When you then couple a growth mindset with a marginal gains strategy, you get progress – continued progress. You see, it’s fair to say that most of us might question the point of aiming for just 1 per cent when we’re often encouraged to think BIG and aim high. Well, think of it this way: maintaining the motivation needed to keep progressing towards a big goal can be a tough challenge, and that’s where setting smaller stepping-stone goals comes in. Breaking down a big goal into smaller, more manageable goals can help to keep you moving in the right direction.
You only need to consider the number of New Year resolutions made each year. How many of them are achieved? Big goals such as “lose 3 stone” or “clear all debts” are often too far away and they quickly begin to feel unachievable. Progress generally stops by mid-February!
So, as educators, lets transfer that thinking to our pupils?
If we broke down everything you could think of to get the pupils you work to develop further, what would that be and look like? Then, how could you raise their performance in each factor by 1%.
Just a few points to consider:
• Environment: where best to work? Library? Study room? IT room?
• Time: how long to revise? What is optimum?
• Method: how should I revise? Teaching others? Past papers?
• Mindset: visualising success or failure? What drives you? Having a Growth Mindset?
• Diet/Exercise: are you getting the right balance?
Where do your pupils need to improve? What are the marginal gains your pupils can make? Are you facilitating situations to make that 1% increase?
For wider business and the view of your organisation the concept of marginal gains isn’t new and the benefits of marginal gains in business life of continuing to make small 1% improvements and these improvements soon add up to make a big difference – but it’s also one that we often fail to address on a regular basis.
It’s very easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making better decisions on a daily basis.
Improving that 1% doesn’t have to be immediately noticeable but it can be just as meaningful in the long term so, as a a leader in an organisation its worth considering. Striving for a mere 1% improvement on any given metric might – quite understandably – leave you wondering, why bother? Surely, a more lucrative approach would be to aim higher. 5%,
surely, at the very least – but even 5% has got nothing on improvements weighing in at 10%, 15% or even 25%. The danger of this strategy is you lose sight of the ultimate goal and the goal itself seems unachievable to many of your staff in the organisation.
In business life, many of the most innovative companies recognise the power of this approach and are putting this into action to make business targets and the goals of key leaders and teams seem achievable but by also encouging small increases in overall performance.