{"id":8438,"date":"2026-10-13T01:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T07:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=8438"},"modified":"2026-09-28T14:26:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:26:28","slug":"the-flip-side-of-arthurs-4-50-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/the-flip-side-of-arthurs-4-50-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flip Side of Arthur&#8217;s 4-50 Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You may be familiar with the 80-20 Rule. Arthur&#8217;s 4-50 Rule takes it farther. Here&#8217;s the flip side of the 4-50 rule.<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation &#8211; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1207434358?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201cLean Six Sigma Demystified\u201d and QI Macros [software].<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;If you know anything about me, I always preach Arthur&#8217;s 4-50 rule: That 4% of what you&#8217;re doing is producing over 50% of the mistakes, errors, waste, rework, and whatever. But let&#8217;s look at the flip side of the 4-50 rule, which is 50% of what you&#8217;re doing is only producing 4% of the benefit. 50% of your customers, 4% of the benefit.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Jeff Bezos recently said, &#8220;Hey, 50% of Americans are only paying 3% of the total income taxes.&#8221; Now, it costs a lot of time and energy to collect, process, and manage all that 50%. He said, &#8220;I think we can find the 3% and not have those people have to pay.&#8221; There&#8217;s an idea. The flip side of the 4-50 rule.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Maybe you should not focus on the 50% that only gets you 3% of the benefit. Maybe you should focus on other stuff. Right? So, the 4\/50 rule works both ways. Right? 4% of your customers are producing half your revenue. 50% are only producing 4%. And the 50% producing 4% are probably the crankiest of them all. I&#8217;ve found in QI Macros, the big customers we almost never hear from, and it&#8217;s the small &#8216;onesy-twosey&#8217; ones that can be annoying sometimes.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So, think about the flip side of the 4-50 rule. What should you change based on looking at your business that way?<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may be familiar with the 80-20 Rule. Arthur&rsquo;s 4-50 Rule takes it farther. Here&rsquo;s the flip side of the 4-50 rule. Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation &ndash; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results. &#65279; &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m Jay Arthur, author of &ldquo;Lean Six Sigma Demystified&rdquo; and QI Macros [software]. &ldquo;If you know anything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[507,678,629],"class_list":["post-8438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-80-20-rule","tag-arthurs-4-50-rule","tag-qimacros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8438"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8563,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8438\/revisions\/8563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}