Feature

My Secret Work Weapon: Small changes can add up to a significant improvement

Sir Clive Woodward said that England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003 not by making a few big changes, but by making several small improvements to how the team played.

My Secret Work Weapon: Small changes can add up to a significant improvement

By ensuring the players could pass a little more accurately or tackle a little harder, England moved ahead of the other teams.

The same concept can be applied in business. If everyone aims to make a small improvement, you keep getting better, and, after a while, you can look back and see how far you've travelled.

An example at Heathrow is that we want to make families' journeys better. Last Easter in T5 we trialled a play area, which got a fantastic reaction. So we introduced play areas into all the terminals for the summer and then Christmas.

Now we're building permanent areas in all terminals. Without the step-by-step learning and improving, we would probably never have introduced them.