Last year I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam with my family. The room with the most famous paintings of the most famous Dutch masters was packed. The other rooms in the museum were almost empty.
A small amount of exhibits in any museum will attract most of the attention.
This Vital Few effect is not limited to museums: A seasoned Medical Docter once told me that there are three medical breakthroughs which are responsible for the vast majority of human health improvement: sanitation, antibiotics and vaccines. All else is just icing on the cake.
The Vital Few effect is the foundation of high-performance organizations as well:
- Which few processes provide most of the value?
- Which few clients create most of the revenue?
- Which few people drive most of the innovation?
- Which few meetings are essential to make key decisions?
- Which few products are responsible for most of the return?
If you want to get more results, focus more on the few things which matter.
You can do this by becoming better at ignoring what doesn’t matter: Reducing noise helps you to pick up more signal.
What’s your process to structurally eliminate more noise from your life?