A Marginal Gains Approach to Self Improvement

The ushering in of a new year, for many of us, will be accompanied by a renewed commitment to our own self-improvement. From fitness fads to career progression, we have big plans for the year ahead.

It probably comes as little surprise that January is the month in which we are most likely to quit our job, join a gym, or end a relationship. However, the sort of change we embark upon at the start of the year is something we often fail to sustain. By February, 14% of all new gym-goers who enthusiastically signed up in the previous month will have already dropped out (with 4% not even making it through to January). As January gives way to February, our efforts somehow fall by the wayside.

As I contemplated my own plans for the year ahead, my thoughts turned to, of all things, British Cycling(!)

In recent years, British cycling has enjoyed the sort of dominance that has led to cries that it has “ruined cycling”. This has not always been the case. In fact, as recently as 2010 no British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France, posing a considerable challenge to Dave Bailsford, the new Performance Director for Team Sky (Great Britain’s professional cycling team). Bailsford had been tasked with helping the team to overcome this significant drought. His approach was a simple one: he believed in and adhered to a concept that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains”, an approach inspired by his fascination with Kaizen and other process-improvement techniques.

The philosophy behind marginal gains promotes small, incremental improvements that cumulatively produce a significant delta of change. Much of the recent success enjoyed by British Cycling, for example, has been attributed to small 1 percent improvements in areas that were largely overlooked by everyone else. These ranged from spraying alcohol on bike wheels to increase tackiness, to the importance of good hand hygiene. Individually, these tactics would be unlikely to have any effect on the success of the team, but in aggregation they have been repeatedly proven to increase the athletes’ probability of success.

Improving by just 1 percent isn’t notable (and sometimes it isn’t even noticeable). But these small changes can contribute to meaningful and impactful change if they form part of wider commitment to continuous improvement. These improvements when aggregated over time are not insignificant.

Kaizen, the inspiration behind the marginal gains approach, was first popularised outside of Japan by Masaaki Imai’s 1986 book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success. I particularly like his definition of Kaizen as:

We should strive to focus on progression rather than perfection, and compound the improvements. Whilst the “big picture” objective is important, so too are the smaller, necessary steps that need to be taken in order to get there. Let’s not set ourselves up for failure in the pursuit of immediate and drastic change. Instead, let’s commit to the small(er), continuous actions that we can reasonably sustain. After all, as Einstein observed: “Compounding is the greatest mathematical discovery of all time”.

A Marginal Gains Approach to Self Improvement

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