When Sir Dave Brailsford took over British Cycling in the early 2000s, the team was nowhere near the podium. His strategy? Don’t fix everything at once. Instead, find small, consistent ways to improve; just 1% better across hundreds of areas. Better seats. Better pillows to improve sleep. Better handwashing techniques. New aerodynamic suits.
This approach, known as the Theory of Aggregation of Marginal Gains, led to the pinnacle of achievements in the sport of cycling, Olympic domination and Tour de France victories. It’s a lesson in compound impact: tiny optimizations, over time, can change everything.
And while your business might not be racing for the yellow jersey, the same principle applies, especially in how you use data. In this post, we explore how small, strategic improvements in data quality, product decisions, and team behavior can lead to major business outcomes.
1. Small Tweaks in Product Can Lead to Big Wins
When product teams think optimization, they often think big: full redesigns, new features, huge roadmap pivots. But in many cases, it’s the smaller improvements informed by behavioral data that actually move the needle.
Think:
- Simplifying an onboarding flow by removing one unnecessary step
- Rewording CTAs based on A/B test learnings
- Adjusting the timing of in-app nudges based on user activity trends
Each of these changes might only lift a metric by 0.5% or 1%. But stacked together across a user journey, they can result in meaningful gains in retention, engagement, or conversion.
The mindset shift: Don’t wait for perfection. Test. Observe. Action it.
2. User Frustrations Start With Smaller Trigger Points
The most powerful product insights are not always found in reports and documents. They often come from observing tiny user behaviors that suggest unmet needs or friction points.
- Users repeatedly skipping a feature? It might need rethinking. [Mixpanel’s Session Replays…..here’s looking at you 👀]
- A tiny flicker on your site that hasn’t been addressed yet? It might need action
- One browser or device segment has a lower completion rate? That’s a fixable edge case.
The earlier you can spot these small signals, the faster you can course-correct or come up with smarter ways to deal with repeated friction points.
Small insight → strategic action → outsized impact.
3. Data Quality Improvements Compound Over Time
Every organization deals with messy data. This could involve misaligned events, missing definitions, or dashboards built on inaccurate data. The solution isn’t always a full rebuild. Instead, focus on continuous micro-improvements:
- Working with business teams to understand what they want to achieve from the data they have and focus their efforts on clean up accordingly.
- Standardize naming conventions across one department first – use that template across different departments based on success
- Flag and remove outdated metrics from dashboards that no longer guide decisions
These actions may seem small, but they reduce decision friction, increase trust, and unlock better insights, all of which fuel better outcomes.
Getting cleaner data is not a sprint. It’s a steady, ongoing effort.
4. Better Strategy Starts with One Better Question
Strategic shifts can start small, too. Embedding data in everyday decisions doesn’t have to involve a full transformation.
- Start one weekly meeting with a key metrics review
- Add one “what does the data say?” question into planning sessions
- Pause to validate gut decisions with data even once a week
Small behavior changes like these can shift your team’s default mode from intuition to insight.
Tiny strategic shifts shape long-term culture.
5. Team Literacy >> Tools / Dashboards / Anything else
At the Vibe Marketing Tech Fest last month, one takeaway stood out to us: data literacy across all departments is still a huge gap. You can have the best stack in the world, but if only two people know how to use it, it’s wasted potential.
Here’s our 1% take on it:
- Host “Lunch and Learn” Sessions monthly. For example, the data team could present a 30-minute internal walkthrough of a dashboard and explain why those metrics matter. The rest of the time? Bonding over pizza.
- Create one-pager “cheat sheets” for your key analytics tools
- Invite someone from outside the data team to co-present on a metric – understand their perspective on it and where you can offer support as the data team
The goal is to create shared ownership of data which can be achieved through micro-interventions like these.
A small boost in literacy can lead to empowered teams and better decisions.
6. Start Solving Fragmentation by Understanding Ownership
Many organizations struggle not because they lack data, but because their data is scattered across platforms, teams, and formats and no one knows how to stitch it together.
Solving this doesn’t start with a full integration plan. It starts with clarity:
- Who owns which data sets?
- What tools are collecting what data? Are these tools integrated?
- Is your team aware of overlaps or gaps in the tech stack?
Start small:
- Map out your core tools and the data they collect
- Identify one area where data is duplicated or missing
- Bring the right people together to talk through the fragmentation and create small, actionable plans for teams to understand the impact of fragmented data,
- Everyone in the team should understand their place in the broader data ecosystem; what data comes to them to get their job done and what data they are creating and passing on for someone else’s job to be done
Fragmented data is often a people and visibility problem, not just a technical one.
Build Your Own Culture of 1% Gains
The most successful data-driven teams move smarter, more consistently. They treat data as an everyday advantage, not a once-a-quarter report.
By focusing on the 1%
- a more relevant goal / KPI,
- a fixed tag,
- a clearer question,
your organization can unlock a compounding advantage that outpaces competitors who wait for a “big moment.”
So the next time you wonder how to move the needle: start small. Start now and keep moving forward.
👉 Ready to find your 1%? Let’s talk about how small, strategic data improvements can fuel big wins for your business. Contact us now.