Rick Nelson

The 80/20 rule: settling for a B?
July 26, 2006

Is your work load at 100%? Would you like to cut it to 20% and still achieve 80% of your results? That’s the promise of Richard Koch’s book Living the 80/20 Way, which was distributed to attendees of the Design Automation Conference’s Workshop for Women in Design Automation (WWINDA), held Monday in San Francisco.

But workshop keynoter Raynette Au, a VP at NVIDIA, was having none of it. Addressing the workshop topic "Working the 80/20 Rule for Success—Focusing in on What Matters," Au said that 80% is a B minus. A B minus for minimal work may have been fleetingly attractive when she was a college student (when she first heard about the 80/20 rule), she said, but achieving 100% is now much more interesting to her. She added that people subconsciously practice the 80/20 rule, and the challenge is get to 100% when you struggle just to answer e-mail and keep milk in the fridge. She had some suggestions to that end:

--Determine what you really value and put your effort into that. Do a meaningful assessment of what is important to you and organize your life so you can focus on that. For example, she said, she has organized her life to be near her family and has turned down jobs that might have been strong career moves.

--Do what you do best and make it matter. Too often, she said, people downplay their strongest skills in an effort of avoid being labeled obsessively compulsive. “Acknowledge your proficiencies and treat them with respect,” she said.

--Educate people about your proficiencies and about how they benefit the organization: “Make your skills matter to everyone around you.”

Posted by Rick Nelson on July 26, 2006 | Comments (4)