Find Your 48th Minute

Ah, Saturday sports. It loves you, it hates you.

It all started with an early morning u/7 soccer match. The team lost, but AJ was immense defensively, and he had the grassburns to prove it. Later, Matie was the only kid to get past the goalie in a penalty shootout, ensuring a drawn match. The celebrations felt like the World Cup final, mind you. I had the presence of mind to anticipate the big moment, and got great footage of his hero moment from behind the goal. This video was watched about 100 times in the car on the way home.

Alas, the glow was short lived.

By late afternoon, the sporting arena had shifted from the soccer field to our lounge. We had volunteered our place to celebrate my friend Johan's 50th around the first Springbok versus All Blacks Test. Soon there was a room full of dudes, brandy and Coke in hand, offering Rassie Erasmus tactical advice he had inexplicably neglected to request from us. Even the kids got drawn away from their iPads to watch parts of the game, which may have been the most impressive victory recorded all weekend.

It was a great throwback to my 20s, Johan and I the ones that brought the crews together for this time honoured ritual of watching the Boks slug it out against the old enemy. I still love these guys, but I don't see much of them anymore, as everyone has moved on with their lives in different ways. But it was a great nostalgia moment, if slightly marred by the eventual result.

I have some new rituals. I prefer whiskey to brandy these days, but when it comes to the Boks, I realized a few years ago I do have a sacred duty. At around minute 48, I pour myself a double Ricky Louw and Coke. I do this, and the rugby gods align, delivering Rassie a telepathic instruction to send on the Bomb Squad, destroying the opposition and ensuring Springbok supremacy. It's tried and trusted teamwork between myself, the universe and the coach, and when everyone plays their part, the script follows the inevitable and preferred route to Sunday morning "We are the champions" vibes.

Minute 48 is where I take a swig, lean forward, and think: Here we go.

This Saturday, minute 48 arrived. I poured the drink, leaned forward…

And Fabian Holland charged down Grant Williams.

Try All Blacks.

Not what we discussed, Rassie. But I wasn't worried. We had these guys. Only sloppy finishing in the first half had denied us a substantial lead, and this was just a blip… only it wasn't. Momentum is funny that way. Within ten minutes, they were the ones scrumming us back. They changed personnel. They won the scrum penalty. They scored again. What was going on, and where was my Bomb Squad???

It was hard to watch, and by full-time, New Zealand had won 33-16 and taken a 1-0 lead in the series. And the dudes packed up their brandies, and trundled off to the 50th dinner celebration. Luckily we are resilient as South Africans, and everyone was having a good old time in no time. But in the slight headache of the morning, I did a bit of a reflection on what went down at Ellis Park, and it carried through to my prep for work in the week.

The reflection was this: Big moments change games. Sometimes it goes our way, sometimes it doesn't. And for me, the magic happens in the room, but the prep happens long before. As you read this, I am in Joburg doing strategic work for a well-known institution in Sandton, and hopefully helping them courageously move their organization forward. My thinking for this session is anchored around some principles from visionary Discovery founder Adrian Gore's new book The Four Principles. Said principles feel particularly resonant to what happened in the Boks game, particularly his riff on the tried and trusted 80/20 rule. Also known as the Pareto Principle, Gore has given it a sexy new angle… called the Pareto Tail.

Gore's argument is that our lives and businesses are not shaped equally by everything we do. Most decisions have relatively modest consequences. But hidden amongst them are a tiny number of decisions, actions, relationships and moments that have an utterly disproportionate impact on what happens next.

His other three principles help us get there. Disciplined Optimism makes us more likely to see opportunity. Focused Urgency gets us moving on what matters rather than simply being busy. Declared Goals create commitment. But ultimately, all three increase our chances of operating in the Pareto Tail, where a handful of actions can change the trajectory of everything.

Rugby is a wonderful demonstration of this. For 80 minutes, hundreds of decisions get made. Carries, tackles, kicks, passes, lineouts, substitutions and referee conversations. Most matter a little. A few matter enormously.

Last year in Wellington, Cheslin Kolbe's intercept try provided one of those moments. It lit the fuse on a second-half explosion that eventually became a record 43-10 Springbok victory. This weekend, the tail belonged to New Zealand. Holland's charge-down. The decision to keep scrumming rather than take the points. The All Blacks changing their front row. The scrum penalty that followed. Jacobson's try.

A match containing hundreds of actions suddenly pivoted on a handful.

There is an important leadership lesson here because we tend to allocate our anxiety remarkably democratically. We sweat the small stuff, the emails, the minor decisions, the meeting that could have been an email and, increasingly, the email that probably should have been left to AI.

Meanwhile, somewhere in our business sits our equivalent of minute 48. It is a critical hire. A major customer relationship. A pricing decision. A cash-flow constraint. A difficult conversation. A new market. A technology bet. The decision to stop doing something that has worked for years but is no longer working.

You cannot predict every Pareto Tail moment in advance. But you can become much better at recognising where those moments are likely to occur and ensuring that, when they arrive, you have your best people, your clearest thinking and enough capacity available to act.

That was perhaps the Springboks' problem on Saturday. They did a lot right, but they did not turn enough first-half dominance into scoreboard pressure. Then, when the game reached its decisive window, New Zealand were ready to make changes and exploit their opportunities.

And perhaps that is the optimistic bit for us Bok supporters. The Springboks have rarely been at their most dangerous when everything is going smoothly. One-nil down, backs against the wall, Cape Town next weekend?

Now that sounds much more familiar.

I may just pour the minute-48 brandy a little earlier.

PG's Pro Tip: Know Your Pareto Tail

Most things do not deserve equal amounts of your attention. The leadership challenge is identifying the small number of moments where the quality of your decision could have a disproportionately large impact.

Find your 48th minute. Look at the next 90 days and identify the three to five decisions, conversations or opportunities that could materially alter your trajectory.

Protect resources for the tail. Make sure your best thinking, people, money and time are available for those moments. There is little point having a Bomb Squad if they are sitting in a meeting discussing the office Christmas party when you need them.

Stop sweating everything equally. Deliberately downgrade low-consequence decisions. Automate them, delegate them, make them quickly or simply accept that good enough is, in fact, good enough. Save perfection for the decisions where perfection actually matters. And if you want some help, join one of our AI Starter Kit workshops. Claude is the bomb for cutting out the heavy admin lifting, and helping you focus on what's important.

ChatGPT Prompt

Act as my strategic coach using Adrian Gore's concept of the Pareto Tail. I will give you information about my business, role, current priorities, opportunities, problems and the major decisions facing me over the next 90 days.

First, separate the issues into ordinary decisions and potential Pareto Tail decisions, where a relatively small action could create a disproportionately large positive or negative outcome.

Identify the five highest-leverage moments or decisions I am likely to face. For each one, explain why it belongs in the Pareto Tail, what could happen if I get it right or wrong, what preparation I should do now, and which resources or people should be available when the moment arrives.

Then force-rank the five from highest to lowest potential impact and ask me five difficult questions that would expose whether I am spending too much time on ordinary work while neglecting my 48th-minute decisions.

Here is my context: [INSERT CONTEXT]

If you want to explore Gore's framework further, The Four Principles is worth a look. His central challenge is a useful one: talent matters, but impact comes from learning how to concentrate that talent on the very small number of opportunities where it can multiply.

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