http://www.usachatnow.com/community/blog/category/business/ Blog categories... http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/optimize-your-time-management/ Be prepared to make drastic changes. Be creative to find and introduce different ways of doing things. Challenge and question your own habits, routines, and the way you defend your time when others try to dictate how you should use it. The Pareto Principle (80:20 Rule) is a simple easy starting point for assessing where you currently direct your time, and for identifying where your time could better be directed.
Challenge anything that could be wasting time and effort, particularly habitual tasks, meetings and reports where responsibility is inherited or handed down from above. Don't just assume that just because 'we've always done it this way' that it's still appropriate or even required at all. Think about why you are doing things, and whether there is a better way.
Review your activities in terms of your short-term and long-term goals, and prioritise your activities accordingly. Especially, plan preparation and creative thinking time in your diary for the long-term jobs, because they need it. If you don't plan for the preparation you'll never do it, and all the work will get left to the last minute (sounds familiar?......). The short-term urgent tasks will always use up all your time unless you plan to spend it otherwise.
Use a diary, and an activity planner to schedule when to do things, publish or display it, and try to stick to it.
If you are subject to demand and request by others in your organization, and need to recondition their expectations as to your availability and their claim on your time, you should produce a weekly schedule, showing your planned activities and time-slots for everything that you do. This is a vital tool in helping you to explain and justify to others why you must prioritise and schedule demands from others when it suits you, not others.]]> http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/optimize-your-time-management/ Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:59:30 +0000 John_Alone http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/the-pareto-principle/ The Pareto 80/20 Rule is commonly used (and ignored at considerable cost) in many aspects of organizational and business management. It is helpful in specialised quality management such as six sigma, planning, decision-making, and general performance management.
The principle is extremely helpful in bringing swift and easy clarity to complex situations and problems, especially when deciding where to focus effort and resources.
The Pareto Principle (at a simple level) suggests that where two related data sets or groups exist (typically cause and effect, or input and output):
"80 percent of output is produced by 20 percent of input."
or alternatively
"80 percent of outcomes are from 20 percent of causes"
or alternatively
"80 percent of contribution comes from 20 percent of the potential contribution available"
There is no definitive Pareto 'quote' as such - the above are my own simplified interpretations of Pareto's 80-20 Rule. The Pareto Principle is a model or theory, and an extremely useful model at that. It has endless applications - in management, social study and demographics, all types of distribution analysis, and business and financial planning and evaluation.
In actual fact the Pareto Principle does not say that the 80:20 ratio applies to every situation, and neither is the model based on a ratio in which the two figures must add to make 100.
And even where a situation does contain a 80:20 correlation other ratios might be more significant, for example:
99:22 (illustrating that even greater concentration than 80:20 and therefore significance at the 'top-end') or
5:50 (ie, just 5% results or benefit coming from 50% of the input or causes or contributors, obviously indicating an enormous amount of ineffectual activity or content).

The reasons why 80:20 has become the 'standard' are:
the 80-20 correlation was the first to be discovered
80-20 remains the most striking and commonly occurring ratio
and since its discovery, the 80:20 ratio has always been used as the name and basic illustration of the Pareto theory.
Here are some examples of Pareto's Law as it applies to various situations. According to the Pareto Principle, it will generally the case (broadly - remember it's a guide not a scientific certainty), that within any given scenario or system or organisation:
80 percent of results come from 20 percent of efforts
80 percent of activity will require 20 percent of resources
80 percent of usage is by 20 percent of users
80 percent of the difficulty in achieving something lies in 20 percent of the challenge
80 percent of revenue comes from 20 percent of customers
80 percent of problems come from 20 percent of causes
80 percent of profit comes from 20 percent of the product range
80 percent of complaints come from 20 percent of customers
80 percent of sales will come from 20 percent of sales people
80 percent of corporate pollution comes from 20 percent of corporations
80 percent of work absence is due to 20 percent of staff
80 percent of road traffic accidents are cause by 20 percent of drivers
80 percent of a restaurant's turnover comes from 20 percent of its menu
80 percent of your time spent on this website will be spent on 20 percent of this website
and so on..
Remember for any particular situation the precise ratio can and probably will be different to 80:20, but the principle will apply nevertheless, and in many cases the actual ratio will not be far away from the 80:20 general rule.


Such a principle is extremely useful in planning, analysis, trouble-shooting, problem-solving and decision-making, and change management, especially when broad initial judgements have to be made, and especially when propositions need checking. Many complex business disasters could easily have been averted if the instigators had thought to refer to the Pareto Principle as a 'sanity check' early on. Pareto's Law is a tremendously powerful model, all the more effective because it's so simple and easy.
For example, consider an organisation which persists in directing its activities equally across its entire product range when perhaps 95% of its profits derive from just 10% of the products, and/or perhaps a mere 2% of its profits come from 60% of its product range. Imagine the wasted effort... Instead, by carrying out a quick simple 'Pareto analysis' and discovering these statistics, the decision-makers could see at a glance clearly where to direct their efforts, and probably too could see a whole lot of products that could be discontinued. The same effect can be seen in markets, services, product content, resources, etc; indeed any situation where an 'output:input' or 'effect:cause' relationship exists.
Pareto's Principle is named after the man who first discovered and described the '80:20' phenomenon, Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), an Italian economist and sociologist. Pareto was born in Paris, and became Professor of Political Economy at Lausanne, Switzerland in 1893. An academic, Pareto was fascinated by social and political statistics and trends, and the mathematical interpretation of socio-economic systems.]]> http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/the-pareto-principle/ Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:57:09 +0000 John_Alone http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/the-monkey-story/ Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.
Before long, a monkey will...]]> Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.
Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.
As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water.
Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, turn off the cold water.
Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.
The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.
To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.
After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.
The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.
The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.
Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one.
The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well.
Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced.
Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs.
Why not?
Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been around here.
And that's how company policy begins ...]]> http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/the-monkey-story/ Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:55:09 +0000 John_Alone http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/agenda-writing-2/ Determine that a meeting is necessary. Can the topic be better addressed through other types of communications, such as individual face-to-f...]]> Determine that a meeting is necessary. Can the topic be better addressed through other types of communications, such as individual face-to-face discussions, email or a broad organizational announcement? You don’t want to waste people’s time.
2. Step 2
If a meeting is called for, decide what kind of meeting is needed. For instance, is it to share information, solve problems, persuade others or explore a topic in more depth? It may be combinations of a few of these.
3. Step 3
Create the Agenda. It will have three phases: 1) Setup, 2) Discussion and 3) Summary. Assign a time frame to each phase.
4. Step 4
Start with the Setup. Write a brief description of the meeting purpose/goal, and the value of the topic to the participants. Note how long the meeting will last.
5. Step 5
Next describe Phase 2: the Discussion process. This phase represents the bulk of the meeting time. The discussion activity depends on the type of meeting being held. For instance, if it’s an information sharing meeting, identify who will present and how much time is allotted. If it’s a problem-solving meeting you might write, ‘open sharing of ideas and decision making’. If it’s a meeting where people will be persuading each other you could write, ‘examine different points of view’.
6. Step 6
Describe the final Summary phase. You could write review key discussion points and agree on next-step actions'.
7. Step 7
Send out the agenda giving participants sufficient time to prepare. Provide clear start and end times.
8. Step 8
When you start the meeting, use the Agenda at to set expectations for how it will be conducted. The Setup phase sets the tone.]]> http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/agenda-writing-2/ Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:24:45 +0000 John_Alone http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/agenda-writing-1/ Before scheduling a meeting, start by determining the meeting purpose. Write it down as one or two sentences stating the reason for the meet...]]> Before scheduling a meeting, start by determining the meeting purpose. Write it down as one or two sentences stating the reason for the meeting or what are to be the results from the meeting. This purpose should be shared with those invited to the meeting.
2. Step 2
Once the purpose is known, it should be easy to list all the actions that must be done in the meeting in order to accomplish that purpose. These actions will become the TOPIC portion of the meeting agenda by listing them in a logical order. These Topic items should be written using action words like discuss, review, brainstorm, decide, assign, or report so there is no confusion on what is to be done. Having the action words along with the item will help the group or presenters understand what is expected of them during each agenda topic. When listing the items on the agenda, make sure the most important items are first so they get done before the meeting ends.
3. Step 3
Now next to each topic on the agenda place the TIME. This time will begin with the actual start and end clock time for the meeting and clock times for each topic item on the agenda using time increments of 10-15 minutes (Examples: 9:00-9:10, 10:15-10:30, 11:30-11:50, etc.) Having the actual time on the agenda helps keep the meeting on track by allowing the group to track their progress. If keeping on time is really important, then you may want to list it before the Topic on the final agenda.
4. Step 4
To finish creating the agenda, list the assigned TALKER for each topic item. The Talker is the person(s) responsible for each item listed on the agenda, such as a presenter or facilitator. This is the person who will lead that portion of the meeting to give information or facilitate processes. For items that require the entire group to actively participate, such as discussion or decision-making, the talker could be listed as “All”.
5. Step 5
If possible, provide the final agenda to meeting invitees prior to the meeting. Be sure to open your meeting with a review of the agenda and have everyone agree to the agenda before continuing with the meeting. Having agreement to the agenda will make it easier to bring the group back on track if they begin to stray from the agenda.]]> http://www.usachatnow.com/community/John_Alone/blog/agenda-writing-1/ Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:23:59 +0000 John_Alone http://www.usachatnow.com/community/RodeoCowboy/blog/usachatnow/ I just wanted to take the time to write a quick blog... I believe some Chatters don't realize how good of a Social Network UsaChatNow is until they le...]]> I just wanted to take the time to write a quick blog... I believe some Chatters don't realize how good of a Social Network UsaChatNow is until they leave. Chatters leave for different reasons but when you sit and think about it... those reasons are so minuscule too the big picture. UsaChat has been around for 9 years and is growing every year! Other social networking sites try, but never succeed the success that this site has, and will have. I myself, left and thought i could make a site and make it bigger than Usa, sure i had users, sure i had a nice chat and a decent community, but never in the year that i had my site did i come close to the traffic and success this site has. I left the chat that started it all for me, a place where i met friends, which then became like a second family, and most importantly left a site where the owner had ambition in making the site better every chance he gets. I'm glad to be back, glad to help Tears out again, because i now know owning a site like this... isn't always easy, but he does it like its nothing. hope too see you all in chat!]]> http://www.usachatnow.com/community/RodeoCowboy/blog/usachatnow/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:39:29 +0000 Shane Dixon