80% of positive outcomes come from just 20% of the leaders in our community.

The rule doesn’t state that 80% of what we want will come from electing the right one person as our leader. No, that’s nonsense. It takes many leaders, working in harmony to produce the outcomes we really need. Therefore, Pareto Leadership requires the organization of leadership. 20% of the leaders in government, corporations, and social organizations, coming together could easily change the course of society. We don’t need everyone, but we do need a lot of leaders.

In politics, we can usually get about 50% of people to agree upon a Republican or a Democrat. On the Supreme Court, most controversial decisions seem to be made by the agreement of around 60% of the judges. We should be able to get 20% of leaders to agree on important things, especially if we can identify the 20% who have the capacity to actually make a difference.

Collaboration is a must for solving big problems. No one person or company or government can do it alone. That is why we are building the Pareto Foundation -- an organization linking a broad selection of leaders from many levels of many organizations -- to collaborate on solving the Pareto Issues.

Successful collaboration requires:

• Trust: competence & integrity
• Agreements: based on shared focus and shared meaning
• Performance: metrics and accountability
• Communication: sharing information about "what works," discovering sticking points for stakeholders, engaging solutions