The Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The principle is named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy, was owned by 20% of the population – a remarkably consistent figure around the world.

The distribution is claimed to appear in several different aspects of business, e.g.

80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers
80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its customers
80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of the time its staff spend
80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products
80% of a company’s sales are made by 20% of its sales staff
It was whilst pondering this phenomenon that I thought about how this principle might be related to job satisfaction, personal happiness and effectiveness.

When I think back to my role as a senior leader in public service I now recognise that probably 80% of my satisfaction came from 20% of my remit. In my current role working with senior leaders in the commercial and public sectors I’m increasingly finding similar proportions afflicting my clients.

One of the pleasures of getting older is that you become more comfortable admitting to what you can’t do, whereas when you are younger you have tendency (particularly in the world of work) to project and protect an image of total mastery and acumen.

It was probably quite late in life that I came to appreciate that “I could do a small number of things really well and a large number of things much less well”.

When considering how this relates to other people it could be translated into “I know that I can do some things better than most other people, but that other people can do most things better than me”.

Organisations have a tendency to appoint people to senior positions because of a particular skill set and personal assets – then immediately set about requiring them to take on tasks for which they have no inclination or acumen – and then they wonder why things aren’t working out!

In my work with a wide range of high-performing organisations I’m seeing a strong positive correlation between allowing people to concentrate on their maximising value by concentrating upon own particular assets.

So when times are as tough, as they currently are, and organisations look to allocate additional tasks to senior people (who are already busy) we should try to align with their strengths, as opposed to seeing responsibilities lying in neat coherent packages that suit an organogram – but not human beings.

If we could achieve that, then we have an outside chance of turning the Pareto principle on its head where 80% of what we do provides us with our greatest satisfaction, personal happinessm and likelihood to do good.