The first time of anything is always exciting just like first love, first car, first job and many other things in life. As I was pondering which book review to post on my first blog, I have finally decided to post my opinion on "The 80/20 Individual" by Richard Koch. The choice is actually nothing particularly special as I believe it is more important to get started rather than trying to achieve perfection just like a girl choosing a dress for a night's out (hehe). At the end of the day, it is not the dress that makes the difference, it's your natural beauty and personality. We guys just won't notice what colour of your dress or whether it is knee length or slightly below or up. You would be worry if we notice that more than anything else. Anyway, let's get started.
As the title suggest, The 80/20 Individual is probably best summarised as a book that teaches us to prioritize and makes good use of our limited 24 hours a day. It highlights that the world is not 50/50 where effort and reward are not linearly related. Some of the important ideas which I have learned from the book are:
a) The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man (George Bernard Shaw). Richard Koch highlights the importance of being unreasonable (not being difficult but in his book, being creative).
b) To create, you must belong. If you work for a firm where you can't be yourself, you may create, but only against the grain. You could create much more someplace else.
c) The essence of being an 80/20 individual is to focus your life around a unique attribute of your personality - one that is of vital importance to you and that can provide what other people need or want in an appealing way.
d) You'll need other people: partners probably, supporters certainly. Your Olympian strength-the 20 percent-requires the 80 percent to be supplied by other people. You need a small team to be effective.
e) Nurture your team: If they are not equal partners with you, think of them as supporters, not as employees. Your success must be their success as well-they must benefit from being part of your world, just as you benefit from them being part of yours.
f) Great ideas will stay with you only if you are the best possible vehicle for them. If you can't take the ideas and make better use of them than anybody else, fortune will desert you. Choose ideas that resonate with your most creative 20 percent, ideas that find their destiny in you.
g) A study by the Boston Consulting Group found that "typically, less than 10 percent of the total time devoted to any work in an organization is truly value-added. The rest is wasted because of unnecessary steps or unbalanced operations.
h) In consulting, the best way to compress time is extensive upfront planning. (Personal opinion: This sounds easy but those in the consulting line will probably encounter managers who just fire-fight problems when it appears. It just contributes to stress and poor quality of work. Managers don't like to plan as it may give perceptions to others that they are perhaps not as busy as others. Hey, they must be free since he has the time to plan while we don't even have the time to eat lunch, rite?. So, if you are confident enough, ignore what others are doing and do allocate some time for planning and be calm just like a still lake. After all, there is a reason why you are promoted and not the ones who barely have time to have lunch).
i) Making money is all about making the right decisions-and realizing when a decision is necessary.
j) Hiring talent is a much better deal than hiring mediocrity.
k) I (Richard Koch) hold the controversial view that you should hire only people whom you like and who like you. (Personal note: By the way, Warren Buffet also shares the same view on working with people that he likes).
l) The ideal number of partners falls between two and seven. With groups of more than seven, intimacy is lost and cliques begin to form.
m) An 80/20 individual inside someone else's corporation will typically produce returns for the corporation that are between 20 and 200 times his or her compensation.
n) The days when growth required investment in productive capacity are over. Today growth requires new ideas, new inspiration, new business models, variants of existing successful models, and new and better services. The essence of growth used to be physical-now it is intellectual.
o) Most everything I've done I've copied from someone else (Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart). (Personal note: Don't misinterpret, it means we must be innovative and apply existing successful ideas in new ways or new arena rather than spending unnecessary time trying out previously unsuccessful ideas-not an 80/20 individual!).
p) Success, not failure, most urgently requires change. Follow the path of natural selection-if it ain't broke, do fix it!
In summary, this is a good book for for aspiring individuals who will feel that they can take on the world after reading this book. It provides good examples on a how an individual can utilise his talents and fulfill his potentials. Very often, we lack the time to "demonstrate" our inherent talent just because we are lost in the day-top-day mundane tasks. How often that you came up with a great idea but just find it too difficult to carry it through or you felt that you simply don't have the time to do so. Well, this book aims to help unlock the potential in you by applying the principles of the 80/20 individual.
On a final note, while it is appealing to anyone that we perhaps can eliminate 80% of the tasks and only concentrate on the 20% which will covers 80% of the task, one must not forget that if you wish to improve the remaining 20%, you will probably need to put in extra 80% effort compared to the average joe. That is how hard it is to be the creme de la creme. Who says being a good manager or leader is easy. If it is easy, it would be boring.
Good luck and all the best.
Summary: Good book for aspiring individuals who hope to achieve more. Will feel motivated and if applied correctly (not deviantly) the principles in the book, you will find yourself managing your time and priorities better and unleashes the creative side of you.
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