Nice article with many points I agree with from a practical management perspective. There are hidden dangers to Pareto logic though. Not fully understanding th

Nice article with many points I agree with from a practical management perspective. There are hidden dangers to Pareto logic though. Not fully understanding the value of the remaining 80%, and how it in turn is distributed, can lead to suboptimal or catastrophic decisions. One that strikes me from software engineering, IIRC Sommerville's analysis, was that 80% of the cost of projects lies in the "maintenance phase". However, with software each work unit breaks down, fractally, into a "building" stage and a "sustenance" (debugging, refactoring, integrating...) that looks like an overhead. Modern SE kicks that can down the road so that we end up with software that is only 20% finished (but what a wonderful 20% that is), and 80% of problems made into deferred externalities of downloading updates, security fixes and so on. Another problem happens when we apply Pareto selection iteratively. 20% of 20% of 20% is less than 1%. It's easy to get carried away with brutal rounds of optimisation. Not understanding how the low value margins support the seemingly most productive minority is a classic judgement error best told by the Aesop fable of the stomach; " One day it occurred to the Members of the Body that they were doing all the work while the Belly had all the food. So they held a meeting and decided to strike till the Belly consented to its proper share of the work. For a day or two, the Hands refused to take the food, the Mouth refused to receive it, and the Teeth had no work to do. After a day or two the Members began to find that they themselves were in poor condition: the Hands could hardly move, and the Mouth was parched and dry, while the Legs were unable to support the rest. Thus even the Belly was doing necessary work for the Body, and all must work together or the Body will go to pieces."