Devoted to how insight is developed, shared and acted on
Pareto: Talent in the Spotlight
The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of useful results are generated by 20% of the total effort. In this issue, we want to take a look at how this principle can help you to make the very most of your abilities.
There can be a tendency in the insight world to try to do everything yourself. But sometimes this can be to the detriment of your real talent and your true potential. If you apply the Pareto Principle to this aspect of your abilities, you are probably outstanding at 20% of what you do - whilst your abilities may be more average in other areas.
Talent spotting
So, how powerful or effective could you be if you spent more of your time focusing on your key areas of strength? The same principle can be applied to your colleagues. Assuming you haven’t got a team of clones, you could try identifying the key strengths of different members of your team and start playing to everybody’s strengths. You may even decide to outsource any elements in which none of you excel.
For instance, your particular area of expertise might involve building bigger pictures or you might have strengths in networking and influencing. Do you spend much of your time managing people or projects when you could be adding more value by focussing on the business challenges? Perhaps you need to review your team structure.
Take a look at your colleagues. Can you identify, for example, individuals with particular strengths in:
- Detailed analysis or commercial valuation?
- Writing skills (or could these skills be developed if you identified the necessary talent and invested in it)?
- Administration or PowerPoint slides – enabling you to hand much of this aspect over to someone who is more of an expert than you?
Effective and fulfilled
You want to develop team members with well-rounded skills, but that doesn’t mean that making everyone totally self-sufficient is always the best approach. It can be better to develop pockets of expertise rather than to expect everyone to be a ‘jack of all trades’.
It’s worth stepping back and reviewing how much of your time is spent in areas in which you excel, where you can be most effective and creative. If you do this across the team you will all become more productive and more effective - and probably more content as a result.
Copyright © 2012 Customer Insight Solutions. All Rights Reserved