Pedaling is perhaps the best metaphor to visualize continuous improvement: the rider makes small, repetitive “cycles” that together propel the bicycle forward—sometimes over 3,500 kilometers, as seen in the Tour de France.
One man famously turned this metaphor into a reality within the world of competitive cycling by applying the Kaizen principle of marginal improvement to the British cycling team to achieve Olympic gold. When Sir Dave Brailsford became head of British Cycling Program in 2002, British cyclists had won just one gold medal in the team’s 76-year history.
“Aiming for gold was too daunting,” Brailsford explained in an interview published in Harvard Business Review by Eben Harrell. “As an MBA, I had become fascinated with Kaizen and other process-improvement techniques. It struck me that we should think small, not big, and adopt a philosophy of continuous improvement through the aggregation of marginal gains. Forget about perfection; focus on progression and compound the improvements. “
His team searched for 1% improvements everywhere: they tested aerodynamics in wind tunnels, painted mechanics’ floors white to spot dust that might affect bike maintenance, hired a surgeon to teach proper hand-washing to prevent illness, and even brought their own mattresses to competitions to ensure consistent sleep quality.
The results? At both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics, British cyclists dominated, winning seven out of 10 available gold medals. This remarkable transformation came not through revolutionary technology or extraordinary talent, but through the disciplined application of small, continuous improvements.
Brailsford emphasized that delivering these small changes required relentless discipline. In an interview at London Business Forum Brailsford said “…you can make small change and be very very good at delivering those small changes…” which stresses the importance of persistence in application and follow-up perfection, small instances of kodawari, a Japanese term meaning the pursuit of perfection. This philosophy aligns perfectly with the principles of continuous improvement: if you discover a better way than what you originally practiced, you should adopt it and scale the improvement across the entire organization.
Even the most refined marginal improvements cannot compensate for weak fundamentals. All said about Kaizen assumes one cardinal fact to be in place which is that you have a process that works and sufficiently performs to achieve the intended result. Quoting from the same HBR interview dated October 30, 2015:
“Interestingly, when I moved from the track to the Tour de France, we didn’t get it right at all; our first few races were well below expectation. We took an honest look and realized that we had focused on the peas not the steak. We tried so hard with all the bells and whistles of marginal gains that our focus was too much on the periphery and not on the core. You have to identify the critical success factors and ensure they are in place, and then focus your improvements around them. That was a harsh lesson.”
These words from a real-world example offers profound wisdom. To get to the top of the mountain, it is true that you have to put one step in front of the other consecutively, progress towards your goal incrementally, however what if you don’t yet know how to walk?
