Don’t be perfect. Be good enough. The Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule (2024)

The third in our series of articles designed to cut through the noise and help you make an informed decision between Custom Content and Off-the-shelf eLearning for your next project, looks at the Pareto Principle.

The basic idea is 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.

So in theory if you focus 20% of resources correctly, you can get 80% of the results you need. You reach ‘good enough’ and can be much more cost-effective, instead of using 80% more resources stretching to a ‘perfect’ 100%.

If you have defined your business needs, staying cost-effective is simply about focusing on reaching that ‘good enough’ 80%.

For example -

You could provide on-boarding for your new team members with VR - they get to explore the office, meet the team and interact with them.Sounds great! But, if you can onboard them with just a 2D interactive office map showing locations, and team members, then why waste those extra resources.

The same goes for the content itself as much as the delivery method. If you can onboard them to a ‘good enough’ level with only 20% of the content, do it. They can always pick up the rest once they are up and running.

The 80/20 rule can be applied to everything and is all about asking, ‘is this critical?’ If not, lose it.

Now we are looking at everything with an ‘is this critical?’ eye, and in our next article we will dive into the different types of training.

If you’re interested in a chat, we’d be keen to show you more of the work we are doing and the results we are achieving for our clients. I look forward to hearing from you soon.