richard koch

Prioritising 80/20 and ferocity together

Affirmative action, prioritizing, problem solving

This is the latest brain wave which I have had. I had written a post on ferocity which was a word I learned from Steven Kotler in his book “The Art of Impossible…”. His thesis is that if you go out at problems with a ferocity, take affirmative action and the more problems you solve, the better you become at solving problems which helps you become even better to achieve your impossible dreams.

I have been working on the 80/20 principle as suggested by Richard Koch on prioritising my day and then also use the Prioritisation Matrix to work further and plan my day based on impact of what I do and where I want to go.

Now comes the brain wave portion. 80/20 and the prioritisation matrix are all about doing less work but more focussed work. While the ferocity logic is about gaining proficiency by solving more. So there’s a slight dichotomy in my opinion.

Except if you can create enough focussed problems and then try to solve them at a go. so instead of planning a prioritisation matrix for a day everyday, we were to build it for a week in advance. Then we try to achieve the most critical parts of these in a day rather than a week.

I don’t know how practical this would be, how much time will I have and whether I will be able to delegate enough, but I will figure out and let you know how effective it was.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritising your day

Affirmative action, Focus, prioritizing

I have written earlier about doing an 80/20 of your activities in your day. While I use the concept along with the Prioritisation Matrix suggested by B.J.Fogg in his book Tiny Habits, I used it primarily to save time so that I don’t end up finishing tasks that don’t have too much return on invested time. A lot of times I used to feel exhausted at the end of the day, but when I would look at the achievement , there was nothing to show for it.

It was like I was always walking on a treadmill, burning calories but getting nowhere. That’s where Richard Koch’s 80/20 rule and in a different way the Prioritisation Matrix have helped me considerably. Now everyday in the morning I look at my To-Do list which I keep updating on my phone. Then I put down on this matrix each of the tasks that need to be done in terms of their scale of impact and my ability to influence the outcome.

The benefit of this is that even if I do only the tasks which have a high impact and my ability to influence is high then at the end of the day I would have still achieved considerably more.

Why am I explaining all this to you. Well today was one such day. It was supposed to have started early and I would have done all my meditation and focused sitting before starting office work. But as I got up my wife complained of fever. So I had t replan my day completely while keeping my customer and internal meetings intact. There was quite a bit of overwhelm through the day. I did not achieve a lot of the items on my To-Do list for today. But I still achieved 90% of my highest priority tasks which ensured that I was considerably effective inspite of the challenges I had all day.

If you also have a lot of tasks on your daily To-Do list and you get overwhelmed, seeing your life pass by while you seem to be not getting anywhere, try the 80/20 rule. Once you focus and take affirmative action with a clear indication on what will have the most impact for you, it will definitely change a lot of things for you. Let me know in the comments below if this practice helps you.ichard

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Sometimes opportunities come looking for you.

Karma, Networking, relationships

Being in marketing and sales I am always looking to find ways to get opportunities.  Some of the methods I  have written about  in separate posts are finding the right “elephant ” to ride so that wherever the elephant finds opportunities,  it takes us alongside.

Then I  have written multiple times about other partnership  mechanisms to help you get closer to opportunities.

Today I  will write about  what Richard Koch talks about in his wonderful book, The 80/20 for Manager- the power of loose and distributed networks .

One network is  what you build consciously by nurturing various people, by giving value in advance. This is something that Joe Polish calls his Genius Network. With these people you stay in touch, help them and they in turn help you. So when they see an opportunity they join hands with you to address the opportunity or you take their advice to get that opportunity.

Then their are networks where people know you through other people or because you have at some point worked with them. In either case they remembered you because they believed that you are good person and good in the job.

It is these kind of people who refer you for an opportunity to a friend or to a third party , without any possible gain to themselves, except the feeling of helping someone.

It’s then that opportunities come searching for you. If you have helped enough people, and you’re known for doing a good and honest job , then people love recommending you. This is what happened today with me.

Out of the blue today somebody came seeking me out to showcase our products/ services at an event they are doing and they won’t be charging me anything. We are always looking out for opportunities to showcase our solutions to a wide audience and this is a God send eventhough the time is very short.

It comes back to my basic philosophy to always help people, excuse some where the Karmic cycle plays its role.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Segment Profitability

Product Management, Profitability, segmentation

As a product manager you look at creating extensions to meet needs of different markets. However not all segments are created equal.

While it’s good for the ego to know that our product is present in multiple segments, some segments are more profitable than others. As a product manager you need to be aware of it because otherwise some finance guy may draw up his own conclusions and shut down your product line.

There could be various ways of doing an analysis of each segment. One method that I have found easy and quick to use & keep me aware is suggested by Richard Koch in his seminal book The 80/20 Principle. If you have not read this book, I would recommend you stop doing everything else and pick it up at the Kindle store.

His suggestion is to segment your market by competitors. The segment where you face the same competitors you club together. Whenever the competitors change you account as different segment. Now fighting different types of competitors in different market segments requires bandwidth of all kinds of resources.

If you know against which competitors you win more easily and also make more money because of scale or whatever else, then as a product manager you should do everything to win even more so that the absolute profit that your product line creates grows.

On the other hand if there are segments, where you find it difficult to win against other types of competitors then you should avoid.

There was a time when I was carrying a product line of an operating system . Now I could sell services to end customers for managing their operating systems, I could sell them training on those operating systems for corporate customers and individuals who wanted to pick up the skill.

While it was easy to sell services and training to companies, when it came to selling in retail our systems were failing against dedicated retail training companies. So even though my product remained the same, in the retail market my competitors were different and I had to leave that segment. Till that time I had not read this book. Now I like to keep evaluating on regular basis how my different product lines are doing in different competitive segments.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!