Synergise IT

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. My academic friend asked me this earlier this week, if Pareto rule holds, therefore an Enterprise 2.0 investment (might cost hundreds of thousands to implement) might not be a good idea at all. If 80% of the content on an Enterprise 2.0 platform is contribute by only 20% of the employees then it defeats the purpose of enterprise wide collaboration and the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 would not be achieved. Theoretically he is right.

However, from my experience of implementing Enteprise 2.0, if the organisation creates a purpose for people to use the Enterprise 2.0 platform for their daily work and team collaboration across geographic boundaries then the uptake would be extremely different. Lets face it, most people do not like to work and they are at work to make money. So for people to adopt something new and move out of their comfort zone to use Enterprise 2.0 technologies, it must first be directly beneficial to their work and make their life easier on an individual basis.

Whenever I speak to newbies about Enterprise 2.0, alot of questions arises. Some are genuine concerns and some are Norman-ish questions. However, when a real life example is provided and I illustrate how Enterprise 2.0 can help them and make their life easier, they become converts straight away. Within hours, they get onto the platform and never looked back and so far I can see that contribution volume is based on the amount of work they were assigned to complete and not the 80-20 rule.

From the above, I can safely say that The Pareto Principle doesn’t apply. I will continue to look more into this and monitor the long term results. There might be chance that Pareto principle might hold in the long run.