Take the rest of the week off, and don’t show up again until Monday afternoon!!

Are you serious?

O.K. I confess, you won’t be able to take off this week, there’s too much to do in the short run. Your business or career could collapse.

Taking off ‘til Monday won’t work in the short run; but longer range, it is possible.

“And how?” they said, in response.

Become an 80-20 thinker

So for now, let’s set the days off out there as a reward for doing what I will suggest.

I’ll base my comments on the work of 4 of the clearest thinkers in the 20th Century, Wilfredo Pareto, Joseph Juran, Stephen Covey and Michael Gerber. I may add a few as I go.

Is that about right for what you thought you would hear today?

I’ve got just a few 20th Century Thinker Thoughts to set the tone for the rest of the talk.

“If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.” (Anonymous)

And,
“It’s what you learn after you know everything, that counts.” (John Wooten)

And,
“Don’t get it right, just get it going!” (Joe Schroeder)

With those comments as background:

You are going to be offered the chance to move away from the level of results you are currently experiencing, no matter the quality of the results, and toward better, faster.

To become an 80-20 thinker, use the ideas of Pareto, Juran, and Covey to observe you own activities. For those who may not have heard of the concept of 80-20 or as Juran phrased it, the “Pareto Principle,” may I give it to you by example?

80- 20 examples: 80% of profit comes from 20% of customers;
80% of personnel headaches come from 20% of employees:
20% of your activities are responsible for 80% of your productive output.
80% of your leisure time enjoyment comes from 20% of leisure time activity

In their major writings, each made a contribution, Wilfredo Pareto, an Italian Economist and writer, noted that 80% of the wealth in Venice was in the hands of 20% of the people. He found that to be true elsewhere in Europe.
Dr. Joseph Juran was a contemporary of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Deming is usually regarded as the source of the Japanese Miracle of the late 60’s and 70’s. Juran generalized from Pareto’s observations and gave Pareto the credit for discovering not only an economic principle, but also a principle of nature.
Dr. Stephen Covey expanded the concept by engaging his readers of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a classification exercise within a two axis matrix. The matrix creates four cells bounded by the two axes. The Axes are, important and not-so important, urgent and not so urgent.

Much of their work can be summarized in a few sentences that are relevant to our focus today.

Work on your most productive, most highly leveraged activities and leave to others those that are necessary but not so leveraged.

Train others or buy their expertise to accomplish the supporting infrastructure for your business or career.

May I say, “Outsource?”

Michael Gerber has produced the books in the E-myth series His literary series strongly advocates for delegation and investor thinking for business owners and would-be E-Myth Managers. There is 80-20 thinking in his work, too.

There is much more to be said. This whole arena has immense potential for making executives so much more productive. Taken to a reasonable level, one could make the case for the executive who accomplishes more in 20 hours a week than that person had contributed in the usual 50 to 70 hours that many executive put in a typical week

So where to we go from here?

Which activities do I drop and where do I concentrate?

Sorry. From this vantage point I can’t be specific about what activities. I can give you some guidance about that.

By the way, the text of my remarks will be posted on my website later today. Find it and other useful items at www.jjmcoach.com.

I recommend that you begin by being more self-observant, more aware of interruptions and more intolerant of them. Further, notice in what part of your day you tend to be able to stay with a task with high levels of concentration and energy. Those are 20% periods.

There are two branches to becoming an 80-20 thinker.

FIRST IS STRATEGIC; SECOND TACTICAL.

Strategic

Ask what am I trying to create here?
Then ask “Where do I want this job/ organization to be in, say, 3 years?”

To use the now famous analogy used by Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great, “Do you have the right people in the right seats on your bus?”

You must decide to replace or re-create the passengers.

Be absolutely certain that all the people in your unit know just where you are driving and that that is where they also have signed up to go there with you.

Frequent meetings of the group to check signals:
Occasional one-to-one meetings with each member of your team to re-align where needed and to get feedback to the now famous NYC Mayor Koch’s question, “How am I doing?”

Examine your job for your highest leverage activities. Which among the range of your activities are you uniquely qualified to do and of those which do you enjoy most?

Examine them to be sure you have included actions that produce sought –after results.

Now look at the bottom end of a long list of your activities. Start giving them away in cohesive groups-structurally complete responsibilities.

Can’t do that? Well there are many reasons why that won’t work right away.

That’s the strategic part. If you can’t outsource it directly, you must train internally.

May I see a show of hands? Who believes that everyone below you in your part of the organization is fully engaged for at least 6 hours of 8?

This is the beginning of the Delegation Cycle. There is much more on Delegation on my site.

Tactical

I’ll begin here by relating a story that many of you may well have heard before.

Shortly after the beginning of the 20th century, Charles Schwab, not the stock broker guy, but the president of U.S. Steel, took some advice from a management consultant named Ivy Lee. Years later, Schwab said it was the best advice he had ever received. A busy man, Schwab was frustrated with his own lack of progress and turned to Lee for advice. Lee gave him the advice I will give to you at this point. Create this habit: Each evening, before you leave your office, identify the six most important tasks ahead of you. Prioritize them. At the start of your next day, begin to work on the most important task and work it to completion or impasse. Make an appointment with yourself for when you will engage that task again. Move to the second task. You will be comforted by the knowledge that you are always working on the most important activity.

To support your Strategic effort,

I suggest that part of the daily planning should include a piece of your time devoted to getting your organization the same page in the hymnal