Britain's Secret to Olympic Gold
From 1908 to 2007, the British Cycling team won just 1 Gold medal at the Olympics.
But in 2008, the Brits dominated – winning 8 Gold medals, making them the only nation that won more than a single Gold.
4 years later, they performed even better, leading the table at 12 medals – 8 of those being Gold again.
How did the British Cycling team have such an incredible turnaround?
They owe it to the Japanese principle of Kaizen – also known as the theory of Continuous Improvement.
You see, in late 2002, Sir Dave Brailsford became the head of British Cycling.
Brailsford was a former professional cyclist with an MBA degree, and he applied the theory of marginal gains to cycling. He started to “think small, not big”, and adopted the concept of continuous improvement by aggregating marginal gains.
“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
He began by making small adjustments.
The kinds of things you would imagine might help optimize performance, like:
- Redesigning the bike seats for comfort
- Improving the tire grip by rubbing alcohol on them
- Changing the uniforms to make them lighter + more aerodynamic
But – and here’s why Brailsford is a genius – he also made tweaks to the not-so-obvious things.
His team of coaches looked for process improvements too.
For instance, they hired a doctor to teach the team about proper handwashing, to avoid illness during the season. They brought their own mattresses and pillows on tour, so the team could have a proper night’s rest and optimal sleep posture, wherever they were.
They looked for small improvements everywhere and found a whole host of opportunities to optimize performance.
The result?
These marginal gains compounded.
Leading to landmark victories, never seen before by the British Cycling team!
Just goes to show:
“The only way to actually win is to get better each day.” – James Clear
Kaizen Your Way to Marketing Gold!
If you take the concept of Kaizen and apply it to your Marketing, imagine the impact it can have on your revenue and profit.
Each small test and improvement to every element of your marketing – your CTA, Headline, or imagery – can have compounding results on conversions.
The math is simple: 1% better every day, for a whole year, leads to a 37x improvement.
