Not long ago, I wrote my post on the value of improving your strengths by only 10% (see "Related items" at the end of this post). What a lovely coincidence that, only a week or so later, I happened upon Richard Koch's book, "The 80/20 Individual".
As you may infer from the title, this book discusses a personal improvement strategy based on the Pareto Principle, better known as "the 80/20 rule." (Koch wrote this book as a follow-up to his 1997 book, "The 80/20 Principle" which I've never read).
I've been pleasantly surprised by the depth, insight, and applicability of this book.
The power of "wealth-creating" individuals and small teams
Overall, this book is about how to maximize the impact of your individual wealth-creating capabilities by exploiting your top 20% most valuable skills, ideas, and activities. Even in large organizations, a lot of the power and growth comes from small teams and their ability to disproportionately exploit the resources of their larger parent. Koch tells us that, when companies enter the Fortune 50, their growth slows down dramatically. In fact, the research he cites found that 91% of companies entering the Fortune 50 never grew substantially again without acquisitions.
His techniques are all centered on creating a growth "engine" to create wealth and achieve wild success.
An energizing presentation
Based on the title, I was expecting this to be focused on individual strength development, and I expected to see a lot of the same kinds of "psyche yourself up" techniques present in many self-improvement book. Instead, I found a holistic approach to help you deal with and maximize individual strengths as they relate to success in business. There are exercises and advice in the book to help you tune your mindset to look for your strengths, as well as case studies to help you maximinze what Koch calls your "20% spike." The 20% spike is the "thing", in any endeavor, that provides unique, game changing differentiation for people who win.
Koch spends some time discussing people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and others to discuss how they've maximized their "20% spike." Anyone who's able to win by maximizing their 20% fall into a group that Koch terms, "80/20 Individuals."
The "meat" of the book is 9 chapters called "The Nine Essentials of 80/20 Success." Each chapter has a philosophy, some examples, and advice to help you apply the nine essentials.
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This is called the "Hockey stick effect" in our business, because it means a big spike at the end of the quarter, causing our daily business graphs to be shaped like hockey sticks.
