Kaizen And The Aggregation Of Marginal Gains - How Every Little Counts
Channel: Practical Inspiration - Personal Growth & Success
Date: 2019-12-29

In this video on Practical Inspiration we look at the Kaizen Method and Aggregation Of Marginal Gains, as used by the British Olympics Cycling team in the 2016 Rio Olympics to achieve record breaking success. The concept of Kaizen is used in Japanese business to help incremental growth and improvement, while Marginal Gains, a concept termed by Cycling Instructor Dave Brailsford (who has gone on to do a Ted Talk), is very similar, used to immense success by the likes of Clive Woodward.

So in this video learn about the Kaizen method of continuous improvement, or the kaizen method, and how to use kaizen method and marginal gains to succeed in your own life. The idea is that every little counts (or every inch counts) and will help keep up motivation and build success habits.

The points covered include: 

1. Understand Marginal Gains
- Back in 2002 the British Olympic Cycling team had no significant history of success, only having achieved 1 gold medal in its 76 year history
- Thanks to the principles of Marginal Gains, in the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the British cycling team won 7 out of 10 gold medals 
- ...and from there have gone onto winning 3 of the last 4 Tour De France competitions
- All based on a simple principle, whereby the focus is to make small improvements in performance, rather than reinvent the wheel to try and revolutionise their way of working

2. Focus on Kaizen
- Kaizen is an approach used in Japanese business, whereby the focus is to make continuous and small improvements rather than sweeping changes
- This is done by identifying a number of areas where small improvements can be made within the business
- The ideas for change come from those who work in those areas, rather than Research and Development, so they are closer in understanding how these changes will impact them day to day
- This idea leads to the next point on how to work towards marginal gains

3. Take Ownership and Identify Processes
- In both Kaizen and the idea of marginal gains, it's up to individuals to try and take ownership and responsibility in their role
- That means to undertand their role and processes in as much detail as possible
- ...and spend time focusing on identifying areas that can be improved, made more efficient or where there are possibilities for small improvements
- The individual then needs to put together a list of areas for possible improvements, focusing on the small details

4. Find Improvements
- Once a list of areas to improve is collated, it's important to focus on how they can be improved
- These will be small changes, which in the short term may not show immediate or significant gains, but over a period of time will compound to have a large impact
- For example, for someone in a role where they type on a keyboard, they may explore the idea of learning to touch type
- Initially, this may not show significant improvements in how quickly they type, but when they add up the time saved in a day, week or month, the time gained can be significant

5. Continually Seek Improvement
- Once improvements are made, the key is to then continually review and improve the process, to keep getting the gains of small changes
- ...as the process is about incremental and continual growth, not just about immediate gain, but evolving over time
- Continuing with the typing example, this might be to move from touch typing to exploring possibilities of speech to text, avoiding the need to type at all
- So apply marginal gains in your work and life, as doing so could be the difference from being just another competitor, to becoming an all time great

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Music provided by HearWeGo
Artist: Day 7
Title: Skyrocket
Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ji27H3I-noY

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