Lessons from Sports

World Cup, Tour de France & Transformation

Posted on July 11, 2026  | 4 minutes  | Stefan Zils

Norway topped the medal table at the Winter Olympics and reached the World Cup quarterfinals. With just 5.6 million people, Norway proves that smaller countries can still achieve world-class results. Their achievements go beyond winter sports and extend into many fields. What makes the Norwegian approach to sports so effective?

Norway’s Sports System

Norway allocates 64% of its lottery funds to professional sports and community sport. For kids and young people, the main focus is on motivation, inclusion, and having fun, not competition or results — a principle anchored in Norway’s Children’s Rights in Sports. Children can try different sports without stress, which is why 93% take part in organized activities. Top athletes train at Olympiatoppen, where Olympic and Paralympic athletes receive equal, wide-ranging support. At Olympiatoppen, athlete training is carefully monitored, and training results will be shared. Monitoring helps avoid overtraining. Olympiatoppen thinks not in terms of a single sport; it tries to be interdisciplinary.

Marginal Gains at British Cycling

Another example is the British cycling team. According to the book “Atomic Habits,” when Dave Brailsford became team leader, he followed the philosophy of marginal gains: making small improvements, like controlling dust, improving athletes’ sleep, and tweaking bike equipment and clothing. For instance, painting the interiors of trucks white made dust easier to spot, which helped keep high-tech race bikes in top condition for competitions. These small steps helped the team win six Tour de France titles from 2012 to 2018 and succeed at the Beijing and London Olympics. However, Brailsford’s time as leader also ended with problems, including toxic leadership.

Agile - Atomic Habits - Kaizen

Methods like Kaizen, Total Quality Management (TQM), Agile, and Atomic Habits all encourage continuous improvement. Here’s how they work:

  • Kaizen, a term from TQM, stands for continuous improvement (CIP) and the involvement of all employees. The goal is to consistently improve workflows and eliminate waste (Muda). TQM is based on data-driven processes.
  • Agile: Agile methodologies follow a similar approach: teams continuously seek improvements. In Scrum, the team uses the “retrospective” ritual to emphasize what works and what does not in the sprint.
  • Atomic Habits: The 1% method is about making small, steady changes that help build good habits and routines, and dropping the ones that don’t help.

Thoughts

To look at sports differently, I’ll start with my own experience. I didn’t enjoy sports at school because achievements were ignored. Later, I got myself into endurance sports and learned to train on my own, without any pressure, and at my own pace. My favorite activities have helped me understand my limits, plan ahead, face new challenges, and adapt. These are skills that are also useful in digital projects.

Norway shows that it’s better to inspire motivation and offer opportunities to many people rather than focus only on a few top talents. Olympiatoppen’s interdisciplinary approach runs counter to siloed, departmental thinking. Silo thinking is a major problem in digital projects, and it often causes friction when processes are optimized.

The British cycling team shows that small gains can help teams reach the top. Their story also reminds us how important fair leadership is. In business, people matter most, and toxic leadership can be as harmful as poor processes.

In digital settings, these lessons suggest that people, such as users, should be encouraged to experiment with generative AI. Their first attempts might not create perfect IT systems, but their prototypes can lead to better, more user-oriented interfaces and improved processes. This way helps find new solutions, spot inefficiencies, and discover ways to improve.

Continuous improvement, whether using Kaizen, Agile, or Atomic Habits, helps teams evolve — and it is the heart of successful change management. Using data-driven processes makes this even more effective.

Further Reading