Wherever you go, every McDonald’s burger is the same. That is the promise of McDonald’s. That is consistency at work. That is the way a cookie-cutter churns out exactly identical cookies. One after another. McDonald’s’ world-famous standardized process eliminates every human possibility of error or variation and brings out machine-like perfection for every piece coming out of its kitchen. As a customer, you can anticipate what you are going to get and how is it going to taste.
But, that is not how homemade food is. Anything that is made at home is prone to a little variety in taste every time. So, even though the Idli or Dal that is made in your kitchen may taste almost perfect every time, it’s always a little different in each iteration. That is the result of human ingenuity.
Every business is like homemade food. It cannot be exactly alike another business. If you see two stores looking outwardly similar and selling identical goods, they are internally as different as the personalities of the people running them. The same is true for any business making or dealing in any product or service.
So, even though they belong to the same industry, cater to the same market, provide the same product or service category and target the same customers, each business is unique in its own way. And so, rules that apply to one business, do not apply to another in the same way without some tweaking.
Cookie-cutter approaches don’t always work.