The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More with Less

by Richard Koch

Conventional wisdom is not to put all your eggs in one basket. 80/20 wisdom is to choose a basket carefully, load all your eggs into it, and then watch it like a hawk.

celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise average efforts look for the short cut, rather than run the full course exercise control over our lives with the least possible effort be selective, not exhaustive

strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many delegate or outsource as much as possible in our daily lives and be encouraged rather than penalized by tax systems to do this (use gardeners, car mechanics, decorators and other specialists to the maximum, instead of doing the work ourselves) choose our careers and employers with extraordinary care, and if possible employ others rather than being employed ourselves only do the thing we are best at doing and enjoy most look beneath the normal texture of life to uncover ironies and oddities

in every important sphere, work out where 20 per cent of effort can lead to 80 per cent of returns calm down, work less and target a limited number of very valuable goals where the 80/20 Principle will work for us, rather than pursuing every available opportunity make the most of those few ‘lucky

Business strategy should not be a grand and sweeping overview. It should be more like an underview, a peek beneath the covers to look in great detail at what is going on.

All it takes is an understanding of the costs of complexity (or the value of simplicity) and courage to remove at least four-fifths of lethal managerial overhead.

Most organizations, even ostensibly commercial and capitalist ones, are conspiracies of management against the interests of customers, investors and the outside world generally.

If it ain’t broke, make damn sure it doesn’t break.

Analysis has driven out vision,

A few things are always much more important than most things

The scope for entrepreneurial arbitrage is always underestimated.

Success is underrated and underfêted

The biggest wins all start small