When I go to our London office, I travel by train from Cobham in Surrey and then on the London Underground to Warren Street which is the nearest tube station to our headquarters. For nearly a year this journey involved taking the train to the mainline station Waterloo and then changing to the Northern line. Almost by accident coming back from Euston on a business trip I realised there was a better route taking the Victoria line from Warren Street to Vauxhall and catching the Cobham train there – and vice versa. This is an easier and slightly quicker commute and avoids a longer changeover at Waterloo, and whilst not a dramatic improvement is still very worthwhile. I get to work – and then home – earlier.
When we think of beneficial change in a work context it is easy to look for major improvements, quantum leaps if you like. Yet in reality in professional life I suggest it is these smaller incremental changes which are the true path to improvement. As this blog Incremental Improvement suggests “When trying to identify and solve big problems that face your organization, it's tempting to focus all of your efforts on finding big solutions, too”. While in reality “Improvement doesn’t have to come only from big, sweeping changes. While it is sometimes necessary to tackle big problems using big projects, this is not always the case. Incremental improvement is an approach to process improvement in which you and your staff focus efforts on smaller solutions that slowly but surely move the business toward success. These ideas are typically low-cost and low-risk, and are implemented by employees throughout the entire organization.”
The thing is when you are very good at something, which most professionals by definition are, sudden large significant changes are much harder to make and may not even be feasible. By contrast continuous small change can be really effective. See this excellent article This Coach Improved Every Tiny Thing by 1 Percent and Here’s What Happenedwhich cites the impact Dave Brailsford had on British professional cycling when he was hired as a new performance director in 1973 after “nearly one hundred years of mediocrity”. At that time Great Britain’s cyclists had such a bad reputation that European manufacturers would not sell them bikes because it might hurt sales! What Brailsford did was to “adopt a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.” So they made small but perhaps expected adjustments like redesigning bike seats and racing suits. But they went much further and for example:
The article is actually an extract from a book I have just downloaded on Kindle called Atomic Habits by James Clear who “knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions: doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call” which he calls “atomic habits”.
Another outstanding sporting coach who believed in the benefits of marginal gains was Sir Clive Woodward OBE who led the English rugby team to win the 2003 Rugby World Cup. See this article Winners and Losers of the Pro Era - Why did England win the 2003 Rugby World Cup? which suggests “Woodward completely changed the job description of the modern day Head Coach in Rugby Union as he took a far more managerial role and spent years building the right support team to take England forward.” But more importantly, in his own words “Winning the Rugby world cup was not about doing one thing 100% better, but about doing 100 things 1% better”.
There is a Japanese term for this approach – kaizen - which is “a Japanese business philosophy that concerns the processes that continuously improve operations and involve all employees. Kaizen sees improvement in productivity as a gradual and methodical process.” See this article Kaizen: Understanding the Japanese Business Philosophywhich says the approach “focuses on gradually improving productivity and making a work environment more efficient”recognising that “Improvements can come from any employee at any time. The idea is that everyone has a stake in the company's success and everyone should strive, at all times, to help make the business model better.”
The AI engine Microsoft Copilot quite aptly describes the benefits of incremental change for professionals as follows – with some edits by me:
While another American the teacher and writer Tal Ben-Shahar suggests “Incremental change is better than ambitious failure. . . Success feeds on itself.”
And yet a third American the entrepreneur and author Jim Rhon advises that “Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”
When we think of beneficial change in a work context it is easy to look for major improvements, quantum leaps if you like. Yet in reality in professional life I suggest it is these smaller incremental changes which are the true path to improvement. As this blog Incremental Improvement suggests “When trying to identify and solve big problems that face your organization, it's tempting to focus all of your efforts on finding big solutions, too”. While in reality “Improvement doesn’t have to come only from big, sweeping changes. While it is sometimes necessary to tackle big problems using big projects, this is not always the case. Incremental improvement is an approach to process improvement in which you and your staff focus efforts on smaller solutions that slowly but surely move the business toward success. These ideas are typically low-cost and low-risk, and are implemented by employees throughout the entire organization.”
The thing is when you are very good at something, which most professionals by definition are, sudden large significant changes are much harder to make and may not even be feasible. By contrast continuous small change can be really effective. See this excellent article This Coach Improved Every Tiny Thing by 1 Percent and Here’s What Happenedwhich cites the impact Dave Brailsford had on British professional cycling when he was hired as a new performance director in 1973 after “nearly one hundred years of mediocrity”. At that time Great Britain’s cyclists had such a bad reputation that European manufacturers would not sell them bikes because it might hurt sales! What Brailsford did was to “adopt a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.” So they made small but perhaps expected adjustments like redesigning bike seats and racing suits. But they went much further and for example:
- tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery.
- hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold.
- determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider.
- Even painted the inside of the team truck white, which helped them spot little bits of dust that would normally slip by unnoticed but could degrade the performance of the finely tuned bikes
The article is actually an extract from a book I have just downloaded on Kindle called Atomic Habits by James Clear who “knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions: doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call” which he calls “atomic habits”.
Another outstanding sporting coach who believed in the benefits of marginal gains was Sir Clive Woodward OBE who led the English rugby team to win the 2003 Rugby World Cup. See this article Winners and Losers of the Pro Era - Why did England win the 2003 Rugby World Cup? which suggests “Woodward completely changed the job description of the modern day Head Coach in Rugby Union as he took a far more managerial role and spent years building the right support team to take England forward.” But more importantly, in his own words “Winning the Rugby world cup was not about doing one thing 100% better, but about doing 100 things 1% better”.
There is a Japanese term for this approach – kaizen - which is “a Japanese business philosophy that concerns the processes that continuously improve operations and involve all employees. Kaizen sees improvement in productivity as a gradual and methodical process.” See this article Kaizen: Understanding the Japanese Business Philosophywhich says the approach “focuses on gradually improving productivity and making a work environment more efficient”recognising that “Improvements can come from any employee at any time. The idea is that everyone has a stake in the company's success and everyone should strive, at all times, to help make the business model better.”
The AI engine Microsoft Copilot quite aptly describes the benefits of incremental change for professionals as follows – with some edits by me:
- Reduced risk: allowing the testing and evaluation of changes on a small scale before implementing them on a larger scale.
- Improved agility: enabling adaptation to changing circumstances more quickly and efficiently. By making small changes over time, professionals can respond to new challenges and opportunities as they arise.
- Increased engagement: helping us feel more engaged and invested in the change process which can create a more positive and productive work environment.
- Better outcomes: over time by making small changes and evaluating their impact
While another American the teacher and writer Tal Ben-Shahar suggests “Incremental change is better than ambitious failure. . . Success feeds on itself.”
And yet a third American the entrepreneur and author Jim Rhon advises that “Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”
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