This is a principle closely related to the 20:80 rule. Just as a minor portion of our acquisitions can satisfy the bulk of our requirements, so are our human resources not equally effective. The trick is in recognizing which are those resources that are the most productive. In the sphere of human resources in a work place, the principle translates into the Rule of Fives.
To put it simply, out of five persons, two will be quite productive… the 40% that are contributing the most. Two will be positively negative; and there will be one in the middle who may go either way. The principle of Fives helps us to marshal our own managerial resources and energy into working with the better 40%, and working on the middle order 20%. What of the unproductive 40%? The principle suggests we should avoid wasting our own limited managerial resources on the most difficult persons. In other words, here is one more situation where avoidance is better than confrontation…
This is not what is usually advocated, and not what most of us would do in a work place… especially a new one where we have been given a managerial role. Most of us take it as our job to identify the slackers, the trouble makers, the resisters, the non-contributors, and GO AFTER THEM. We build up dossiers, we spy on them; we track their entrances and exits, we try to find out what they are saying about us. We try to stay one step ahead of them. They need not even be very senior or ‘important’ persons in the hierarchy… a troublesome clerk, an indifferent driver or peon… any one could cause your ulcers to act up.
Our waking hours are filled with a sense of foreboding, and our sleeping hours are disturbed by dreams of what these people are up to behind our backs. We focus so much on the negative elements, that our positive energy is sucked out. We are unable to devote much time to our good and willing people, which means that they lose out, we lose out, and our organization or company suffers.
The huge importance given to the bottom two, only strengthens them in their negative activities. You have to accept the bitter truth that it is almost impossible to change people by force: suasion. The bottom two may appear all wrong to you, but perhaps that is not what it appears to others, and definitely not to your peers and your superiors, who obviously want to hear only bad things about you, and will aid and abet the rebellious two, forming a conspiracy against you. Perhaps top management sees these two as being difficult only with you; maybe with another manager, these two become efficient, whereas a different set becomes unproductive. Therefore, you would be much better off leaving those two alone, and getting on with the two good guys and working your arts of persuasion on the guy in the middle.
Have you ever had people who would contribute better by not coming to work at all? Since your power to hire and fire will be limited, sometimes it requires you to give some vague job and send such people off without hurting their feelings! Part of your art as manager consists of containing these people, rather than contending with them. This is also the reason why, if you need say ten good working hands, you will have to carry some extra weight… maybe not 40% of your work force, perhaps, but surely not less than 20%. I believe the older corporations used to create fancy positions for their senior people just to keep them out of everyone’s hair! That’s why God invented the golf course…
To put it simply, out of five persons, two will be quite productive… the 40% that are contributing the most. Two will be positively negative; and there will be one in the middle who may go either way. The principle of Fives helps us to marshal our own managerial resources and energy into working with the better 40%, and working on the middle order 20%. What of the unproductive 40%? The principle suggests we should avoid wasting our own limited managerial resources on the most difficult persons. In other words, here is one more situation where avoidance is better than confrontation…
This is not what is usually advocated, and not what most of us would do in a work place… especially a new one where we have been given a managerial role. Most of us take it as our job to identify the slackers, the trouble makers, the resisters, the non-contributors, and GO AFTER THEM. We build up dossiers, we spy on them; we track their entrances and exits, we try to find out what they are saying about us. We try to stay one step ahead of them. They need not even be very senior or ‘important’ persons in the hierarchy… a troublesome clerk, an indifferent driver or peon… any one could cause your ulcers to act up.
Our waking hours are filled with a sense of foreboding, and our sleeping hours are disturbed by dreams of what these people are up to behind our backs. We focus so much on the negative elements, that our positive energy is sucked out. We are unable to devote much time to our good and willing people, which means that they lose out, we lose out, and our organization or company suffers.
The huge importance given to the bottom two, only strengthens them in their negative activities. You have to accept the bitter truth that it is almost impossible to change people by force: suasion. The bottom two may appear all wrong to you, but perhaps that is not what it appears to others, and definitely not to your peers and your superiors, who obviously want to hear only bad things about you, and will aid and abet the rebellious two, forming a conspiracy against you. Perhaps top management sees these two as being difficult only with you; maybe with another manager, these two become efficient, whereas a different set becomes unproductive. Therefore, you would be much better off leaving those two alone, and getting on with the two good guys and working your arts of persuasion on the guy in the middle.
Have you ever had people who would contribute better by not coming to work at all? Since your power to hire and fire will be limited, sometimes it requires you to give some vague job and send such people off without hurting their feelings! Part of your art as manager consists of containing these people, rather than contending with them. This is also the reason why, if you need say ten good working hands, you will have to carry some extra weight… maybe not 40% of your work force, perhaps, but surely not less than 20%. I believe the older corporations used to create fancy positions for their senior people just to keep them out of everyone’s hair! That’s why God invented the golf course…
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