Six honest

What’s in a name?

Projects tend to be given names, as do project teams, in fact finding an appropriate name is one of the best ways to get a project group to start to think and operate like a team.
The name matters, possibly more than we realise. Esteem and identity can be wrapped up in names. Just look at the London 2012 “Games Makers”. They could have been called a whole host of other things, but Games Makers set the tone, and their actions and behaviours lived up to their billing. Well done to all of the Games Makers at London 2012.
How something is named and defined is part of what creates the barriers or acceptance in the minds of people.
I was Business Process Manager for Nikon UK for many years, and try as I might, explaining the role was always challenging. And then one very early Saturday morning when I was watching the extraordinary cycling of Team GB at the  Bejing Olympics I half heard a phrase that lit me up, “the aggravation of marginal gains”.
It lit me up because the continuous improvement initiative that I was championing at Nikon was proving difficult to communicate and to deliver. I knew the results that we could achieve would be worth it but the challenge of making any progress was proving annoyingly difficult. Now here were the super successful Team GB expressing the same difficulty “the aggravation of marginal gains” and they were demonstrating exceptional results. After some coffee and a bit more alertness on my part I realised that what they were actually referring to was not the aggravation, but the aggregation of marginal gains. I chuckled to myself and thought, actually both are correct. The aggregation is what you want and the aggravation is what you have to go through.
So on that Saturday morning a new plan of action was hatched. Business process improvements would become “marginal gains”. Getting any kind of improvements in the important parts of the business would be worth it. No more striving for the one big thing, the aggregation of little things, marginal gains, would move us on towards our bigger goals.
That’s what we did, in our own company specific, non prescriptive way. We got traction and made gains.
What did I learn that early Saturday morning four years ago?
Marginal gains is an easier and stickier concept than business process improvement.
Aggravation and aggregation sound very similar and are both applicable to making any size of improvements.
Sport can be more than a metaphor for business, it can offer directly appilicable strategy and tactics.
What have I learned from London 2012?
That the secret squirrel club and the marginal gains team of cyclings Team GB are very very good at defining goals, and closing performance gaps.
Their example continues to provide a fantastic approach that businesses of all shapes and sizes can adopt.

Call business process improvements “marginal gains”, find them in business wherever you can, (get someone in short term to help you do it), execute well and performance will improve, possibly to gold medal or podium standard.
The aggravation of marginal gains aggregation is worth it.