prove to be of low value to man and beast—should be abandoned or severely cut back.
As I have been writing this book and observed thousands of examples of the 80/20 Principle, I have had my faith reinforced: faith in progress, in great leaps forward, and in mankind’s ability, individually and collectively, to improve the hand that nature has dealt. Joseph Ford comments: “God plays dice with the universe. But they’re loaded dice. And the main objective is to find out by what rules they were loaded and how we can use them for our own ends.” 16
The 80/20 Principle can help us achieve precisely that.
2
HOW TO THINK 80/20
Chapter 1 explained the concept behind the 80/20 Principle; this chapter will discuss how the 80/20 Principle works in practice and what it can do for you. Two applications of the principle, 80/20 Analysis and 80/20 Thinking, provide a practical philosophy which will help you understand and improve your life.
DEFINITION OF THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE
The 80/20 Principle states that there is an inbuilt imbalance
Part Four: Crescendo—Progress Regained draws the themes together and positions the 80/20 Principle as the greatest secret engine of progress available to us all. It hints at the uses that could be made of the 80/20 Principle for the public good as well as for corporate wealth creation and personal advancement.
WHY THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE BRINGS GOOD NEWS
I want to end this introduction on a personal rather than a procedural note. I believe that the 80/20 Principle is enormously hopeful. Certainly, the principle brings home what may be evident anyway: that there is a tragic amount of waste everywhere, in the way that nature operates, in business, in society, and in our own lives. If the typical pattern is for 80 percent of results to come from 20 percent of inputs, it is necessarily typical too that 80 percent, the great majority, of inputs are having only a marginal—20 percent—impact.
The paradox is that such waste can be wonderful news, if we can use the 80/20 Principle creatively, not just to identify and castigate low productivity but to do something positive about it. There is enormous scope for improvement, by rearranging and redirecting both nature and our own lives. Improving on nature, refusing to accept the status quo, is the route of all progress: evolutionary, scientific, social, and personal. George Bernard Shaw put it well: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” 15
The implication of the 80/20 Principle is that output can be not just increased but multiplied, if we can make the low-productivity inputs nearly as productive as the high-productivity inputs. Successful experiments with the 80/20 Principle in the business arena suggest that, with creativity and determination, this leap in value can usually be made.
There are two routes to achieving this. One is to reallocate the resources from unproductive to productive uses, the secret of all entrepreneurs down the ages. Find a round hole for a round peg, a square hole for a square peg, and a perfect fit for any shape in between. Experience suggests that every resource has its ideal arena, where the resource can be tens or hundreds of times more effective than in most other arenas.
The other route to progress—the method of scientists, doctors, preachers, computer systems designers, educationalists, and trainers—is to find ways to make the unproductive resources more effective, even in their existing applications; to make the weak resources behave as though they were their more productive cousins; to mimic, if necessary by intricate rote-learning procedures, the highly productive resources.
The few things that work fantastically well should be identified, cultivated, nurtured, and multiplied. At the same time, the waste—the majority of things that will always prove to be of low value to man and beast—should be abandoned or severely cut back.
As I have been writing this book and observed thousands of examples of the 80/20 Principle, I have had my faith reinforced: faith in progress, in great leaps forward, and in mankind’s ability, individually and collectively, to improve the hand that nature has dealt. Joseph Ford comments: “God plays dice with the universe. But they’re loaded dice. And the main objective is to find out by what rules they were loaded and how we can use them for our own ends.” 16
The 80/20 Principle can help us achieve precisely that.
2
HOW TO THINK 80/20
Chapter 1 explained the concept behind the 80/20 Principle; this chapter will discuss how the 80/20 Principle works in practice and what it can do for you. Two applications of the principle, 80/20 Analysis and 80/20 Thinking, provide a practical philosophy which will help you understand and improve your life.
DEFINITION OF THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE
The 80/20 Principle states that there is an inbuilt imbalance
Similar Books
The Einstein Code
Tom West
Doomsday Brethren, Book 04: Entice Me at Twilight
Shayla Black
A Heart Most Worthy
Siri Mitchell
Jackal's Dance
Beverley Harper
Beyond the Sea
Keira Andrews
Murder in the Bastille
Cara Black
Breathe for Me
Rhonda Helms
Rock Me Gently
HK Carlton
