I sometimes remind myself that making tiny gains to enrich my business performance is worthwhile and meaningful even when it is not the grand, visible and a seemingly magical leap that everyone will talk about. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,”……then another, and another and another. From my experience I know “overnight success” is a myth. I know that having a successful business is the product of many small steps, a great deal of learning, years of effort, some worries, sleepless nights, trade-offs, setbacks, sometimes having to listen and overcome demoralizing (seemingly overnight) success stories of other people and with it all find a way every day to make myself indispensable. In 2010 Dave Brailsford, Performance Director for Team Sky (Great Britain’s professional cycling team), championed a philosophy of ‘marginal gains’ for British cycling. The whole idea was to analyze and break down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike. Then improve it all by 1% and you will make significant progress toward winning when you put them all together. The result of his philosophy, in 2012, Team Sky rider Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. That same year, Brailsford coached the British cycling team at the 2012 Olympic Games and dominated the competition by winning 70 percent of the gold medals available. In 2013, Team Sky repeated their feat by winning the Tour de France again, this time with rider Chris Froome. Dave Brailsford’s dedication is a reminder. There is no magical grand leap to victory it is the step by step, day by day accumulation of disciplined performance enrichment that brings about the accomplishment of goals. I am not sure who said it, but a simple way to think about it is to coin the well known phrase, “By the yard gains are hard, by the inch they’re a cinch.”
