The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains: Why 1% Better Each Day Changes Everything

Sometimes people think they can only focus on and engage in massive action to make any kind of change. And they don’t stick with the consistency of small marginal gains. Jason is very much one who advocates massive action in his life. But that’s not the only tool. We should have as many tools in our tool belt as we absolutely need to get done the task at hand.

We need to have massive action in our tool belt and we need to have small incremental gains, the aggregation of marginal gains, in our tool belt as well. We need to have that 1%, that discipline. And here’s why it matters more than most people realize.

The One Hundredth of a Second That Cost an Olympic Medal

Jason’s heart went out to one of the young Olympians named Torri Huske. Torri is an 18 year old swimmer from Arlington, Virginia. At the 2021 US Olympic team trials in Omaha, Nebraska, she swam a new American record time of 55.78 seconds in the 100 meter butterfly semifinal.

The next day on June 14th, she once again set a new American record of 55.66 seconds in the 100 meter butterfly finals. It was the third fastest time ever and she automatically qualified for a spot on the 2020 USA Olympic team. Competing in the 100 meter butterfly final on day three of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, she finished fourth. One one hundredth of a second behind bronze medalist Emma McKeon of Australia.

Can you imagine this poor girl’s disappointment by not medaling because of one one hundredth of a second? She had spent years of her life preparing for this one event. She had worked so hard and she had given it her all only to finish one one hundredth of a second out of a medal.

This is an example of how close the margins are sometimes and how small little differences can make in the overall structure of winning. This is the Olympic games. One one hundredth of a second matters in the Olympic games.

How does that tie to construction? Sometimes when we’re looking at efforts that we use for scaling, for operational excellence, for improving a project, for recovering a project, we think it’s always going to happen with something massive, with some effort that’s going to change everything on a turn, everything on a dime. It’s going to be something just amazing and massive.

But in construction, we need to liken our efforts, our scaling, our improvement, our cultural changes, our lean journeys to this one one hundredth of a second story. Not focused on the possibility of losing or placing fourth. But the fact that one one hundredth of a second in this case meant not obtaining an Olympic medal. And failing to aggregate small marginal gains on a construction project may keep us from the full results because small things matter greatly.

How British Cycling Went From Mediocrity to Domination in Five Years

One of the Olympic events Jason found interesting to watch was cycling. Great Britain was ranked number one in cycling at the recent Summer Olympic Games and won a total of 12 medals, six of which were gold. However, they have not always been so dominant in cycling. The fate of British cycling changed in 2003. The organization which was the governing body for professional cycling in Great Britain hired Dave Brailsford as its new performance director.

At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had endured nearly 100 years of mediocrity. Since 1908 until that time, British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic Games and they had fared even worse in cycling’s biggest race, the Tour de France. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the event.

In fact, the performance of British riders had been so underwhelming that one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear.

Brailsford had been hired to put British cycling on a new trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to the strategy that he referred to as the aggregation of marginal gains. This was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything that you do.

Brailsford said the whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything that you could think of that goes into riding a bike and then improve it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.

The Hundreds of One Percent Improvements That Created World Champions

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team:

• They redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for better grip.
• They asked riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding.
• They used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete responded to a particular workout.
• The team tested various fabrics in a wind tunnel and had their outdoor riders switch to indoor racing suits which proved to be lighter and more aerodynamic.

But they didn’t stop there. Brailsford and his team continued to find one percent improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas:

• They tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery.
• They hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold.
• They determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider.
• They 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.

As these and hundreds of other small improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined.

Just five years after Brailsford took over, the British cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing where they won an outstanding 60% of the gold medals available. Four years later, when the Olympic Games came to London, the Brits raised the bar as they set nine Olympic records and seven world records. That same year, Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France.

The next year his teammate, Chris Froome, won the race and he would go on to win again in 2015, 2016, and 2017, giving the British team five Tour de France victories in six years. During the 10 year span from 2007 to 2017, British cyclists won 178 world championships and 66 Paralympic gold medals and captured five Tour de France victories in what is widely regarded as the most successful run in cycling history. They continued to dominate and won 12 medals in Tokyo. How does this happen? How does a team of previously ordinary athletes transform into world champions with tiny changes that, at first glance, would only make a modest difference at best?

Why Small Improvements Accumulate Into Remarkable Results

Why do small improvements accumulate into such remarkable results and how can we replicate this approach in our lives? It is easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.

Too often we convince ourselves that massive success is only accomplished through massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.

Meanwhile, improving 1% isn’t particularly notable. Sometimes it isn’t even noticeable, but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is outstanding. Here’s how the math works out. If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you will end up 37 times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1% worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.

What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more. When Jason or Tony Robbins talk about massive action, they’re talking about massive mental action to move forward and to take action. And this action sometimes will take the form of getting 1% better each day. What it takes for the mind to mentally prepare and queue up is massive. What it takes for us to actually make improvement on a physical level is very minor. This 1% can aggregate into really remarkable results.

How the Aggregation of Marginal Gains Applies to Construction

When you are attempting to improve your field operations, it’s going to be from the aggregation of marginal gains. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Cleanliness improvements where you clean the site a little better each day until it becomes a standard everyone maintains.
• Organization improvements where you label one more thing, stage one more area, create one more system until chaos becomes order.
• Safety improvements where you correct one more hazard, hold one more safety talk, enforce one more standard until incidents drop.
• Huddling with workers more consistently, aligning your meeting systems a little better, getting the team coordinated incrementally.
• Making a focus on quality by doing daily quality, safety, and correction checks to make sure you’re outpacing entropy on a constant basis.

When you’re trying to improve your business, it’s going to be a little bit of finances over here. It’s going to be a little bit of marketing over there. It’s going to be a little bit of culture over here. You need to continue to move forward with the aggregation of marginal gains.

Someone once told Jason there’s too much stuff in the superintendent book. There’s too much here. How can you simplify down what a construction manager does into just three things? Jason got annoyed. Actually, he got a lot annoyed because in construction, unfortunately, there’s no way to simplify down what we do. It’s really about the aggregation of marginal gains in everything that we do. We get to be professionals and to improve everywhere possible.

Being a PM is complex. Being a project superintendent is complex. Being a PE and a field engineer is complex. And if we want to improve, it comes from mastery and it comes from the aggregation of marginal gains and doing what we do better each day. It requires us taking our lean journey. If we’re improving our business, our projects, our company, anything that we’re doing, it will come from the aggregation of marginal gains.

Think about British cycling. They didn’t find one magic solution. They found hundreds of one percent improvements. Better bike seats. Heated overshorts. Biofeedback sensors. Wind tunnel tested fabrics. Different massage gels. Hand washing techniques taught by a surgeon. The right pillows and mattresses. A white painted truck interior to spot dust.

None of those things alone created world champions. But all of them together, accumulated over time, transformed 100 years of mediocrity into the most successful run in cycling history.

That’s what happens in construction when you commit to the aggregation of marginal gains. You don’t need one massive breakthrough. You need hundreds of small improvements that compound over time. One percent better in planning. One percent better in coordination. One percent better in quality. One percent better in safety. One percent better in communication.

Do that every day for a year and you won’t be one percent better. You’ll be 37 times better. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why is 1% improvement better than waiting for one massive breakthrough?

Because it’s easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements daily. We convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action, so we put pressure on ourselves to make earth shattering improvements everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving 1% isn’t particularly notable and sometimes isn’t even noticeable, but it’s far more meaningful in the long run. If you get 1% better each day for one year, you end up 37 times better. What starts as a small win accumulates into something much more.

Q: How did British cycling go from 100 years of mediocrity to world domination?

Through the aggregation of marginal gains. Dave Brailsford’s philosophy was searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything. If you broke down everything that goes into riding a bike and improved it by 1%, you get a significant increase when you put them all together. They made hundreds of improvements: redesigned bike seats, heated overshorts, biofeedback sensors, wind tunnel tested fabrics, massage gel testing, hand washing training from a surgeon, optimized pillows and mattresses, white painted truck interiors to spot dust. Five years later they won 60% of gold medals at Beijing Olympics. Ten years later they had the most successful run in cycling history.

Q: What does the aggregation of marginal gains look like in construction?

Cleanliness a little better each day. Organization where you label one more thing until chaos becomes order. Safety where you correct one more hazard until incidents drop. Huddling with workers more consistently. Aligning meeting systems incrementally. Daily quality, safety, and correction checks to outpace entropy. A little bit of finance improvement, a little marketing, a little culture. It’s not one massive breakthrough. It’s hundreds of small improvements that compound. One percent better in planning, coordination, quality, safety, communication every day. Do that for a year and you’re not 1% better. You’re 37 times better.

Q: Why can’t we simplify construction management down to just three things?

Because in construction there’s no way to simplify down what we do. It’s really about the aggregation of marginal gains in everything we do. Being a PM is complex. Being a superintendent is complex. Being a field engineer is complex. If we want to improve, it comes from mastery and the aggregation of marginal gains, doing what we do better each day. British cycling didn’t win with three things. They won with hundreds of one percent improvements. That’s how construction excellence works too.

Q: How does one one hundredth of a second relate to construction projects?

Torri Huske lost an Olympic medal by one one hundredth of a second after years of preparation. In construction, we think improvement always happens with something massive that changes everything on a dime. But small things matter greatly. Failing to aggregate small marginal gains on a construction project may keep us from full results. One percent better bike seats didn’t create champions alone. But hundreds of one percent improvements accumulated into world domination. The same applies to construction. Small improvements in cleanliness, organization, safety, quality, coordination compound over time into remarkable results.

On we go.