Does your strategic marketing plan lack oomph? Do you think the only way to improve it's effectiveness is to throw it out and start again? Maybe there is another way.
Dave Brailsford was appointed as performance director to the Great British cycling team in 2003. Since 1908, British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic Games, and they had fared even worse in cycling’s biggest race, the Tour de France. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the event.
He had a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains." Brailsford said, “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 %, you will get a significant gain when you put them all together.”
Brailsford began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team. The team tested various fabrics in a wind tunnel and had their road riders switch to indoor racing suits, which proved to be lighter and more aerodynamic. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip.
But they didn’t stop there. Brailsford and his team continued to find 1 % improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas. They tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery. They hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold. As these and hundreds of small improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined.
That same year, Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France. The next year, his teammate Chris Froome won the race, going on to win again in 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Small improvements may seem insignificant and unlikely to result in significant gains, but they do. . What would happen if you made a 1% improvement each week? By the end of the year, your overall increase would be 66%.
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