80 20 rule: Don’t be fooled

Don't be fooled by these LinkedIn influencers using the Pareto principle wrong.

I've seen a few people say something like, “wow, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts, can you believe that? That means 80% of your efforts are a TOTALLY MISPLACED WASTE OF TIME.”

It's kinda insulting to be told that 80% of the time we likely have no idea what we're doing or "executing wrong" or whatever leaders like to say now, when they don't like to hear the data.

We’re already learning from the 20% that works best

It’s implied that in organizations with a lean model, that data is fed back into the loop as a matter of principle. So of course we’re going to be learning from the 20% that works, so we can either grow or trim back the other 80%.

But however much you grow and trim, you’ll still have a split of engaged and unengaged users, useful and converting content or not. You might still have a significant chunk or even most of your revenue coming from a few top accounts.

If your planned OKR for the year is “diversification of revenue streams”, then focus on replicating the success of the top 20% and getting rid of the most resource-draining and least profitable clients. Do this by raising both the price ceiling and the floor progressively over time.

Counterpoint: The other 80% leads you to the 20% of success

You actually must get through the 100 no’s to get to the yes. You must publish 100 pages to get 20 of them ranking highly.

Your content authority depends on breadth and depth of a topic, not to mention the hundreds of backlinks on those 80% pages propping up the 20% that are likely in a menu and linked within the text.

There's just too many variables to be able to control what ratio of your content is going to be considered successful under your terms.

Without all of it, none of it works. -Adrienne Kmetz

What do you think would happen if you deleted 80% of your content? Or skipped 80% of your emails, ideas, or tests?

Zillow, Bankrate, and Nerdwallet all have or had at one point, 30,000+ zip code pages for mortgage rates. All three of these websites are pretty much equally authoritative and equally able to solve the query.

So let's assume they all have 1/3 of the share of the top rankings for these pages.

Does that mean they shouldn't have made 67% of them?

You gotta hear 100 no's to get one yes.

All of the work leads you to where you are.

It's the entire ecosystem, my friends. Just build good things, groom them and merge away what no longer works, and you won't waste a moment.