Most leaders are busy. Diaries are full, inboxes overflowing. It’s easy to feel productive while being pulled in a hundred different directions. But not everything you do carries equal weight. In fact, most of it doesn’t.

Enter the 80/20 rule, or Pareto Principle—the idea that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of inputs. This is also referred to as "the vital few and the trivial many."

It’s one of those concepts everyone nods along with, but very few apply strategically. But it’s a powerful lens for making better decisions, allocating resources more effectively, and creating more impact with less effort.

Yes—the Pareto Principle is old (it dates back to the late 1800s), but it still holds up remarkably well in practice. It first showed up in Italy in the late 1800s, thanks to an Italian economist and engineer named Vilfredo Pareto.

Pareto noticed something interesting: about 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. He started looking deeper and found the same kind of imbalance with income and wealth. Over time, this pattern showed up elsewhere—across countries, industries, and eventually across the world.

This wasn’t about the exact numbers. It was about the shape of the pattern. A small percentage of people, products, inputs or causes were responsible for a large percentage of the outcomes. What Pareto had spotted is what statisticians call a power law: a small change in one area creates a big impact elsewhere.

It was popularised by Joseph Juran, a management consultant who brought the idea into business. He pointed out just how often it showed up—whether in quality control, sales performance, or customer behaviour. He believed it was close to universal.

And the data backs it up. Microsoft once said that 20% of software bugs caused 80% of system crashes. Similar patterns show up across teams, portfolios, product lines, and customer bases.

You see it everywhere:

• A handful of products generate the majority of revenue.
• A small percentage of customers drive most of the profit—or the complaints.
• A few key decisions create most of the strategic momentum (or headaches).

So while it’s not always precisely 80/20, the pattern is real. Most outcomes stem from a disproportionately small set of causes. And that makes it a powerful tool for leaders, because it helps you get strategic about focus.

So while the numbers aren’t always exactly 80/20, the principle holds: a small number of things usually account for most of the results. Leaders who understand that—and act on it—gain a serious advantage.

The best leaders focus where it matters most

When you apply the 80/20 rule to leadership, the question becomes: What’s the 20% of my time, energy, or decisions that drives 80% of my results? And just as importantly: What am I doing that creates noise rather than real impact?

Great leadership isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing the right things. Whether it’s shaping culture, making key decisions, or investing in people, the best leaders are ruthless in focusing on what matters. They know that being stretched thin might make them feel needed, but it rarely leads to strategic progress.

The 80/20 rule helps you cut through the clutter. It gives you a framework to decide what to prioritise, what to delegate, and what to stop doing altogether.

I create a range of tools to help my clients work through tricky problems in my workshops, and you can download my 80/20 Vision tool here. It’s part of my Creative Genius Toolkit, which features a host of other tools to help you generate new ideas and possibilities.

Applying the 80/20 rule inside your business

Here are some high-impact ways you can apply the 80/20 principle within your organisation:

• Customer strategy – Which 20% of your clients generate 80% of your revenue or margin? Are you nurturing them properly, or spreading attention too thin? Alternatively, which clients consume time and energy without delivering real value? That’s worth rethinking.
• Team focus – Who are the 20% of team members who consistently raise the bar? Are you investing enough time in developing and retaining them? High-performers are often left alone because they’re not creating noise—but they’re also the ones most likely to move on if they feel unnoticed.
• Internal meetings and routines – Which 20% of your meetings actually lead to decisions or progress? Could you cancel or streamline the rest? Time is the most finite resource in your business—treat it accordingly.
• Strategic initiatives – Which projects or priorities are genuinely moving the business forward? Leaders often confuse activity with momentum. Sometimes it’s better to kill a pet project than let it quietly drain energy and attention.

Applying the 80/20 rule to your own leadership

This principle isn’t just about business mechanics—it can also be about how you lead. Here’s how to use it to make your leadership more strategic:

• Your calendar – Which meetings or tasks generate most of your impact? Which ones could someone else handle? Regularly audit your time and ask: If I weren’t already doing this, would I start now?
• Your communication – Which conversations actually shift thinking, build alignment, or move decisions forward? Double down on those. The rest might be noise dressed up as leadership.
• Your energy – When are you at your best? What types of work energise you vs drain you? Protect the conditions that enable your best 20%—that’s where your leadership has the most force.
• Your development – What few skills or behaviours, if improved, would elevate everything else? You don’t need to improve in every area. Focus on the leadership habits that unlock leverage.

The 80/20 trap: where this principle goes wrong

The 80/20 rule is powerful—but only when used thoughtfully. A few common traps to avoid:

• Assuming it’s always exactly 80/20 – It’s a heuristic, not a law. The ratio might be 70/30, 90/10, or something else entirely. The point is imbalance, not precision.
• Using it as an excuse to neglect the details – Not everything outside the top 20% can be ignored. Some tasks just need doing. But the goal is to spend more of your leadership energy on what truly moves the needle.
• Focusing only on what’s easy to measure – Just because you can quantify something doesn’t mean it’s where the value is. Some of the highest-leverage work—coaching, strategic thinking, emotional support—doesn’t show up on a dashboard.
• Over-indexing on short-term outputs – The highest-leverage leadership decisions often pay off over months or years. Don’t confuse quick wins with lasting impact.

The challenge: focus on what matters most

If you want to be a more strategic leader, you have to stop trying to do everything. The 80/20 rule isn’t about working less—it’s about working smarter. It forces you to get brutally honest about where your time, energy, and decisions are creating real value.

So here’s the challenge: take 30 minutes this week to do a simple 80/20 review. Use my 80/20 Tool to guide you through the process.

Look at your calendar, your key relationships, your projects, your habits. Ask yourself: What’s creating real impact—and what’s just taking up space? Then make one decision to shift your focus accordingly.

Because great leadership isn’t about doing more. It’s about making better choices.