Are You Tired Of Winning Yet? The 80/20 Principle Wins Again
Some years ago I read “The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less” by Richard Koch. This 80/20 principle is also called the Pareto Principle [1] in some circles. Since the time I encountered this idea, I’ve been fascinated to find this principle in many, many places. ?
The principle states that 80 percent of an output or result comes from 20 percent of an input or participating subset. This is not defined in strict terms nor are the measures required to be precisely 80 percent and 20 percent. As a rough example, consider a portfolio of 100 products. According to the 80/20 principle, 80 percent of your revenue would come from 20 percent of the products. I’ll spare further examples here as the book has plenty plus, I’m going to share one I recently became curious about.?
With that background in mind, I’d like to discuss success, winning, victory and related ideas. While there is certainly no shortage of definitions, I’ll constrain the scope for this discussion to looking at the best performers in a subject area as the benchmarks of success. Who are the best of the best at what they do? This selection seems to be a good benchmark as to what winning looks like in a particular field.?
While not a particularly active fan, NASCAR auto racing came to mind as I begun to ponder the idea of finding out who the best of the best is. I started by going out to discover those drivers and teams that were the best of the best, the all-time winningest drivers.?
Here’s what I found, the top 5 all time winning drivers in NASCAR history [2]:?
Rank ??Driver ??????????????????Wins
1?????????Petty, Richard ??? ?200
2 ?????????Pearson, David ?? 105
3 ?????????Gordon, Jeff ?????????93
4 ?????????Waltrip, Darrell ??? 84
5?????????Allison, Bobby ???? ?84?
If we take the top driver, Richard Petty, as a comparative basis and look at his 200 wins compared to the total wins for all drivers of 566, Richard Petty won 35% of all the wins of the top 5 drivers. The top 2 drivers won 54% of the total. Remember, the 80/20 principle isn’t about the ratio being strictly 80/20, the rule is about the ratio being unbalanced.?
Richard Petty won 90% more races than the second place driver, David Pearson and 115% more races than the third place driver, Jeff Gordon. This outcome is surely unbalanced.?
Let’s look at winning from another angle. Consider baseball and the batting average. A player accumulates a percentage of how many qualifying hits compared to the number of at bat attempts.?
Here are the top 5 drivers by their “batting average” or the number of wins vs. races. [3]?
领英推荐
1, Herb Thomas (0.211) ???48 wins, 228 starts. ??????15th place all time wins.
2, Tim Flock (.209) ??????????39 wins, 107 starts. ??????20th place all time wins.
3, David Pearson (.183) ???105 wins, 574 starts. ?????2nd place all time wins.
4, Richard Petty (.169) ?????200 wins, 1,185 starts. ??1st place all time wins.
5, Fred Lorenzen (.165) ???26 wins, 158 starts. ???????33rd place all time wins.
From this angle we see a different list of winners, this time from the perspective of the ratio of wins vs. starts. Our winner from the earlier list, Richard Petty, is found at the 4th position here. Richard Petty and David Pearson appear on both lists although not at the same ranking positions.
As I look at these two views of results I find myself considering what winning and success is a bit more philosophically. Is winning about raw results, winning more races? Or, alternatively, is winning about winning more often based on how often an attempt is made? From a business perspective I suppose this could be compared to revenue vs. profit or perhaps a customer conversion rate.?
Referring earlier to the idea of looking at the best of the best and considering the 80/20 principle, what do we see here with these racers “batting average”? What I see is that the best of the best only win about 20% of the time, and the very best (those who win the most), win even less often.?
Perhaps this means that many of us, myself surely included, are doing much better than we thought. We only have to win about 20% of the time to be the best of the best. That certainly makes me feel a whole lot better. :-)
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