Pressure. Purpose. Pivot.

A Practical Strategy Playbook for SMEs—Inspired by Patrick Lambie during his talk at the MANCOSA Jacaranda FM Business Breakfast

High performance looks glamorous from a distance. Up close, it's routine, clarity, and humility under pressure. That's what struck us listening to Patrick Lambie reflect on his career: the quiet disciplines behind the clutch moments, the honesty required to accept setbacks, and the courage to build a second act. Swap a rugby stadium for your factory floor, consulting practice, clinic, or retail store, and the parallels are clear. Winning—consistently—comes from how you run the week, how you decide, and how you recover.

At hyperLOOP, we help SMEs turn strategy into a working operating system. Here's how Lambie's lessons translate into a practical, sector-agnostic approach you can deploy this quarter.

Clarity beats noise

In the biggest moments, Lambie narrowed his attention to a single cue. Not five priorities. One. Business is no different. Growth stalls when everything looks important. Teams drown in "quick wins," leaders add one more initiative, and the signal disappears in the noise.

Pick the one outcome that matters now and make it visible—on agendas, on dashboards, in stand-ups. If you run a construction firm, it might be "close out Site A snag list by Friday"; for a healthcare practice, "reduce first-visit wait times to under 10 minutes"; for a retailer, "lift repeat purchases from loyalty members by 15% this month." Everything else becomes either support for that outcome or a conscious "not now." Strategic focus is as much about what you won't do as what you will.

Design expectations, don't inherit them

There's a paradox in performance: the "easy" kick can feel harder than the difficult one, because the fear of messing up creeps in. Businesses experience the same thing when leaders label tasks "quick," "simple," or "low-hanging fruit." The work still needs framing—scope, time, and the quality bar.

Resist vague assignments. Define what "good enough" looks like, name a single owner, and give the task a realistic time box. The marketing manager asked to "whip up a landing page" will deliver faster and better when everyone agrees what's in-bounds, what's out, and when it ships. The point isn't bureaucracy; it's precision. Well-designed expectations free people to execute without second-guessing.

Identity before offers

Lambie didn't want to be known only as "the rugby player." That distinction matters for organisations too. Your business is more than the product you sell this year. When markets shift or regulations change, companies with a clear internal identity—values you can see and behaviours you can measure—pivot without losing themselves.

Write it down, not as slogans, but as standards. "We call customers back within two business hours, even when we don't have the answer." "We close the loop on every complaint within five days." These are identity statements masquerading as service levels. They protect the brand from inside out and give your team a playbook for hard days.

Build a week that produces results

Elite teams have rhythms that make excellence repeatable: preview, prepare, connect, execute, recover, review. SMEs need the same cadence, light enough to live with and strong enough to steer.

Start Monday by naming one outcome for the week and the two or three risks that could derail it. Protect Tuesday to Thursday for real work: shorter meetings, clearer decisions, less calendar sprawl. On Friday morning, ask three questions: what should we stop, what should we keep, and what should we start? Then actually change one process or SOP based on what you learned. Finish the week by reconnecting as humans—gratitude, quick shout-outs, and a look at the week ahead. It's not complicated, but it's rare. And rare is a competitive advantage.

Leadership measured in time-to-unblock

On good teams, leaders carry the bottles before they carry the title. In SMEs, servant leadership shows up as ruthless removal of friction: clearing approvals, negotiating with suppliers, making a tough customer call so your delivery team can focus.

Measure leadership by time-to-unblock. When someone raises a blocker, how long until it's addressed? A 24-hour response standard changes behaviour. It tells your people that momentum matters and that leadership is accountable for enabling it. Culture follows measurement; pick the metric that reinforces the team you want to be.

Turn shocks into systems

Injury forced Lambie to confront limits and redesign his future. Businesses face their own "injuries": a key client churns, a platform algorithm shifts, a tender falls through, cash tightens. The difference between a stumble and a spiral is whether you have a protocol before the shock arrives.

Agree the triggers that move you from "normal operating" to "stabilise": margin dropping below a threshold, debtor days turning red, inventory risk spiking, ROAS falling off a cliff. In stabilise mode, you don't guess—you follow a script. Freeze low-ROI activities. Concentrate resources on your highest-value customers or projects. Move to a single source of truth for updates. Then, when the storm passes, perform a no-blame review within 72 hours and update the system. A small "recovery budget"—time and money ring-fenced for rapid fixes—turns theory into action.

Throughput comes from role clarity and recovery

High performance isn't about heroics; it's about flow. Flow needs two things: clear decision rights and space to think. Role cards help here: one page per role, stating the mission, the few metrics that matter, the decisions this person can make without asking, and the interfaces where hand-offs happen.

Protect recovery too. That's not a luxury; it's an efficiency tool. Shorten default meeting slots, establish no-meeting focus windows, and end the week with a simple shutdown checklist so the team returns on Monday without cognitive debt. When throughput rises, so does morale—and margin.

Pivot like a professional, not a panicked amateur

Markets evolve. Offers age. Channels saturate. The question isn't if you'll pivot, but how. The best pivots look methodical from the outside because they were deliberate on the inside.

Start with a hypothesis: where do your strengths meet a painful, underserved need? Spend 90 days in apprentice mode—customer interviews, shadowing, micro-projects—so you learn before you claim. Launch a minimum viable offer that solves one problem, makes one promise, and delivers one proof point. Pilot with a handful of customers, document outcomes, and only then widen the gate. Scaling is a privilege you earn when proof repeats, not a right you assume because a deck looks good.

Grow the market, not just your share

Development pathways matter in sport; they matter in business ecosystems too. Your future talent, partners, and customers are built—not found. Invest in entry ramps: starter packages for smaller clients, scholarships for supplier training, monthly teach-ins where you share non-proprietary playbooks.

This isn't charity. It's strategy. The rising tide of competence reduces your operational risk and increases the surface area of opportunity. It also clarifies what makes you different: when you give away the "how," people pay you for the "done well."

A simple routine for high-stakes moments

When pressure peaks—a tender presentation, auditor visit, store opening, funding meeting—simplicity wins. Write the one sentence that captures what must happen now. Decide which levers you will adjust and which you will not. Name who executes, who approves, and who communicates. Define the signal that tells you it's working within days, not months. If it isn't, change one variable at a time and try again. Book the review before you start so the learning becomes part of the system, not a good intention lost in the rush.

The point

Pressure isn't the enemy. Randomness is. SMEs that win repeatedly don't rely on inspiration; they rely on design—clear priorities, humane leadership, honest reviews, and the courage to redraw the plan when reality changes.

If you want these principles installed as a practical operating model—tailored to your sector, your team size, and your growth stage—hyperLOOP can help you turn them into dashboards, cadences, decision rights, and everyday habits.

Ready to operationalise strategy? Let's map your first 90 days and build a system that produces "clutch" on demand.