Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most SME strategies are really just revenue wishlists with no diagnosis behind them. Here is the three-part test that separates a real strategy from a wish, and what to fix first if yours fails it.
Short answer: McDonald's shows that consistent growth comes from a few simple, written, repeatable routines, not from heroics. For a 20-person business that means shrinking the menu, defining the standards customers actually feel, writing down the moments that decide quality, training to them, and checking them every week. You do not need franchise scale. You need your best day to become your normal day.
McDonald's tells its own story on its corporate history page. In 1948 the McDonald brothers introduced the Speedee Service System. When their San Bernardino restaurant reopened as a self-service drive-in, the menu was reduced to nine items. That one decision made everything else simpler: faster service, tighter training and fewer things to get wrong.
In 1955 Ray Kroc opened a restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, for McDonald's System, Inc., a predecessor of McDonald's Corporation. Fred Turner, hired in 1956 as a counter man, is credited on the same page with defining the quality, service and cleanliness that continue to this day. And in 1961, Hamburger University opened in the basement of a restaurant in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
McDonald's was one of the global brands Kevin worked on during his agency years, so he has seen from the inside how much of the brand lives in routines rather than slogans. Notice what the early system did not rely on: a heroic owner. It relied on a short menu, defined standards and training, all written down.
Most owners assume systems are for franchises. In a 20-person business, the owner often is the system: they know which customers need a call, which jobs need a second check and which promise was made in the hallway last Tuesday. That works until the owner is on a plane, sick or simply busy growing the business. Then quality drops, and the owner is pulled back in to fix it.
The fix is not a 200-page manual. It is a handful of short routines that protect what customers value most.
Use this as a checklist. It works in any industry, from a landscaping firm to a software reseller.
Start with lesson one. Cutting the menu frees up the time and attention that every other lesson needs.
A simple 90-day rhythm keeps this realistic. In the first month, choose your three core offers and write your three standards. In the second month, draft the five one-page routines with the people who do the work, because they know where the process really breaks. In the third month, train everyone on them, start the weekly ten-minute review and drop anything the team ignores. Owners who try to write everything at once usually stall. Owners who ship one routine a week usually finish.
A system makes your service consistent. It does not decide who you should serve, why they should choose you over a competitor, or where your next dollar of growth should come from. A perfectly consistent business with a blurry offer still struggles.
This is where an outside, cross-industry view helps. Owners in the same industry read the same books, attend the same conferences and copy each other's habits. Borrowing a routine from a business that looks nothing like yours, such as a fast-food kitchen, is a quick way to see which of your habits are choices rather than rules. When you are surrounded by everything in your industry, it is hard to see the wood for the trees.
Kevin D'Ambros-Smith is based in Auckland, New Zealand, and works with US owners online. That is not a claim that an outside coach beats an American one. Plenty of excellent US coaches and advisors exist. It is simply a different vantage point, built on big-brand thinking and applied with small-business clarity to the one constraint holding your growth back.
Lina of Good Gravy described working with Kevin this way:
"Pragmatic way of looking at things so what seems impossible becomes very possible."
Lina, Good Gravy. Individual results vary and depend on the business and the work the owner puts in.
Kevin D'Ambros-Smith is a business coach and advisor who has coached 200+ businesses one-on-one across 30+ industries, after a career at DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi and Saatchi and founding nine companies. He works with US owners online.
No. Start with one page for each of the five moments that matter most to your customers. Add detail only where mistakes keep happening.
A first version of the five one-page routines can be drafted in a few weeks. Give the routines a full 90 days of use before judging them, and revise them as you learn.
Good systems protect the human parts. When the routine handles the basics, your team has more time for the personal touches customers remember.
No. Operating systems such as EOS and Scaling Up set a management rhythm for the whole company. The five lessons above are simpler: they protect what your customers value most. Many owners use both.
Then fix the constraint first. Work out whether it is customers, offer, pricing or delivery before you write a single routine.
Book a free 30-minute call with Kevin. It runs online across US time zones, with no obligation. Or join The Inside Track newsletter for practical growth ideas twice a week. Kevin's online programs are launching soon, and The Inside Track is the place to hear first. Not sure what kind of help you need? Try the short questionnaire.
Kevin D'Ambros-Smith, Simple-Growth
Ready to put these systems to work in your own business? Do that, and you become the owner whose best day is simply your normal day.