1% BETTER
Day by day
Team Sky
A story about Team Sky is amazing to me.
This Great Britain professional cycling team hired Dave Brailsford at the time where team Sky was not so good.
On the world stage, they only won 1 gold medal in 100 years. From 1908 to 2008 only one. They have never won Tour De France which is a premier event in cycling.
They hired Dave because they need change and to do things differently in order to be better.
When they hire Dave he said he has this strategy called AGGREGATION OF MARGINAL GAINS
He explains that means 1% improvement in nearly everything that you do!
With that being said they started to do what a normal cycling team would do. They look and change the tires, adapt the seats, made slightly lighter bikes…
But they also do many things that others didn’t, such as:
They split tested different types of massage gel to see how each of them will help them do best form or recovery
They taught their riders how to wash their hands in order for them not to get sick or make somebody else sick
They even figure out what kind of pillow led to the best night’s sleep for each of their riders.
Daves idea was if they can get all these things done, all these small things done right and constantly (only 1% improvement) that they could win Tour de France in 5 years.
He was wrong!
They win in 3 years!
Small to big
This just shows how small daily improvements of only 1% can add up to very significant change.
Same goal, different strategy!
Simple math
If you get 1% better each day over 365 days you end up being 37 times better at the end of the year.
If you get 1% worse you will take yourself all the way down to zero almost.
Well, some may argue that nobody can be perfect and improve daily,and that is a valid point as well..But
If you improve 5 days a week (be “free” on weekends) and the year has 46 weeks (232 days9 you will still end up 10 times better at the end of the year!
Something to think about!
Darko Bilandžić
Get further,faster!