Learning Isn’t Linear. Neither Is Growth.
- Josh
- May 16
- 5 min read
We’re taught to think that growth happens in milestones. Finish the project. Get the promotion. Launch the course. But what if the best kind of progress isn’t obvious at all? What if it happens in quiet, almost invisible 1% shifts?
That’s the principle behind marginal gains. A philosophy made famous by Sir Dave Brailsford, who transformed British Cycling by focusing on dozens of tiny improvements. Instead of chasing breakthroughs, his team adjusted everything by 1%: handwashing technique, seat ergonomics, travel recovery. The result? Olympic dominance and Tour de France wins.
The same applies to learning—and to leadership. Real progress isn’t tidy or linear. It’s reflective, compounding, and often uncomfortable. Whether you're in a classroom, a boardroom, or leading a team, the path to better rarely follows a straight line.
The Myth of Big Leaps
We love a breakthrough story. The launch that changes everything. The overnight success. The leader who turned it all around. But most growth doesn’t arrive in a single moment—it builds slowly, behind the scenes, through repetition, reflection, and often, failure.
We’re conditioned to chase dramatic results: promotions, product launches, awards, accolades. But these are the outcomes, not the process. Real progress comes from small shifts, tested over time. It’s not glamorous—but it’s where the real work happens.
In education, this truth is everywhere. Learning isn’t a straight climb—it’s full of revision, setbacks, and second attempts. A student might misunderstand a concept, then return to it later with new insight. Growth shows up not in the first attempt, but in the willingness to revisit, to reframe, to try again.
Leaders, like educators, need to embrace this idea. If we expect our teams—or ourselves—to leap forward in perfect sequence, we’ll miss the value of the slow, cumulative gains that actually move us forward. Real learning, real growth, and real change? They’re rarely dramatic. But they’re always worth the wait.
Teachers Know Growth Is Messy
Great educators don’t expect perfection. They plan for progress. They know that real learning is rarely clean or predictable. It’s often clumsy, full of false starts and wrong turns. That’s not a failure of the learner, it’s a feature of the process.
Teachers design for this. They use formative assessment to check understanding along the way. Not to judge, but to guide. They build in feedback loops so students can reflect, adjust, and try again. They structure lessons using scaffolding; breaking complex tasks into manageable parts, and apply spaced repetition to strengthen memory over time.
Why? Because lasting learning doesn’t happen in one perfect pass. It happens through cycles; gradual improvements that build on previous effort.
This approach has powerful lessons outside the classroom. In leadership, project management, and team development, the same thinking applies. Instead of expecting flawless delivery, we should design for iteration. We should create space for trial, reflection, and recalibration.
The best teams, like the best learners, grow when they’re given permission to be unfinished. That’s where insight lives. That’s how capability is built.
Progress doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be designed for.
Leaders as Learning Designers
The best leaders don’t just direct, they design. Like great educators, they understand that growth isn’t something you impose from above. It’s something you create the conditions for.
Teachers don’t assume their students will get everything right the first time. They expect uncertainty. They plan for misunderstanding. They create systems that allow room to try, adjust, and try again. The strongest leaders do the same.
They plan for uncertainty, not control. They encourage experimentation and reward curiosity. They create safe-to-fail environments, where reflection replaces blame. They don’t just push outcomes, they shape cultures where learning is constant.
This is where the principle of marginal gains becomes powerful. The British Cycling team didn’t win by reinventing the sport. They improved every detail; just slightly. From aerodynamics to pillow quality, they asked:
Where can we be 1% better today?
Imagine if leaders asked the same question of their teams:
What’s one thing we could improve in our onboarding?
How could our meetings be 1% clearer, faster, more focused?
Is our feedback helping people learn, or just telling them what went wrong?
When you apply a learning designer’s mindset to leadership, you stop chasing perfect performance and start building sustainable, compounding progress.
Small gains, consistently applied, don’t just improve outcomes. They transform culture.
Failure, Feedback, and the Power of Tiny Shifts
Teachers know that failure isn’t the opposite of progress—it’s part of it. Every mistake is a data point. Every wrong answer is a chance to clarify, rethink, or reinforce. The key is what happens next: feedback, reflection, and iteration.
That mindset is central to the philosophy of marginal gains. Dave Brailsford’s British Cycling team didn’t focus on a single transformation, they looked for tiny, controllable improvements: handwashing technique to reduce illness, better mattresses for sleep, cleaner transport protocols. None of those changes made headlines. But together, they created a compounding effect that changed the outcome entirely.
The same principle applies in business and leadership. Instead of chasing sweeping reforms, ask:
Where can we improve by just 1%?
1% better team retrospectives: more focused, more honest
1% faster project handovers: fewer blockers, tighter transitions
1% clearer role clarity: less friction, more accountability
These changes don’t require big budgets or dramatic overhauls. They require a learning mindset—one that values incremental change, rapid iteration, and embedded reflection.
Like a teacher adjusting a lesson plan in real time, the best leaders are constantly tuning their approach. And over time, those tiny shifts add up to something powerful: capability, confidence, and lasting improvement.
Think Like a Teacher, Lead Like a Cyclist
Small improvements don’t feel revolutionary, but they are. When applied consistently, marginal gains reshape how teams work, learn, and grow. Here’s a practical toolkit to start applying that mindset today:
1 - Run retrospectives like learning check-ins
Don’t just review what happened. Explore what was learned, and what could be improved by 1%.
2 - Add one improvement to onboarding this quarter
A better checklist, clearer expectations, or a welcome message can make a measurable difference.
3 - Choose one small process to test, not overhaul
Refine how you brief tasks, hand over projects, or give updates. Tweak, don’t tear down.
4 - Separate doing the work from learning about the work
Build in moments for reflection and feedback that are distinct from delivery.
5 - Create visible space for 1% improvements
Use a whiteboard, Slack thread, or shared doc. Somewhere people can suggest and track tweaks.
6 - Track improvement over time, not just results
Celebrate the learning curve, not just the final output. Progress is a metric too.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s purposeful momentum. One shift at a time.
Big Wins Start With Small Moves
Growth doesn’t follow a straight line
and it rarely announces itself. The most powerful changes often come from the smallest shifts, applied consistently. That’s the heart of both great teaching and great leadership: knowing that progress takes time, reflection, and patience.
The philosophy of marginal gains reminds us that excellence isn’t built in leaps, it’s built in layers.
The fastest route to excellence is often the slowest-looking one.
Adopting a teacher’s mindset means expecting variation, designing for iteration, and valuing learning as much as results. It’s not about lowering the bar, it’s about building the runway for sustainable growth.
So don’t wait for a breakthrough. Look for the 1% change you can make today: in how you lead, reflect, deliver, or support. That’s how capability grows. That’s how culture shifts. That’s how teams, and people move forward.
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