This inspired me to research the 80/20 rule. Vilfedo Pareto, noted economist and sociologist in the late 1800s, gave birth to the 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Law. He observed that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. Essentially, the assumption of the rule is that most of the results in any situation are determined by a small number of causes. 20 percent of the tasks are always responsible for 80 percent of the results. This rule allows you to place emphasis on tackling the major causes of a specific problem, rather than wasting time on the minor ones. I can see this applying in so many ways:

>     20 percent of your marketing efforts account for 80 percent of new business wins

>     20 percent of your clients account for 80 percent of your work

>     20 percent of your services account for 80 percent of new business wins

>     20 percent of your staff (and clients) will cause 80 percent of your problems

>     20 percent of your staff will output 80 percent of your projects

Most importantly, 20 percent of your efforts will generate 80 percent of your results. This is great food for thought when considering and evaluating your marketing efforts, business strategy, organizational structure, workflow and, even, your to-do-list!

Over a decade ago Best Buy piloted an innovative new management strategy aptly entitled: Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). Under the ROWE plan, each employee is free to do their job, whenever they want, providing as the work gets done. As long as they meet their targeted objectives, employees can change when and where they work without seeking permission from a manager or even (gasp!) letting their them know. Based on an 18 month study of 775 employees at Best Buy’s Minneapolis headquarter, researchers found that ROWE reduced costly employee turn over by 45% and increased productivity 41%.

In March of 2010, President Obama further promoted the program by announcing that the federal government is launching ROWE in the Office of Personnel Management. Obama addressed one of the underlying issues of current management challenges: “It’s about attracting and retaining top talent in the federal workforce and empowering them to do their jobs, and judging their success by the results that they get — not by how many meetings they attend, or how much face-time they log, or how many hours are spent on airplanes. It’s about creating a culture where, as Martha Johnson puts it, ‘Work is what you do, not where you are.’”

In a traditional work environment, productivity is measured by hours worked, not always by efficiency of time, and involves endless in-person and often unnecessary meetings; two things the younger Y generations abhor (working long, unnecessary hours in particular and not leveraging alternative communication opportunities beyond face time). ROWE is a completely refreshing alternative with proven results. ROWE focuses on output and results, not time incurred or how, where, and when the work is getting done.

To be clear, ROWE isn’t a work flex program, which is often very hard to manage and track, but rather is based on working more efficiently and productively. ROWE works particularly well with our increasingly diverse work force, each of whom have different work-styles, personal challenges and frequently work across multiple time zones and locations.

For more information:

http://gorowe.com/2011/01/

http://www.inlandsocal.com/business/content/jessica_lawrence/stories/PE_News_Local_W_bp_jessicalawrence19.1f96331.html

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_50/b4013001.htm

During the event, her collaborator and friend, Chelsea Mauldin spoke about the “eightfold path of Sylvianess,.” In her memorial, she outlined the lessons Sylvia taught her, which she kindly has allowed me to publish here:

1. Wear bright clothing when you speak to groups.
[She gestured at the red shirt she currently wore, which corresponded to the one Sylvia wore in the image projected on the screen.] As Sylvia would say, “Give the people something to look at!”

2. Always be working.
Just because you have a crazy job, or small kids, or some other big problems, you don’t get to slow down or stop moving forward – all you can do is rearrange. Sylvia was fine with sequencing – as long as you always kept working. Maybe if I were lazy or had a little slack period, she would say, “Why don’t you write a book? I’m thinking about writing a book. Why don’t you write a book?” Unbelievable.

 3. Hire a housekeeper.
“Please stop cleaning your kitchen,” she would say. “You do not have time to do that.” This goes with “always be working.”

4. Talk to everybody. All the time. About everything.
In the last three years, I have 1,200 emails from Sylvia. And half of those emails are her telling me about some other conversation she’s having – something fascinating she learned, someone she went to lunch with, someone I should look up. She was at the center of this constant circle of communication. And that was not only a very canny business strategy, but it was also a source of personal power: The power to transform people’s lives, and transform not just the lives of people she knew, but the lives of people who experienced the world she made.

I’m really trying hard to figure out: how do you be like Sylvia in that way, really embrace all the people around you?

5. Have lovely food.
Have lovely food any time you can have lovely food. Have lovely food at meetings, at breakfast. Have hard-boiled eggs. Have scones. Have homemade fruitbread. Have whole milk and skim milk. In the conference room. Have M&Ms on the train down to Baltimore. Have M&Ms coming back. She embraced pleasure.

6. Build an idea, and then move into it.
I got an email from Sylvia almost exactly three years ago, on November 16, 2008, and the title of that email was “Citizen Designers!” She didn’t know then that she was going to rename her firm Citizen Research & Design. But she was constructing this idea of what she wanted to be and how she wanted to live. Then she was going to figure out how she was going to go do it. That’s incredibly powerful. Because how can you live the life you want to live, and create the change you want to create, unless you can name it and picture it first? Then you can go have it.

7. Give projects the right amount of effort.
Now, that was a highly subjective measurement. Sometimes that meant I was supposed to stop freaking out, let something go, and move on, because we had to be finished. And sometimes that meant we had to have the 17th conversation about something we’d already decided long ago, but not to her satisfaction.

But the heart of this idea was balance: thinking consciously about effort versus reward. What are you putting in and what are you getting back? What do you want to get back and what do you willing to put in?

 Finally, the eighth thing she always told me was:

8. Call a car.
She based this on what she called the “Gary Singer Rule” [Sylvia’s husband]. Apparently having done some pretty intense mathematical calculations, Gary had proven that it was cheaper to call a car whenever you wanted to take you wherever you wanted to go rather than own a private vehicle in New York City. And therefore, one should just call a car.

But I thought this also spoke to something we discovered when we had done the taxi project: that cars for hire were — for New Yorkers, time and space starved as we are — a rare form of freedom. They make us feel free.

And Sylvia was for free.

I spoke recently at the AIGA Pivot Conference in Phoenix and noticed that many attendees who dropped me an email requesting a copy of my presentation did not always have an informative signature line. They simply wrote their first name (or, sometimes, their full name). When I get these types of emails, that lack important contact information like full name, titles, company name, phone, URLs and address, it’s like receiving junk mail. My immediate first impression is to discount this type of request (even if they are potential clients). Without a signature line, emails appear to be sent by a student, young designer, or freelancer, not established professionals.

I am always baffled and amazed by how few professionals (or really anyone) do not use a pre-set signature line. It is not that hard to do and is an immediately impactful way to demonstrate not only who you are, but where you are from and different ways you can be reached. It positions you as a professional. You can go further and add a logo, but I am not a fan of attached artwork, as I always open it thinking it is meant for me (plus it increases the file size). Also, there is such a thing as too much information. I personally don’t like any inspirational quotes, promotional language, or personal philosophies. Rarely are they read and, in some cases, such content may offend some recipients.

This is an immediate quick win – change your email signature now! I am betting your response rate may even increase a bit. If nothing else, you show confidence in who you are and that the recipient is important to you.

– New Event, RSVP required
– New project, proposal needed
– Schedule change, approval required
– New appointment, please confirm
– Outstanding payment due, please advise
– Meeting notes, for your reference

• Make a personal connection, if you are sending emails particularly to recipients that may not know you (most new business emails), it is best to mention any personal connection in the subject area for example:

– Someone that referred you to the recipient
– A mutual friend
– An event you and the recipient met or attended

Mention some sort of personal connection will warm up the email and will intrigue and encourage the recipient to open the email

Be careful of:

• Words that could indicate spam
• Replying to a past email without updating or changing the subject matter, if a new topic or new action required

 This is another relatively easy quick win, re-thinking what you write in the subject line will most certainly impact your open and read-through rates!