The Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule as it is also known is based on the observation that in life, a minority of causes, inputs and efforts often produce the majority of effects, results and rewards. Business management consultant Joseph M. Juran was the first to conceptualize this principle and named it after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who in 1906, observed that 80 percent of the land in England (and every country he subsequently studied) was owned by 20 percent of the population.

Over the years, he and many others observed this rule in action in many different spheres:

Relationships: Twenty percent of the people a person knows (friends, colleagues, family) will provide him or her with eighty percent of nurturing support and satisfaction.

Business: Twenty percent of customers will account for eighty percent of revenue.

Productivity: Twenty percent of a person's activities will account for eighty percent of his or her success.

Gardening: Eighty percent of garden peas are produced by twenty percent of the pea pods.

Understanding the Pareto Principle and incorporating the central insight of this concept can be of real value when applied daily to the key aspects of our lives. If we can identify the activities that produce the best results, we can apply our time and focus much more effectively. In other words, we can do more of what actually matters.

It's important to remember that the 80-20 rule is simply a principle. The 20% and 80% are intended as rough estimates. It can be 80-20 in a particular situation, but it's not set in stone, and it doesn't have to reflect a total of 100%. It just means that in many things, the great majority of the consequences come from a disproportionally small percent of the causes. For example, a teacher may have a class where 99% of discipline issues are created by just 10% of the students, or a business may have a situation where 70% of sales are of generated by 25% of its salespeople.

Putting the Pareto Principle to Work for You

Before we can put the Pareto Principle to work for us, however, we must be able to identify the 20% that really matters to each of us? The principle can only be effective if we can reliably distinguish the 20% of actions (or people, or events) that produce that disproportionate number of benefits. If we could know intuitively in the beginning what actions would be most productive in achieving our goals, it would be a relatively simple matter of focusing the majority of our efforts on those activities. However, this is usually not possible. We can generally only discern the critical 20% through observation and analysis after-the-fact. Therefore, the key to effectively applying the Pareto Principle for increased success and happiness is to continually monitor and assess the results we achieve over time through our daily behavior, and identify those that are most productive for us.

Carefully Analyze your Successes and Failures for Valuable Clues

Let's use sales as an example. If at the end of a month, an advertising salesperson spent some time to identify the group of customers who contributed 80% of his or her sales for the month and then analyzed the circumstances and conditions pertaining to those customers, the salesperson would likely identify certain characteristics the customers had in common (business type, size, location and contact person) as well as some common elements of the sales process (such as the time and frequency of the sales calls) that contributed to the sales taking place. From this analysis certain patterns would emerge relating to customer characteristics and the sales process that would correlate more highly with these particular sales. Focusing greater emphasis on these elements during future sales activities should produce greater sales successes than if the salesperson continued on without making any changes in either customer targeting or sales technique.

The Pareto principle is great to increase focus. Don't try to do more, just do more of the right things. For example, only a few of our non-productive behaviors will generally be the major contributors our disappointment and hardships in life. So working on just these few can greatly contribute to our personal growth. Time management is an area where the 80-20 rule can be very effective. If you have a lot of work to do, break it down to specific activities and figure out what minority (20%) of the tasks listed will contribute to the majority (80%) percent of the results you seek. Then give your maximum concentration to those minority tasks. This same approach can be applied to any area of life with similar results. The key to successfully leveraging the Pareto Principle is careful observation of past activities and behaviors or applying knowledge derived from the observation and analysis of others.

It is important to remember that successfully applying the Pareto Principle does not mean ignoring or discarding the other 80% of people, tasks or activities, but rather prioritizing attention to the critical 20%. The other 80% still needs to get done. In fact, there are usually many things in the 80% category of causes, efforts and inputs that are absolutely critical to personal or organizational success, which if not done properly can have a significant detrimental effect on results. However, just because something is very important doesn't necessarily mean that a lot of time and attention should be focused on it. It is simply important that it gets done.

A good example illustrating this point is comparing the functions of business development with maintaining customer loyalty. Most people would agree that while both are critically important activities for a business to grow and that the more customers an organization can retain the fewer new customers it needs to find, more time and effort should be devoted to business development because more time and effort is required. more on customer loyalty   

Using the Pareto Principle can help brings a kind of clarity into your life since it keeps you focused on the important things and alleviates the stress of feeling that "you have to do" many of the less important things. It frees you from rules such as "I have to attend every meeting" and lets you make your own rules. It makes life easier and often gets you where you want to go faster and more smoothly.

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People often associate the topic of persuasion primarily with the concept of selling, but the importance of effective persuasion skills really pertains to every one of us regardless of our individual vocation. Every day each of us is involved to some degree in influencing the thoughts and actions of others. In fact, the path to success in life lies to a very large extent in gaining the cooperation of others. In this edition of Insights, we continue with our ongoing segment dedicated to the topic of persuasion.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOFT SKILLS

Soft skills can be described as the set of personal character traits, attributes and interpersonal skills that characterize a person's relationships with other people. Soft skills have more to do with who we are than what we know. As such, soft skills encompass the communication style preferences that determine how well one interacts with others and are usually an important contributing factor in shaping a person's personality. Unlike hard skills, which are about a person's skill set pertaining to the ability to perform a certain type of task or activity, soft skills are broadly applicable to any type of personal interaction.

In the workplace, soft skills are considered to be complementary to hard skills and are believed to enhance an individual's personal interactions, job performance and career prospects. The hard skills necessary for an effective salesperson, for example, might include a thorough understanding of selling skills, product knowledge and order processing procedures. Alternatively, soft skills required for a salesperson might include empathy, active listening and an appealing communication style.

Soft Skills and Persuasive Ability

Persuasion can be likened to selling. When you are trying to persuade someone to think the way you are thinking about a thought or concept, you are essentially selling an idea. And as with virtually all selling situations, you usually need to sell yourself first. This usually requires the development of trust, rapport and interest on the part of the person you are trying to persuade. Conveying the facts and details of an idea can be characterized as the process of applying hard skills to the persuasion situation (i.e., gaining attention developing a need, handling objections, etc.) It's the logical, intellectual process that you would follow to get another to listen to and consider your idea or proposition.

However, to get the other person to agree with you and commit to the action you desire, you must get him or her to emotionally WANT to accept your premise, and this requires the effective application of soft skills such as those described above to develop an emotional connection with the person with whom you are speaking to motivate action. Another way to look at it is that persuasive ability itself is a soft skill and is an ability that is highly valued in business and in society.

Certainly it is possible to influence the behavior of others without establishing an emotional connection. Many people, especially ineffective managers often use intimidation to get their way with subordinates. While this does motivate action, it is not persuasion because by definition persuasion involves voluntary compliance, not coercion. Furthermore, coercion adds a whole new dimension to the concept of hard skill.

Developing Your Persuasive Soft Skills

Whereas hard skills can be learned and perfected over time, soft skills can be more difficult to acquire and change. That's because soft skills are usually not as easily defined or documented (and, therefore, not as easy to train or learn) as hard skills. When seeking to persuade, we usually focus mostly on the words that make up our message. While we may have conscious control over the words we use, we may not have the same level of awareness over the other key elements of our message, namely our voice and body language. The tricky thing about body language is that we are usually unaware of the messages we're conveying nonverbally. When presenters see themselves on videotape, they're often surprised to see that their body language was conveying an entirely different message from the one they had intended.

Anyone can utter a series of words, but it is a speaker's personal connection to those words that can bring them to life for the listener. The movements of our eyes, mouth, and facial muscles can have a significant impact on building a connection with those we are talking with. Alternatively, they can undermine our every word. Persuaders who care deeply about what they are saying tend to use their entire bodies to support their message. Their gestures are consistent and congruent with their words. Eye focus is the most important element in this process. No part of our facial expression is more important in communicating sincerity and credibility. Nothing else so directly connects us with our listeners, whether in a small gathering or a large group.

Other types of soft skills that are important in business and in life are competencies in such areas as conflict resolution, decision making, self-motivation, self-discipline, etiquette, negotiation and team orientation. Sometimes such attributes are simply lumped in to the term interpersonal skills. In recent years the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) had come into general use as an alternative approach to characterize soft skills. Intelligence can be broadly defined as the capacity for goal-oriented adaptive behavior, and emotional intelligence focuses on those aspects of intelligence that govern self-knowledge and social adaptation. However the concept of soft skills and persuasion is not new. A great book on soft skills, How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, was published in 1936.

Ask us a question about Persuasiveness. 

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