Principle of Marginal Gains – Building a Sustainable Culture

Transforming yourself, a business or performance of a team is not an overnight thing, it takes time, many small changes and discipline. Most of the significant changes in life aren’t stand-alone events, but rather the sum of all the moments when we chose to do things one percent better.

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In 2010, Dave Brailsford faced a tough job. No British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France, but as the new General Manager and Performance Director for Team Sky (Great Britain’s professional cycling team), Brailsford was asked to change that.

His approach was simple. Brailsford believed in a concept that he referred to as the?“Aggregation of marginal gains.”?He explained it as “The one percent margin for improvement in everything you do.” His belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just one percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.

They started with the obvious. They looked at training programme improvements, the comfort of the bikes the athletes used, and optimising their nutritional intake. But as part of marginal gains theory, they went much?MUCH?further.

They searched for one percent improvements in tiny areas that were overlooked by almost everyone else: They analysed the optimum temperature the cyclists' muscles would need to be for peak performance and found electrically heated training shorts to keep them at that temperature. They started looking at the exact sort of bedding that would give the athletes the best night's sleep.

They experimented with different massage gels and how best to apply them for muscle recovery. They even started teaching the athletes how to wash their hands properly to minimise their chances of getting sick and disrupting training!

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Brailsford believed that if they could successfully execute this strategy, then Team Sky would be in a position to win the Tour de France in five years time. He was wrong. They won it in three years.

In 2012, Team Sky rider Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. That same year, Brailsford coached the British cycling team at the 2012 Olympic Games and dominated the competition by winning 70 percent of the gold medals available.

In 2013, Team Sky repeated their feat by winning the Tour de France again, this time with rider Chris Froome. Many have referred to the British cycling feats in the Olympics and the Tour de France over the past 10 years as the most successful run in modern cycling history.

And now for the important question:?What can we learn from Brailsford’s approach?

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The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

Almost every process and habit we have, good or bad, is the result of many small decisions over time.

So often we convince ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible outcome associated with it. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, travelling the world or any other goal, we often put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.

Meanwhile, improving by just one percent isn’t notable and sometimes it isn’t even?noticeable but it can be just as meaningful, especially in the long run. Have you lost weight or made changes to your house over time, you don’t notice the change yourself but when a friend sees you for the first time in a few years they say 'wow, what a transformation'.

Unfortunately from what we can tell, this pattern works the same way in reverse, an aggregation of marginal losses, in other words. If you find yourself stuck with bad habits or poor results, it’s usually not because something happened overnight. It’s the sum of many small choices — a one percent decline here and there — that eventually leads to a problem. This can be caused by lack of rigour and leadership focus. When we take our eye off standards and allow even the smallest deviations to ways of working and behaviours we may not notice straight away but the overall culture and performance will decline

In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is one percent better or one percent worse. In other words, it won’t impact you very much today but, as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between companies who make slightly better decisions and those who don’t. This is why small choices don’t make much of a difference in the short-term but add up over the long-term.

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Summary

You probably won’t find yourself in the Tour de France anytime soon, but the concept of aggregating marginal gains can be used all the same.

Most people love to talk about success (and life in general) as an event. We talk about losing fifty pounds or building a successful business or winning the Tour de France as if they are events. But the truth is that most of the significant things in life aren’t stand-alone events, but rather the sum of all the moments when we chose to do things one percent better or one percent worse. Aggregating these marginal gains makes a difference.

There is power in small wins and slow gains.?