How British Cycling used marginal gains to win Olympic gold medals!

When Sir Dave Brailsford became head of British Cycling in 2003, the team had almost no record of success. British cycling had only won a single Olympic gold medal in its 76-year history.

That quickly changed under Sir Dave’s leadership when the team started to focus on margical gains.

Watch the video for examples of marginal gains. Some of them might surprise you.

someone challenged me let me explain a few weeks ago I did a video on the small potato mindset and I introduced the concept of marginal gains marginal gains means making small improvements in different areas each Improvement is small but when you add them all up they can make a big difference so one of my friends went to his boss to talk about the principle of marginal gains and how they could use it in the business the boss just looked at him and said dude I don’t want one percent improvements I want at least 10 percent improvements so for any of the doubters out there let me show you the power of marginal gains let’s go to the UK [Music] so today’s video is supposed to be about cycling and I guess it still is but I literally just climbed hundreds of steps to get to the top of King’s Park in Hong Kong and it’s hot and it’s humid oh anyway let’s do this it’s time to get on your bike when sir Dave brailsworth became the head of British cycling in 2003 their team had nearly no record of success British cycling had only one one single Olympic gold medal in its 76-year history for proud Sports Nation like Great Britain that sucks now that quickly changed under the Dave’s leadership at the 2008 Beijing Olympics his team won 7 out of 10 gold medals available in track cycling four years later they repeated that achievement at the London Olympics so Dave then went on to coach the British professional cycling team team sky under his leadership the team won Six Tour de France events and Tour de France is the hottest biggest professional race in the world so you might wonder how did that happen so Dave changed bicycle racing by focusing on marginal gains so here’s the thing when Dave joined British cycling the three was to win Olympic gold medals but that dream is like wanting to climb a huge mountain that is so far away that you can hardly see it and the team asked how do we get from here to there since Perfection is so far away so so Dave decided to focus on progression instead of perfection the team didn’t change their dreams they changed the process so the team started to ask what can we do next week that we are not doing this week so Dave said if you break everything down and improve each little thing by one percent it all adds up to make a big difference the team went to work and they improved many different areas here are five examples some of them might surprise you number one the bikes no surprise so Dave obviously wanted better bikes for the team so they work closely with the manufacturers to create bikes that were lighter stiffer and more aerodynamic helping the Riders go even faster number two betting recognizing the importance of quality sleep so Dave provided custom bedding including pillows and mattresses for all the Riders and when they traveled they would bring the bidding along to ensure the Riders would get their quality sleep in the different hotels number three massage oils yeah the Riders get regular massages to help them relax and recover so the team experimented with different massage oils to find the ones that would help the Riders relax more and recover faster number four hand hygiene yes they actually told the writers how to wash their hands and by focusing on the importance of hand hygiene and using antibacterial hand gel they reduce the risk of illness number five meetings yeah similar to many of us in business they realized they were spending way too much time in unproductive meetings so they standardized the format including the agenda minute taking and follow-up that helped them get more productive and save a lot of time that was just five examples of the many improvements that they made and they’re all small improvements but you add them all up and you have Olympic gold medals [Music] back to you I hope you are now convinced that marginal gains is an awesome concept so I invite you to look at the way you work look at your processes find small improvements in each area and when you make them and you add them all up you might surprise yourself that’s it my name is Thomas Bay until next time make things better and make better things boom foreign [Music] moving forward making progress [Music] foreign

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