PETER Roper reflects on what small businesses can learn from the success of Team GB at the Rio Olympics that resulted in a record haul of medals.

IF you are like me then the last few days of watching the Olympics have been simply fantastic. Team GB have smashed their targets and we have, for many armchair fans, new life-long heroes such as Laura Trott and Jason Kenny in the cycling.

The Team GB cycling team have dominated the event by using three key things to the maximum:

Firstly they have made the most of lottery funding to professionalise all areas of the sport. At every opportunity team GB athletes took the opportunity to thank the Lottery because without it they knew they would be second best.

Secondly they have taken a ruthless approach to who has been funded and when. The team headquarters at Manchester has polarised opinion but undoubtedly the athletes have competed against themselves on a daily basis and were absolutely used to the competitive environment of the Olympics. In fact the swimming team changed their approach from 2012, where they didn’t perform as well as hoped, to a more competitive stance within the squad and it showed in the results in Rio.

Thirdly Team GB has taken a marginal gain approach whilst other nations are quietly muttering about dark forces – how else could we have such a fabulous result for our team and its members?

To me, it’s quite simple: the law of marginal gains might be relatively new in sport but in a family business it’s always been there and always will be. In laymen’s terms, they leave no stone unturned in their day-to-day quest to be the best.

Family businesses have to be exactly the same as Team GB, always looking to improve service, always looking to marginalise costs, always looking for better profitability, always looking for better methods of working – the list goes on and on.

Am I surprised that this approach works for Team GB?

No, other than I’m surprised it’s taken this long for Olympic teams to catch on to this natural way of working, after all, family businesses are always a team effort, so we already understand that we need to improve all areas of the team and strive to keep striving at all times.

So how about your business?

Is it striving for marginal gains?