We’ve all heard of the Pareto Principle — the 80:20 rule — in one form or another.

In its basic formulation, something like 20% of your customers — or donors, or stores, or products — generate 80% of your income.

[I’ve often daydreamed: does 20% of my time generate 80% of my income? Sadly, I’ve never been able to document that and cut out the waste! But I digress.]

So when I saw this headline — The curse of the 20:2 principle — on the 101Fundraising blog, I thought … must check this out. Either a big mistake or something new and cool.

In a way, the article, by Lucy Gower, is both.

The ‘principle’ is new … to me, at least. And it’s about making mistakes.

The article’s premise is that as school — and then life — goes by, increasing we get rewarded for “for getting things right and following instruction and not for inquisitive enquiry, experimenting or ideas, and certainly not for getting things wrong.”

In fact, we get blasted for the two mistakes we made out of twenty tries. Think about the chilling effect.

I love this illustration:

Here’s the hugely important point that Lucy articulates so well:

“One of the results of this is that we tend to stick to what we know, to safe situations and habits that we repeat over and over again. Whilst this in some ways can be helpful, for example, we know a system works and we continue to use it in that way, the risk is that if we only do more of the same, or we don’t adapt quickly enough we, and our organisations will fail …

“The impact of the 20:2 principle is that as organisations and individuals we feel safer sticking with what we know, we prefer not to take risks, and we like to be rewarded for getting things right. We conform. We prefer not to challenge or test new ideas that may fail, or be marked wrong …

“If, as individuals we do not step outside our comfort zones to drive change and as organisations do not genuinely encourage entrepreneurial thinking and doing, how will we ever create the step change that is needed? We are not in the business of changing the world by tinkering around the edges of incrementalism – when that approach is simply not going to solve our problem.”

Beautifully said, Lucy. You get an Agitator raise!

And what about our readers? Do you fear the 20:2 principle? Is it one of your organisation’s cultural norms? Has it ever discouraged you from innovating?

Tom