What are your 1 percents? Lessons from the NextGen Planners Conference

15/07/24 · By Joseph Williams

Liverpool played host to the NextGen Planners ‘Elements’ Conference for 2024 and involved everything from panel discussions to TED-style talks. But it was the opening keynote from Winter Olympic gold medallist, Amy Williams, which contained a key takeaway for us at ZeroKey.

Amy is a former skeleton racer who won gold for Britain at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 – becoming the first British individual gold medallist at a Winter Olympics for 30 years. And it was the underlying message throughout her keynote which resonated most with what we are seeking to achieve at ZeroKey.

She asked the question: “What are your 1 percents?”

As Amy explained, over a period of 4 years she continuously made small improvements to her training and general life which would all add up to make a significant difference when she eventually won gold – no detail was too small or improvement unnecessary.

The term ‘1 percent’ or ‘marginal gains’ has become synonymous with British sport, largely thanks to Sir Dave Brailsford. Brailsford believed that “if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

If we apply this logic to our profession – and more specifically towards the issue of manually keying data – what small incremental improvements can be made that will add up to make a significant difference?

For example, using our web-extension to simply copy/paste an individual element of data may only save you 5 seconds. Or utilising the option to select a Quick Action may only save you 10 seconds. Individually, the time saving is not huge. But when combined, it could make a significant difference over the course of a week, a month, and a year.

And this is the message we wish to promote. Achieving our mission of integrating technology and eliminating the need to manually key data will be a journey. We won’t achieve this with our initial MVP. But if we can help you save 1 percent here and 1 percent there, and continue to iterate to save you more, it will soon add up to make a significant difference.

At the top of this page is an extract from our ‘An introduction to ZeroKey’ demo video. If you have any questions or would like to find out more, please do not hesitate to get in touch. You can also register your interest and stay up to date on everything ZeroKey (including our beta programme).

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