An incredible example of the power of incremental improvement is the Dave Brailsford story. It’s 2010 and he’s named as the GM and Performance Director for Team Sky (Britain’s professional cycling team). To date, no British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France.
How did he do it?
His approach was simple yet would prove to be profound. He employed what was known in the Microeconomic arena as marginal change. A marginal change is a proportionally very small addition or subtraction to the total quantity of some variable. In microeconomic theory, “marginal” concepts are employed to drive various forms of “optimizing” behaviors.
Brailsford developed a concept referred to as the “aggregation of marginal gains” meaning “1% margin for improvement in everything we do.” His theory held that if every area related to cycling were improved by just 1%, then those small gains would add up to a remarkable improvement.
They started optimizing things we might expect: their weekly training program was obvious, so too was the nutrition of riders, but they even took it down to things like the weight of the tires, ergonomics of the bike seat, peddles, everything.
Brailsford and his team kept searching for any and all areas to tweak. They looked for 1% improvements in areas overlooked by almost everyone else: figuring out things like “which pillow offered the best sleep”, even the “best way to wash hands to avoid infection”.
Brailsford believed if they could execute the strategy consistently and successfully, then they would be able to win the Tour de France in five years.
They won it in three.
Many have referred to the British cycling feats in the Olympics and the Tour de France over the past few years as the most successful in modern cycling history.
It’s easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of
making better decisions.
