Disproportionate Outcomes
“Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth with it” — Archimedes
I spent some time with a good friend a while back. We started talking about some philanthropy work that he and his wife are doing for children with special needs. This resonated with me, as my wife spent a number of years of her life working at a school for children with special needs. I mentioned to my friend that we were always amazed at the progress that the children could make with the right tools and assistance. At the time, we made it a habit of giving money to the school to purchase more tools (computer equipment and other learning aids). This definitely had an impact on that school and those children.
My friend went on to say that he was giving to an educational institution, who was training students to teach children with special needs. He added, “I always try to give where there is the most leverage”. While ‘leverage’ is perhaps an overused word, his comment was the perfect example of the true application of leverage. If you train young adults to teach children with special needs, then you can probably touch hundreds or thousands of children over a reasonable period of time. By contrast, if you give tools to one school (like I have done in the past), you only impact a much smaller population of children (i.e. those that go to that school).
Now, giving is giving and helping is helping…and there is probably no wrong way to do it. But, for me, this was a powerful lesson in leverage.
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A lever consists of 4 components:
1) A beam/rod
2) A fulcrum
3) An input force
4) An output force
An individual exerts a force on the lever and it results in an output force. For example, if you are trying to lift a large rock, you exert the force on the bar, with leverage from the fulcrum, to lift it in a way that you could not with your bare hands or with a smaller tool (i.e. less leverage).
The definition of leverage that I like, which applies in physics and broader is this:
Using a relatively smaller amount of power to gain a disproportionately greater advantage on the outcome.
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The concept of leverage is generally understood and dates back to Archimedes’ quotation in 200 BC and prior. Yet, what is generally understood is not always presciently practiced. The greatest lever anyone has to drive disproportionate outcomes is their time. If you spend time on high leverage activities, then you have the opportunity for great outcomes. If you spend time on low leverage activities, while you may have a positive outcome, the effects will be relatively muted.
Here is an interesting exercise. Write 3 columns on a sheet of paper per below:
Categorize everything you have done in the last week into each column. It is easy to default to low leverage activities (they are typically easier), and my guess is that the ‘low leverage’ column may be full for some people doing this the first time.
A low leverage task is not unneeded or irrelevant per se, but it will not lead to a disproportionate outcome. Often times, the highest leverage items are the things that are already working. As the right column fills up, the impact is profound.
Back to the story at the beginning, my friend was using his resources to teach teachers, which had the potential of a disproportionately greater outcome than my form of giving. We could donate the precise same amount of money and while I would impact 100 students, he could impact 10,000. That’s leverage.
