Perhaps now more than ever before, people are struggling to stay focussed on what needs to be done. Our workplaces are constantly changing, there is an unrelenting barrage of information distracting us, and every day and week there are new challenges to solve. How can we get focussed and keep work flowing?
For a long time, businesses have used the Pareto Principle (Wikipedia) to ensure they focus on the ‘few things’ (or the Pareto ‘20’) that have the ‘biggest impact’ (or the Pareto ‘80’). For example, 80% of sales come from 20% of the customers or products, or 20% of reported software bugs cause 80% of the errors and crashes. A Pareto analysis is typically performed on a particular business area and then resources are focussed on those ‘few things’ to achieve the ‘biggest impact’. Effectively economies-of-scale are been applied.
The Pareto Principle is an effective way to identify WHAT requires attention and resources. What about HOW attention and resources are utilised? Should the ‘few things’ be handled in the same as the ‘many other things’? Often methods of working remain unchanging after performing a Pareto analysis and generic business processes (or the lack thereof) are still applied equally to ‘all things’.
The Glenday Sieve (iSixSigma), which is built on the Pareto Principle, suggests that a few (6%) of the “high-volume procedures, processes, units or activities” account for a large volume (50%) of the effort or workload. This analysis looks at HOW work is done and what amount of attention and resources are required.
After a Glenday Sieve analysis, different methods of working should be used for the few high-volume processes compared to the greater number of (20-50%) low-volume processes which account for the smaller volume (1-5%) of the effort or workload. The working methods for the high-volume processes should be standardised and automated which in turn will increase efficiencies, which reduce efforts and resources required to achieve the desired output in the shortest amount of time. This leads to an improved flow of tasks and activities for the high-volume processes. Put another way, economies-of-repetition come into play.
By using these two principles together, a business can identify what to focus on and it can ensure that work flow is optimised.