The fate of British Cycling changed one day in 2003.
Dave Brailsford became their performance director.
Great Britain had suffered nearly 100 years of being below average. Since the 1900’s British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic games and never have had a rider win the Tour de France.
Their performance was so poor that many of the top bike producers and manufacturers in Europe refused to sell their bikes to the team due to the fear that the British Cycling team would tarnish their brands.
Brailsford came into his new position with a plan he referred to as the “Aggregation of Marginal Gains.” A philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything that you do.
He said to his new team, “The whole principle is an idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1% you will get a significant increase when you put all the improvements together.”
As soon as Brailsford got there tiny improvements began to occur everywhere. Bike seats were redesigned to be more comfortable, riders wore electrically heated suits to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding. New suits were designed out of lighter fabrics to increase speed.
But the 1% improvements didn’t stop there… Brailsford continued to find 1% improvements areas that are commonly overlooked and unexpected.
After 5 years Brailsford’s test came with his team, the 2003 Olympics in Beijing! Miraculously the British Cycling team took home 60% of the gold medals available.
Four years later, when the Olympics came to London the team set nine Olympic records and seven world records. That same year Bradley Wiggins became the first British Cyclist to win the Tour de France. The British would then go on to win the event 6 out of 10 years.
In what is called the most successful run in cycling history Brailsford team won 178 world championships, 66 Olympic gold medals, 5 tour de France victories.
How does this happen? How does a mediocre team transform into world champions just through tiny marginal improvements that on the surface seem meaningless? Why do such small improvements accumulate into such remarkable results?
It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment, like many did when they saw the dynasty of the British Cycling team in the making. While forgetting about the small, simple improvements that took place way before a champion was built.
Too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive actions.
Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book winning a championship, or achieving any other goal.
We put to much pressure on ourselves to make some earth shattering improvement that everyone will talk about, with out realizing we are setting ourselves up for failure.
While, improving by just one percent isn’t particularly notable in fact, in many instances it isn’t even noticeable. But it will be far more meaningful in the long run.
The truth is though, that most of the significant things in life are not stand alone events, but rather the sum of all the moments when we choose to do things 1% better or 1% worse.
Where are the 1% improvements in your life?
