“As I have said numerous times before, the scarcest resource is time. We have 24 hours in a day, and what we do with that time is critical for us as individuals, for our organizations, and, ultimately, our customers. Therefore, when leaders get pulled into directions that are not vital to mission delivery, organizational effectiveness will suffer.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. For those in the social innovation field, finding the 20 percent of activities that are going to give you maximum impact is paramount. Clearly, that means sorting through the list of innovative ideas and not trying to go for all of them.”

–Kriss Deiglmeier, “Just Say No,” 5/3/2012