Saturday, January 29, 2011

Pareto Principle

Hello my dear friends,

To begin with my first blog, let me use a simple concept - the Pareto principle. Here I am going to illustrate what it is, assuming that you have never understood what is Pareto principle! Here we go...

The law of vital few and trivial many!!!
No, I am not talking about Indian politics. Its the Pareto principle itself!!! Going by my funny logic, it simply says to score 80 % (or percentile) marks in an exam (assuming that its an open book test) you need to put in only 20% effort. But for scoring the remaining 20%(or percentile), you need to put the himalayan 80% effort!!!

Wherever you go, this law can be applied. Say you go to a supermarket with a list from your wife, you will finish shopping 80% of the items in almost 20% time. But to shop the remaining 20% (including her napkins or like), it will take 80% time!! The vital few eat up lot of time and even cost!!!

Or, lets say you wanna finish a pizza. 3/4ths of the pizza goes inside a hungry stomach pretty fast compared to the last quarter!

Such simple logics are applied in industries, wherein, 20% of the people - the so called managers sit and brush their seats and take home 80% of the company's profits. And 80% of the rest of the staff toil themselves for the remaining 20% income!!! And to conclude, I would like to add this famous management lesson - "To sit idle and do nothing, you should be on the top(20%)!!!"