Reading List: The 80/20 Manager

In his 1997 best-seller, The 80/20 Principle, entrepreneur and investor Richard Koch adapted the Pareto Rule—the principle that 80 percent of what we accomplish results from 20 percent of our efforts—to everyday life.

Now, in The 80/20 Manager, Koch tailors it to the art of managing, explaining that more work hours don’t net better results. Instead managers should learn to work more effectively and efficiently.

Koch explains the math behind the principle in the first part of the book, a numbers game that may not interest the statistically disinclined. In Part II, Koch identifies 10 management tools and styles—mentoring, developing strategy, leveraging influence, to name a few—each of which offers another path to working less while working better by simplifying and streamlining daily tasks and processes.

The missing link in this scenario is how to accurately identify that precious 20 percent of ideas, efforts, methods and decisions that result in the 80 percent output. Despite that unknowable, Koch presents a bevy of practical ideas to help managers manage their time and increase their productivity, while decreasing their work load.

by Richard Koch

October

Little, Brown; $27