Continuous Improvement

When I worked solely as a performance nutritionist, the ‘marginal gains’ theory established by Dave Brailsford and British Cycling was all the rage

James Dyson famously created 5,127 prototypes of his first vaccuum cleaner before he was satisfied

Before that, the ‘Toyota Production System’ used their ‘kaizen’ philosophy (change for better) to improve production

Nearly 40 years prior to Toyota’s continuous improvement focus was Henry Ford, who revolutionised the assembly line and became the first person to systemise the production of cars, taking production time from 12 hours to 93 minutes.

I’m not going to use all of these as a tidy, unblemished example of why you need to continuously improve what you’re doing

I want to speak about the conditions that allow for this

These improvements look logical and neat, but in real time they’re messy, humiliating and require almost non-stop failure

The survival of these methods owe as much to the irrationally obsessive nature of the people involved, as they do to the changes themselves.

It’s easy to point the finger and look at things outside of you as to why you’re not maybe where you want to be

‘They told me this would work, they guaranteed that if I did A, then I would get B’

Given their lack of crystal ball, were you silly to believe this guarantee?

Instead, turn inwards for a minute.

Do you have the faith in what you’re doing, the belief that it’s right for you

And the determination that it’s a matter of when this works, not if?

Could you stomach 5,127 failures before the win?