80/20 questions for leaders

This article was inspired by Richard Koch’s book and his appearance on the Tim Ferriss podcast

How can a business identify the 20% of employees who have the most impact?

How can this 20% of high performers be kept in the company?

How can you create/ hire more employees like this 20%?

How can a business identify the clients / products / services that bring 80% of the revenue

How can business identify the clients / employees / products that cause 80% of the problems?

What happens when the business identifies the 20% that makes the oversized positive /  negative impact?

What can generate the most money for the least cost (money, time and effort)?

Which 20% of clients / employees/ products bring in 80% of the revenue / problems

What more can you do for the top 20% of clients? – stay in very close contact with them. Go above and beyond for them – be a concierge. Tailored products just for them

Identify all reasons for why a project go live is delayed over a 3 / 6 month period. Which are the main causes and what is their impact? How can the implementation process be simplified? What incentives (penalties) can be put into the contract to ensure the client does what is required on the correct date?

Identify the reasons why projects went live on time – what can be copied?

Identify the reasons why projects failed to go live on time – what can be avoided?

Complexity increases costs so how to simplify the business – for example – remove unprofitable products (harvest them – reduce support, increase prices so this unprofitable section goes away over time and while doing so gives you money with minimal effort and cost)

Find the one goal that will have the biggest positive impact and only focus on that goal. For example go live on time with 75% of projects (current % of on time go lives is 10%). Then workout the steps needed to be done to reach this goal and only do these steps.

The 80/20 approach is a real test of leadership – do you do nothing or do you take action?