They have a slight edge
In the last blog we looked at 3 ways to get the same qualities successful people have. Now we look at one more, the slight edge and how it can make you more successful.
Successful people are competitive and win enough to make them successful. In some cases this is most of the time. It’s interesting and important that difference between winning and coming second or losing, as we prefer to call it in business, is usually wafer thin. Take well know sporting examples like Bradley Wiggins or Usain Bolt for instance. “Wiggo” or Sir Bradley Wiggins as he prefers to be called won the 2012 Tour de France, spending just over 87 hours in the saddle, by 3minutues 21 seconds, a margin of 0.06%. Usain Bolt won the 100m in the Olympics held in the same year in a 9.63 seconds by 0.12 seconds, a margin of 1.25%. Business wins are the same. In the rare cases where customers truly told me what prompted them to select the organisation I represented we never won my much and frequently by frighteningly thin margins. But it was enough.
How can you gain and preserve the wafer thin winning margin needed to succeeed? The slight edge is the concept of marginal improvements which yield disproportionate advantage. It’s been around for a while and is embodied in sayings like “many a mickle makes a muckle” and “'Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.”
A good example is provided by Dave Brailsford, or Sir Dave as he is now, is the man who bought winning ways to GB cycling then Team Sky. He believed in a concept he called “aggregation of marginal gains.” He believed that by improving every area related to cycling by just 1 percent, lots of small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.
Starting with obvious he looked at the nutrition of riders, their weekly training program, the ergonomics of the bike seat, and the weight of the tyres.
Gradually he moved down the list to items that were not so obvious. Getting the right pillow for his riders so they slept better, the most effective type of massage gel for the optimum massage, even teaching riders the best way to wash their hands to avoid infection. Lots of small improvement aggregated up to truly spectacular results.
Taking the GB cycling team he managed from 1997-2014 first. In the 2000 Olympic Games, his first games, GB achieved 3 medals, 1 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze. In the 2012 games team GB secured 12 medals, 8 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze. What a result.
Team Sky came next and he has been team principal since 2010. Perhaps, in fact almost certainly, the toughest, best known cycle race in the world is the Tour de France. Bradley Wiggins won the 2012 Tour de France, becoming the first British winner in its history, while teammate Chris Froome finished as the runner up. He went on to win Sky's third Tour de France title in 2015, fourth in 2016 and fifth in 2017. The French simply cannot wait for Brexit in the hopeless hope it will mean Team Sky cannot compete in 2018.
Can we use the same concept in business? Yes, I believe we can get a slight edge in many areas of business today. This is important because often the increases in organisational and personal performance asked for are daunting and seem impossible to achieve. Organisations need to become profitable and stay profitable. This calls for continual improvements year on year and large obvious ones ran out some time ago. We have to look for lots of marginal improvements and use the slight edge concept to get the requisite performance increase.
Let’s look at a couple of areas, sales and marketing which is revenue generating and administration which is not. In sales we need to get more revenue for the same cost. In admin more output for the same cost. Even better if the same cost turns out to be less cost.
Taking a straightforward sales and marketing process comprising target marketing, planning and running customer contact events, appointment scheduling and conducting sales interviews. Improve the targeting marginally with a better understanding of customer needs and slightly better quality lists. Increase the effectiveness of customer contact by a tad by improving the messaging, invitations, channel and venue. Improve the selection and training of the person responsible for appointment setting by a trifling amount. Give them an improved script, motivate them more and keep a marginally better control of work rate. Make sales interviews a little bit more effective. Recruit slightly better sales people with a somewhat tighter fit to organisational culture and better sales skills. Once you have a better recruit give them marginally better training, support and incentive packages. Hone you sales process and promote marginally better team work. I could go on but I am sure you have the idea? These small improvements are likely to make a very considerable improvement to revenue.
Admin needs more throughput for the same cost. We need to be more productive so marginal improvements in processes are well worth looking into. Processes often become out of step with changing needs but stay the same because “we have always done it that way.” Consider the most expensive processes first and work down the list. Involve the people who actually do the work and look for marginal improvements at each stage of each process. Perhaps it’s possible to reduce admin labour costs, grow your staff’s skills and increase morale at the same time? A good delegation and plan can do this.
If you are the team leader start by listing the tasks you perform. Select tasks that team members can do better than you can (yes this is possible), more cheaply than you or tasks that would develop their skills. We recommend a policy of gradual delegation where 4 is the lowest and 1 is the highest;
1. Act and report routinely
2. Act and report immediately
3. See approval then act
4. Wait until told
List items you feel are suitable for delegation against team members most suited to them. Now rate the current level of delegation and set the goal level of delegation. This will provide you with a matrix of potential marginal gains to reduce cost, improve performance and increase motivation. Not bad for a simple delegation plan?