Studio Non Troppo

In Seth Godin’s post today, he uses an example of a fuel conservation problem to illustrate the practical limitations and pitfalls of coming across logic (in this case, arithmetic):

A simple quiz for smart marketers:

Let’s say your goal is to reduce gasoline consumption.

And let’s say there are only two kinds of cars in the world. Half of them are Suburbans that get 10 miles to the gallon and half are Priuses that get 50.

If we assume that all the cars drive the same number of miles, which would be a better investment:

• Get new tires for all the Suburbans and increase their mileage a bit to 13 miles per gallon.
• Replace all the Priuses and rewire them to get 100 miles per gallon (doubling their average!)

Trick question aside, the answer is the first one. (In fact, it’s more than twice as good a move).

We’re not wired for arithmetic. It confuses us, stresses us out and more often than not, is used to deceive.

I’ll focus on the “trick question” part and leave the math to the reader (Seth also includes a couple links in his post with demonstrations of the arithmetic.)

In all likelihood, the best answer to the problem would be c) none of the above. Replacing the Suburbans with 50 mpg Priuses – or even with cars that get just 20 miles per gallon – would be far better than either of the alternatives. And that’s obviously only one of many alternatives, including radical ones such as “walk!” These aren’t answers Seth is unaware of; he was just making his point about arithmetic, confusion, and deception.

The point I want to make in this post is this:

Optimizing a bad choice rarely gets you ahead of where you could be if you made a better choice.

Photo: davco9200

Your “power band” is where you’re most effective.

Maybe you can alphabetize the files, but with that Ph.D. in Information Architecture, maybe that’s not the best use of your talents.

Or maybe you could teach college students, but you shine with middle schoolers.

Or maybe you know you can help people solve their problems using negotiation and facilitation techniques, but you find that when people are forced to listen to you, you only manage moderate, treading-water style solutions, whereas when people come seek you out to get unstuck, you effect game changing innovation.

Working outside of your power band might not make things worse, but it doesn’t efficiently make things better.

If you have the choice to work in your power band, that’s great.  Many times, of course, you’re told to work outside of it.  Keep on the lookout for ways back in.  You owe it to yourself and to the people you can help.

It’s called “eighty-twenty” or the Pareto Principle: you get 80% of the bang from 20% of the buck. That’s one way to think of it. Here are some others:

• the top 20% of your customers provide 80% of your orders
• the worst 20% of your clients provide 80% of you headaches (OK, that might be an understatement!)
• the last 20% of “getting the job done” takes 80% of the time (whether or not you’ve budgeted that much time)

Photo: Denzil~

Eighty-twenty is a rule of thumb, not a rule of law (or even of mathematics), so instead of feeling sentenced to the consequences, you can use it as a starting point to reflect on what you’re doing and not doing.

Sometimes, it’s worth doing all 100%. Other times, it’s worth stopping after you’ve done the big-payoff 20%, using elsewhere the resources you’ve freed up by not continuing into the diminishing-returns region of the remaining 80%. Using eighty-twenty as one of your reflective tools, a tool to help to decide what to do and what not to do, can give you back the feeling that you have a choice.