Unpacking Effective Leadership and the 5% Rule

Leadership is as much a science as it is an art. And in the context of senior management, the mandate for effective leadership is amplified.

The 5% rule aims to eliminate bottlenecks in project actualization and suggests that leaders spend deliberate, focused time with other team members at the beginning of a project to make key decisions.

“The way I define this is more strategy-driven execution than execution-driven strategy,” said Anil Singhal (pictured), co-founder and CEO of NetScout Systems Inc. “For example, we do this every day when we have to go somewhere and we plan it, we don’t just go into our garage and start driving, we look at Google Map, we decide based on where you are: “Should I take a train? Should I take an Uber? What time should I drive? Sometimes we decide to postpone the trip. All this requires less than 5% of the total effort before execution, which arrives at its destination.

Singhal spoke with Bob Laliberte, an analyst at theCUBE Research, in a recent CUBE Chat. They discussed Singhal’s principles of effective leadership, outlining a Lean approach that emphasizes the importance of early, impactful decision-making and its ripple effect on overall productivity and company culture . (Disclosure below.)

Effective leadership: what is the 5% rule?

The 5% rule is inspired by the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) which states that 20% of the efforts produce 80% of the results. The principle can be applied again within the 20% limit, which means that 5% of the effort generates 95% of the results. The concept is simple but powerful: By investing in the initial decision-making phase, leaders set the stage for smooth execution, avoiding pitfalls later in the process, according to Singhal.

“I believe that micromanagement is not really a leadership style, it is a necessity,” he said. “If you don’t give your team clear direction, you don’t explain why they’re doing it, you’re just telling them what to do. You have not established that for the first 5% of the project you will be forced to micromanage.

The 5% rule allows leaders to give teams the autonomy to execute their tasks while creating periodic checkpoints for review. By focusing on the initial strategy, leaders can avoid getting bogged down in day-to-day operational details. Instead, they empower their teams to take ownership, fostering a culture of trust and accountability, Singhal added.

“I think there are checkpoints periodically and certainly towards the end and later, but you’re not involved consistently during the execution phase,” he said. “You’re rarely involved, but it depends on how well you work during the 5%. If you’re just doing it for fun, you don’t have everyone involved and you don’t come to a consensus, you don’t agree on what problem you want to solve and how are you going to go about it. , then the 5% rule will not succeed.

The 5% rule doesn’t just streamline decision-making; it also improves team productivity. This method encourages a lean approach to problem solving, which has many benefits beyond just meeting deadlines.

“It leads to retention, more collaboration, and makes people happier working together,” he said. “There are many more outcomes than just team productivity. For example, for an R&D project, I’ve seen that the 5% rule actually reduces the lines of code you have to write. So yes, it’s a good goal.

Here is theCUBE’s full interview with Anil Singhal:

(*Disclosure: NetScout Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither NetScout nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE