Will it make the boat go faster?

In January 2013 Toto Wolff became Managing Partner, Team Principal & CEO of Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 Team.

Mercedes had only entered Formula 1 as a new constructor in 2010. The team had a complex history and struggled during the early years of its introduction.

When Toto first went to meet with the Mercedes team, to discuss his new role, he was unimpressed with the reception area at the factory. He noticed an old Daily Mail strewn in many different pieces, and a dirty cup with dried out coffee stains sitting on the table.

He raised these concerns with his new team. They laughed them off and suggested a clean coffee cup wouldn’t improve the engineering of a racing car.

Toto disagreed. He believed that standards of excellence should reflect on everything you do. High standards become ingrained into a winning mentality.

Between 2014 & 20201 Mercedes-AMG won a record eight consecutive Formula 1 Constructors Championships.

The Power Of Tiny Gains

Sir Dave Brailsford was Performance Director at UK cycling from 1997 until 2014. Under his leadership, Team GB are regarded as the most successful cycling team in modern history.

Sir Dave is also the Team Principle at Ineos Grenadiers Cycling Team. That’s a position he’s held since 2010.

In the first 110 editions of the Tour de France, a British rider had never come close to winning the race. There’s a famous story of a bike manufacturer who didn’t want British riders to be seen on their bikes, because it would hurt bike sales.

Dave Brailsford led Team Sky to six British winners over a seven-year period between 2012 and 2018.

When Sir Dave arrived at UK cycling and Team Ineos, he implemented a philosophy which has now become widely popularised in leadership culture. The philosophy is known as ‘Marginal Gains‘.

The principle of Marginal Gains came from the idea that if you broke down everything you can think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, it adds up to a significant increase in performance.

In fact, if you improve your current performance level by 1% every day for the next year, you will be almost 38 times more effective than you are today.

Know What To Focus On

The men’s Eight is considered the flagship event at a regatta meeting. This is due to the raw power and speed of the boat.

At the 2000 Olympics the men’s Eight race was filled with the usual strong competitors ” USA, Australia, Netherlands, Croatia & Romania. Also, in the final, was a relatively new and inexperienced Great Britain team.

Very few people backed the British team, as they hadn’t won this event since 1912. It’s an even that requires high amounts of fitness, endurance, skill, technique, and a willingness to suffer.

In the 12 months leading up to the Olympics, the British crew were determined to erase their unfavourable history and cross the line in first place.

They recognised that to achieve such a crazy goal, they would need to implement concrete, daily habits. So before doing anything, they asked themselves one simple question:..

‘Will it Make the Boat Go Faster?‘

Yes, they went on to win the race.

One of the crew, Ben Hunt-Davis, has since written a successful book sharing their story.

What won the race was not just the talent, supremely focused preparation, and hard work, but also the daily actions, thought processes, setting goals:. and then stretching them.

Elite performers don’t simply work hard, they work differently.

Identify Your Tiny Goals

When I work with a new client, my job is to prevent then from becoming obsessed with analysing one aspect of their life and then searching for a major improvement.

Improving one element is unlikely to make a material impact on your results or experience. It’s not long before a plateau is reached. And you end up quickly frustrated.

Making noticeable and quick improvements to your performance, requires that you look at everything you do, and then making incremental improvements.

Doing everything a little bit better, and maintaining that focus for a sustained period, requires great discipline. It requires that you begin to show up as a different version of yourself.

Most people aren’t interested in maintaining that kind of discipline. So, they quickly give up, and accept the results they are getting.

If you’re committed to making real lasting improvement, try this:

• Make a list of 10 things that will make your boat go faster.
• Identify the change you will commit to, in order to make a small improvement to each item you have identified.
• Monitor your progress every day for at least 60 days (preferably longer).

I promise that if you maintain this you will achieve noticeable lasting results. I just can’t tell you when you’ll begin to notice them. But that’s also part of the fun.