The 80/20 reality inside your company
If you zoom out far enough, almost every system is run by a minority. I’m re-reading The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant, and their chapter on how ability and wealth concentrate is a useful lens on power laws inside companies.
The few who move the many
Durant starts with an observation that would be impolite in a modern HR memo: practical ability is not evenly distributed. In almost every society, most of the competence, energy, and foresight ends up concentrated in a relatively small group.
That minority, almost by definition, captures more resources and more influence. Wealth follows ability, and then more ability flows to where wealth and leverage already are. Over time, you get a familiar picture: a small group at the top with outsized power, and a long tail of people whose individual impact is harder to see.
He doesn’t stop there. Left alone, this concentration keeps compounding until something breaks. When the gap between the few who have leverage and the many who don’t gets too large, history shows two recurring outcomes:
Peaceful rebalancing through laws, reforms, and redistribution.
Violent rebalancing through revolution, where wealth is not just redistributed but destroyed.
Durant’s point is not moral outrage; it’s pattern recognition. Ability and power concentrating is natural. Periodic correction is also natural. Ignore either side and you misread how groups behave over time.
Inside companies, the same structure appears in friendlier clothing.
A small percentage of people generate most of the sales, ideas, and decisions that actually move the business. A handful of products drive most of the revenue. A short list of customers drives most of the profit. If you map impact honestly, you’ll see your own minority.
At the same time, information, decision rights, and equity tend to flow toward a small leadership group. Some of that is necessary; you can’t run a company by committee. But if you compound that concentration without any designed rebalancing, you get your own version of the historical pattern:
Quiet resentment that the upside is locked up.
Politics as people try to get closer to the center.
Sudden “revolutions”: mass departures, internal coups, or cultural backlash against “the top.”
History suggests a calmer approach. Don’t fight the existence of power laws. Accept that a minority will always drive most outcomes. Then design peaceful, regular ways to redistribute opportunity and upside before you’re forced into more painful resets.
That might look like opening new product lines for emerging leaders to own, broadening equity participation as the company matures, or rotating real decision authority on specific bets. You still bet heavily on your best people, but you also keep creating surface area for the next minority of high performers to emerge.
Durant’s lesson is not to flatten everything. It’s to remember that when the few hold too much for too long, the many eventually find a way to rebalance the game. As a founder or operator, you can either wait for that to happen to you, or you can build controlled rebalancing into how you grow.
Lessons
Ability and impact are naturally concentrated
A small minority of people, products, and customers will drive most of your results. Pretending otherwise makes your planning blurry.Power accumulates where ability and information meet
Over time, decision rights, budgets, and equity drift toward a small group. Some centralization is necessary; total centralization is fragile.Every system eventually rebalances
If concentration grows unchecked, the many will eventually push back. In companies, that shows up as attrition, politics, and “revolutions” in leadership.Healthy companies redistribute opportunity on purpose
You can’t make outcomes equal, but you can keep widening access to meaningful problems, ownership, and upside as you grow.
On Monday, do this
Map your internal power law. Identify the top 10–20 percent of people, products, and customers by impact. Make that explicit with your leadership team so you’re operating from reality.
Spot dangerous concentration. Ask where decision power, information, and upside are overly concentrated in a few hands. Focus on one area that would hurt most if a single person left.
Create one new ladder of ownership. Design a concrete opportunity (a new product, region, or initiative) that an emerging leader can fully own, with clear accountability and visible upside.
Broaden upside slightly. Choose one mechanism this year to widen participation in success (a profit share on a key product, equity refresh for a broader group, or a transparent bonus tied to team results).
History’s pattern is clear: the few will always move the many, and the many will always, eventually, reshape the few. Builders who understand both sides can design companies that harness power laws without being broken by their corrections.
I’m Harsh. I build businesses with extraordinary people. I’m helping grow Ideals Virtual Data Rooms into a billion dollar enterprise, bootstrapping a food startup and investing through Marcellus Investment Managers. I share my learnings as a business builder daily on my WhatsApp community. I also send one email each Sunday for founders and senior operators who want useful ideas to win in business and life. You can find me on LinkedIn here.
Thanks for explaining so clearly!! It's such an obvious observation yet so misunderstood, including in social sector circles and politics where attention goes not towards understanding how the current scenario evolved, but simply branding systems as unfair, or groups as previliged, and seeking rebalancing without understanding the capabilities of different groups.
The delicate balance between encouraging innovation and initiative, with a sense of fairness and protecting certain groups, and creating space and disruption to keep doors open for new innovators, is absolutely critical in organizations and society.
Can our political leadership which operates with a capture and control mentality, even in a democracy, do what is best for society when viewed from this lens?