The Power Law

This post is coming out of an interesting discussion with a friend. He is one of the most data based, process driven, goal oriented kind of guys I’ve ever known…….. pretty much the other end of the spectrum from me.  

Just to give some context on how the equation works; he walks into my house and says, ‘you have 72 pieces of articles in your house ( I’m like…. that must be, at one time, the most accurate and the most irrelevant piece of information I've heard about my house). Then we go to Lalbagh for a walk, and he goes, ‘this was started in year so and so, by so and so and has this many kinds of trees (and I’m like…… can we please just look at the trees, enjoy the beauty and the walk ). Back in Google days, we have this pact on effort at losing weight, and after two months, he’s with this fancy gadget and tells me, I walked 8645 steps today, and it translates to so many calories ( I fell off my chair laughing….I’m like, I understand and I do get attention to detail, but this I cannot do). That should give you a gist of how things go, and prepare you for what's to come :)

Back to yesterdays conversation: Half hour into the conversation and I find there’s a note book out and a graph taking shape……and this one fascinated me, as I could so easily see where it’s efficiency lay…..not in creating the best possible start up (which is what he’s working on) but a brilliant tool towards self awareness

Curve 1 is a bell curve - a curve on how performance, either at an individual level or at a team level falls into three buckets, the bottom 10% represented at the left, the top 10% at the right and the rest in between.

Curve 2 is the Paretos Principle - also known as the 80-20 rule that roughly states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the causes. Like 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients, 80% of your marks comes from 20% of your studying, the richest 20% own 80% of the wealth

Curve 3 is the Effort curve - Effort or investment is high at the beginning (of a project) and goes down as the project moves into success.

This graph here basically puts all three curves together…and then the magic happens

X axis... if you see, has a A, O and B. And B is the magic zone. Top 10% on performance, 80% on impact and lowest on effort.....a super efficiency zone.

There’s an ‘Ó’ which is the cushion area, a 'nonsense' place you come to, to enable sustainability of the B.

Lesson: B is the place to 'be'. (pun intended). Figure out what gets you there and keeps you there. Avoid anything that drags you down to A. Use O as buffer zone, but keeping it relevant to you.

And he’s like…..this is not about my start up. Can we live life like this? Can one keep things in the happy zone? Work.....Relationships....Life....anything?

I'd say a vociferous yes, definitely aspirable.........through self awareness and choice...... and I think this is a really good tool to plot which part of the graph your effort and impact are on. 

If there are questions Kiran........  please feel free to answer :)