Cheryl couldn't believe what she was hearing. As Regional Director of IT Services, she would be implementing the new procedures for requisitioning desktop and laptop equipment, and she could see chaos looming. She felt that familiar knot forming in the back of her neck as she envisioned hoards of frustrated project managers screaming for her head.
Maybe it was time to retire and open that florist shop — but she couldn't really afford that. She would have to find a way to make this work, or find another job someplace.
Before the changes, IT Service Representatives received requisitions for new equipment, and checked them for correctness and compliance with standards. If there were any mistakes, the Service Rep would contact the requisitioner. Under the new scheme, the Service Reps would simply bounce the form back to the originator. They would no longer assist requisitioners in fixing defective requisitions. According to headquarters, this would reduce costs: "It's time they grew up and learned how to complete a simple form."
The form was simple, but the equipment being specified wasn't. And since the list of approved configurations was changing constantly, lots of requisitions would bounce. Some projects would be delayed, and Cheryl could see how her department would be caught in the middle.
Next morning, she had a brilliant idea. Instead of worrying, she would anticipate. Here's what she realized:
Use Pareto's Principle(the 80/20 rule) to
focus your attention.
By addressing 20%
of the problems, you can
eliminate 80% of your load.
- Accept what is
- True, this was a problem Cheryl never should have had. She would much rather have led of a customer-centered approach, without the cavalier bouncing back of out-of-band requisitions, but that issue was above her pay grade. Stewing about it just made her angry. So she accepted it, and that enabled her to anticipate the consequences.
- Use Pareto's Principle to focus your anticipation
- Cheryl recognized that Pareto's Principle (the 80/20 rule) meant that 80% of the difficulty came from 20% of the cases. For IT Services, most of the problems came from only 5 of the 22 site administrators responsible for requisitions. Cheryl decided that she would deal with the "Fabulous Five" specially — perhaps a personal visit from a Service Rep to explain what would happen to their requisitions under the new procedure.
- Prevent problems rather than repair them
- By coordinating with Training and the managers of site administrators, she would make sure that requisitioners had all they needed to get it right. Cheryl reframed the problem from one of making massive repairs to one of reducing the error rate.
When change comes, we can worry about what the future holds, or we can anticipate what might happen, and deal with it. Is a change coming for you? Are you worrying or anticipating? Top Next Issue
Is your organization embroiled in Change? Are you managing a change effort that faces rampant cynicism, passive non-cooperation, or maybe even outright revolt? Read 101 Tips for Managing Change to learn how to survive, how to plan and how to execute change efforts to inspire real, passionate support. Order Now!
There is much information on the Web and elsewhere about Pareto's Principle. For example, visit CDS Solutions, or J. A. Schumpeter, 'Vilfredo Pareto', in Ten Great Economists from Marx to Keynes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Order from Amazon.com
Your comments are welcome
Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrenyrWpTxHuyCrjZbUpner@ChacnoFNuSyWlVzCaGfooCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.About Point Lookout
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.
This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.
Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.
Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.
Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.
Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
- An Emergency Toolkit
- You've just had some bad news at work, and you're angry or really upset. Maybe you feel like the target
of a vicious insult or the victim of a serious injustice. You have work to do, and you want to respond,
but you must first regain your composure. What can you do to calm down and start feeling better?
- Virtual Conflict
- Conflict, both constructive and destructive, is part of teamwork. As virtual teams become more common,
we're seeing more virtual conflict — conflict that crosses site boundaries. Dealing with destructive
conflict is difficult enough face-to-face, but in virtual teams, it's especially tricky.
- Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: I
- Whoever facilitates your distributed meetings — whether a dedicated facilitator or the meeting
chair — will discover quickly that remote facilitation presents special problems. Here's a little
catalog of those problems, and some suggestions for addressing them.
- Wacky Words of Wisdom: V
- Adages, aphorisms, and "words of wisdom" are true often enough that we accept them as universal.
They aren't. Here's Part V of some widely held beliefs that mislead us at work.
- Disjoint Awareness: Bias
- Some cognitive biases can cause people in collaborations to have inaccurate understandings of what each
other is doing. Confirmation bias and self-serving bias are two examples of cognitive biases that can
contribute to disjoint awareness in some situations.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming December 11: White Water Rafting as a Metaphor for Group Development
- Tuckman's model of small group development, best known as "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing," applies better to development of some groups than to others. We can use a metaphor to explore how the model applies to Storming in task-oriented work groups. Available here and by RSS on December 11.
- And on December 18: Subgrouping and Conway's Law
- When task-oriented work groups address complex tasks, they might form subgroups to address subtasks. The structure of the subgroups and the order in which they form depend on the structure of the group's task and the sequencing of the subtasks. Available here and by RSS on December 18.
Coaching services
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenyrWpTxHuyCrjZbUpner@ChacnoFNuSyWlVzCaGfooCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.
Get the ebook!
Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:
- Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
- Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
- Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
- Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
- Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
- Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )
Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info
Follow Rick
Recommend this issue to a friend
Send an email message to a friend
rbrenyrWpTxHuyCrjZbUpner@ChacnoFNuSyWlVzCaGfooCanyon.comSend a message to Rick
A Tip A Day feed
Point Lookout weekly feed
- Your stuff is brilliant! Thank you!
- You and Scott Adams both secretly work here, right?
- I really enjoy my weekly newsletters. I appreciate the quick read.
- A sort of Dr. Phil for Management!
- …extremely accurate, inspiring and applicable to day-to-day … invaluable.
- More