A common practice in a military campaign is to hold some forces in reserve. The very wise rule of thumb is that they are to be used to reinforce success – to exploit a breakthrough or provide the decisive momentum at a point where your side is on the verge of victory.
Unfortunately, the instinct is to send them where your lines appear about to collapse. As natural as that would appear, it almost always works to your advantage to throw the weight of your resources behind a promising assault to seize the early victory, forcing your opponent to abandon his advantage and to reinforce his own failures.
And the same applies in business. We should be pouring our best resources into our most promising opportunities. But we often find ourselves instead propping up initiatives that have lost their luster, or supporting legacy programs due to misplaced affection or tradition.
This is the 20/80 rule in action. It suggests that 20% of our work produces 80% of our results. Typically, we take that to mean that, inevitably, some of our resources simply outperform most others by a wide margin.
But it also points to what we tend to do with those resources. Where are your most productive assets deployed? Against your most profitable programs? How about the other 80% – are they underperforming simply because they are being pointlessly expended on outdated or unpromising initiatives? Perhaps they would be more efficient if you managed them more efficiently.
But this will require that you make the hard decisions to exploit success rather than reinforce failure. And that will require that you make the even harder determinations as to what programs really do represent the future of your company – and which no longer do. Then you follow through on those conclusions. Are you prepared to do that?
Think of it in terms of cost-cutting. When we engage in this sort of efficiency campaign, we typically look at across-the-board cuts in department or program budgets. Everybody is required to trim their expenditures by a given percentage, to cut back on travel or training or other presumably discretionary activities, or to institute hiring freezes.
But in doing this we are punishing both failure and success indiscriminately, rather than redeploying assets from the former to the latter. The best cost-cutting program would shut down the programs which are eating up 80% of your effort for only 20% of your return. Then redeploy the assets that had been wastefully tied up in them to where they can exploit success and help create increased revenue, rather than leave them reinforcing failure and generating unproductive costs.
It is this sort of assessment of the facts on the ground, discerning the difference between the paths to the future being discovered within your organization and the accumulating baggage weighing it down, and continuously redeploying assets from the latter to the former, that the manager must undertake.
Are you following your instincts, or are you doing your job?
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Today’s tips: Issues like these require the mindset of a determined, decisive manager – rather than an ethereally visionary “leader.” With that assertion in mind, please see this excellent list of reasons why such leaders fail, by the author of PsyBlog. You will want to pay particular attention to items 2, 4, and 6.
And speaking of leaders and failure, please also be sure to see what Michael Wade has to say about the bright boys.
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Technorati Tags: military, success, victory, business, 20/80 rule, cost-cutting, efficiency, assessment, manager, visionary, leader, PsyBlog, Michael Wade
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Jim,
I couldn’t help but immediately think of this principle as it applies to professional development.
We see huge amounts of energy and resources focused on doing gap analysis in the case of individual performance and competencies. Regardless of how much the behavioral research supports building on strengths, organizations continue to want to shore up weaknesses.
When tough times appear, we see people who are spending their time trying to become average at something they were never intended to do to begin with.
Terrific post. . .
I agree… One of the best posts I’ve seen in awhile — on anyone’s site. Many times I’ve observed political struggles keeping the person “in charge” from making difficult cuts where they’re most needed in the interest of appeasing the people who have a stake in NOT having their budgets cut.
It’s a simple question of leadership. Brilliantly put, Jim.
Excellent post as always Jim. In education we spend 80% of our energy and resources on the lowest 20% percent of our students to bring their scores up. (This is a generalization, but you get the point) I wonder the impact of focusing those resources on the top 20% percent. What would the impact be to our education system and for those top students?
It cant’ be done of course in public education because of equity issues, but an interesting question would be should our top students should be getting more attention and resources to leverage their abilities for the future of our society?
Hi Steve,
This is a great connection – it’s probably even a harder point to drive home than the other made in the post. It’s probably a good test for our ability to think this way across the organization – by training ourselves to think this way about ourselves, and about how we conduct staff development.
It’s an interesting topic, too, pointing to the complexity of developing and managing a staff of diverse talents in an environment of sometimes inflexible demands. A question of problem or opportunity.
Thanks for adding this to the mix – a lot to think about.
Hello Cam,
Thanks for your too-kind words. Speaking of budgets, this sort of thinking should be applied to the “bailout” payments being made currently. Where should our money really be going? The actual response we’re seeing, including the political elements in the “leadership” being shown, makes it all the more interesting.
Thanks again, Cam!
Hi Rob,
Now this is really interesting thinking – and it points to another aspect of the way politics – both overtly in political institutions and covertly in the dynamics of our organizations and even our own behavior – influences how things actually unfold.
These are the kinds of questions we need to get more discussion of in education at all levels.
Thanks for this, Rob, and for your work and writing.
Perhaps if the Detroit 3 had followed this advice they wouldn’t be holding a tin cup out for a gov’t bailout. As a business consultant, my frustrations with some C-level executives is at an all-time high.
Hello Lewis,
There’s a connection to this topic for you! And perhaps the government is simply repeating their error at a higher level if it bails them out. Lots of room for frustration all around.
Thanks for your visit, and, by the way, for your work and your incisive writing at your own site, which I hope readers here will click through to visit.