The Power of Marginal Gains

Hello, it's Mike Richards here from the treasury recruitment company. I hope you're enjoying the treasury career corner. If you are great news, perhaps you give us a rating on itunes or wherever you consume your podcast content. This means that even more treasury professionals can benefit from finding out, or by finding out about how treasurers have achieved their career goals. The link to rate our show will list at the bottom of our show notes. And please remember as well, the show itself is as much about you as it is about us. There are specific questions you want us to ask or there's feedback you want to give. Please drop me an email. My direct email is mikeresuryrecruitment.com inventibly enough. But anyway, that's enough from me.

Let's get on with the show. The power of marginal gains so all of you lot apparently are busy treasury professionals, but you can still make the time to come out here. It's education, I know, and it may seem overwhelming or time consuming to do any of the things that I've recommended. So I want to introduce this very simple concept. I didn't make it up. So has anyone. And I will buy a beer for anyone. That's quite unusual in itself. Not you knows who that person is and you can't answer either. Anyone? Sorry, Jeff. Jeff. No, no, this is Dave Brailsford or Sir Dave to his friends. British cycling team performance director. He came up with this idea of marginal gains. He joined the British cycling team in performance direction 2003. Before he arrived, professional cyclists in Britain had only ever won one gold medal in the Olympics in 110 years. Sorry, ever. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France. They were so bad that manufacturers would not sell them their bikes because they were worried it would affect sales. It's true. This is actually true.

Exactly.

And it was just they were, please give me a bike. But he became focused on this strategy and what he called the aggregation. Marginal gains technical phrase. And it was the quest to find tiny improvements in everything he did. All you do. If you break down everything you think of when riding a bike and improve it by 1% cumulatively, you'll get significant increase when you put them all together. So him and his coaches, they started to make a few adjustments. They redesigned the bike seats. First of all, the riders wore electrically heated shorts to maintain bum muscle temperature. They identified ideal pillows and mattresses and got them transported wherever they went. So they got the best night's sleep. Small margins every time. Hundreds of these soon accumulated. He set out to win a Tour de France within five years. He didn't do it. They did it in three. They then went on to win 60% of the gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. Nine Olympic records, seven world records at London Olympics same year. Bradley Wiggins, first British cyclist to ever win the Tour de France. Following year, Chris Froome, 15, 16, 17. He was actually going for it this year for the fourth time in a row. His riding partner, Geraint Thomas, he won it instead. And their success, as they put it down, was making 1% changes. So where does this all apply to you guys? What if you were to make one of those changes, put a better photo on LinkedIn? What about if you were to think about talking to a mentor that might.

Actually help you in the past?

So maybe it's setting your next goal and the stepping stones that we talked about of how to get there, developing your skills. Do you need to do some more study? As I said, reviewing your LinkedIn profile, adding a bit of content there it will actually also then helping with your consistent branding, getting the coach or mentor developing decent elevator pitch when you're on the train home tonight, thinking actually if I meet someone, what I should have said was this, this, this. Imagine the effect all of these could have on your treasury career. Hope you've enjoyed it. And I look forward particularly to this side of the room who are very happy all buy me a beer in the bar later. Thank you.