Cycling’s premier event, the Tour de France, is now in full swing with riders from around the world putting their bodies through three weeks of hell in order to claim the fabled Maillot Jaune – the Yellow Jersey.
The first part of the race has been dominated by Team Sky who have become the dominant force in world cycling under the stewardship of Dave Brailsford. Brailsford has used radical methods and something he describes as the aggregation of marginal gains to achieve this success.
His methods have been so successful that businesses are now adopting the same theory to improve performance in all areas – from technology and innovation through to people and processes.
The aggregation of marginal gains is, put simply, improving efficiency across everything your business does. In effect, it is the optimisation of every element that goes into making your business better.
The principle behind it is that if you improve in every variable underpinning or influencing your performance by just 1% then cumulatively you get a significant performance improvement. And better performance across all areas of business should mean a better product, increased customer satisfaction and healthy turnover.
Small changes. Big difference.
Marginal gains can be made across all areas of your business. The secret is not being afraid to try something new. Going back to cycling, when Team Sky first turned up to a time trial in skin suits the rest of the world laughed at them. However they proved to be so successful that they’ve now become the norm.
Encourage everyone in the business to come up with ideas for how things can be done better and then have the courage to try something new. Small improvements across many areas add up to a big collective difference.
Factors from time management, staff morale, meeting structures, use of technology, office culture and even HR processes can all be addressed to find those improvements in performance.
Workforce management software is another tool being used to help businesses find marginal gains and is delivering significant performance benefits when it comes to improving productivity, being more efficient, saving cost and increasing revenue.
By providing a 360 degree view of core business functions such as budgeting, forecasting and time management while at the same time revolutionising the approach to scheduling, it’s helping businesses gain the edge over their competition.
That’s what we do. We optimise the way business work helping them achieve more, perform better and deliver success.
Let us help you find your optimum performance. Get in touch with us today to speak to one of our team of experts.