Getting back to strategy

Publicado em Novembro de 1988 pela revista Harvard Business Review, "Getting back to strategy" de Kenichi  Ohmae, parece-me que continua actual...
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"Competitiveness” is the word most commonly uttered these days in economic policy circles in Washington most European capitals. (Moi ici: Actualmente, à palavra competitividade juntam-se também palavras como produtividade e custos unitários do trabalho) The restoration of competitive vitality is a widely shared political slogan.
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(Moi ici: Na altura os maus da fita eram os japoneses) To many Western managers, the Japanese competitive achievement provides hard evidence that a successful strategy’s hallmark is the creation of sustainable competitive advantage by beating the competition. If it takes world-class manufacturing to win, runs the lesson, you have to beat competitors with your factories. If it takes rapid product development, you have to beat them with your labs. If it takes mastery of distribution channels, you have to beat them with your logistics systems. No matter what it takes, the goal of strategy is to beat the competition. (Moi ici: Não se precipitem, o autor só está a descrever o sentimento do mainstream... perigosamente semelhante ao do mainstream actual que pensa que o inimigo é a China, logo, há que reduzir salários)
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Of course, winning the manufacturing or product development or logistics battle is no bad thing. But it is not really what strategy is—or should be—about. Because when the focus of attention is on ways to beat the competition, it is inevitable that strategy will be defined primarily in terms of the competition. For instance, if the competition has recently brought out an electronic kitchen gadget that slices, dices, and brews coffee, you had better get one just like it into your product line—and get it there soon. If the competition has cut production costs, you had better get out your scalpel. If they have just started to run national ads, you had better call your agency at once. When you go toe-to-toe with competitors, you cannot let them build up any kind of advantage. You must match their every move. Or so the argument goes.
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Of course, it is important to take the competition into account, but in making strategy that should not come first. It cannot come first. First comes painstaking attention to the needs of customers. First comes close analysis of a company’s real degrees of freedom in responding to those needs. First comes the willingness to rethink, fundamentally, what products are and what they do, as well as how best to organize the business system that designs, builds, and markets them. Competitive realities are what you test possible strategies against; you define them in terms of customers. Tit-for-tat responses to what competitors do may be appropriate, but they are largely reactive. They come second, after your real strategy. Before you test yourself against the competition, your strategy takes shape in the determination to create value for customers. (Moi ici: Até arrepia... tantos anos depois e tão poucos pensam no valor...)
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Getting back to strategy means fighting that reflex, not giving in to it. It means resisting the easy answers in the search for better ways to deliver value to customers. (Moi ici: Estamos todos fartos da resposta simples rápida e errada, reduzir salários para tornar a indústria mais competitiva) It means asking the simple-sounding questions about what products are about. It means, in short, taking seriously the strategic part of management.
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(Moi ici: Isto foi escrito em finais de 1988, o exemplo que se segue é sobre o dilema em que se encontravam os empresários japoneses) On one side, there are German companies making top-of-the-line products like Mercedes or BMW in automobiles, commanding such high prices that even elevated cost levels do not greatly hurt profitability. On the other side are low-price, high-volume producers like Korea’s Hyundai, Samsung, and Lucky Gold-star. These companies can make products for less than half what it costs the Japanese. The Japanese are being caught in the middle: they are able neither to command the immense margins of the Germans nor to undercut the rock-bottom wages of the Koreans. The result is a painful squeeze.
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If you are the leader of a Japanese company, what can you do? I see three possibilities.
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First, ... pushing hard—and at considerable expense—toward full automation, un-manned operations, and totally flexible manufacturing systems.
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A second way out of the squeeze is to move upmarket where the Germans are. In theory this might be appealing; in practice it has proven very hard for the Japanese to do. Their corporate cultures simply do not permit it. (Moi ici: A explicação do que se passou com os leitores de CDs é eloquente.) ...The Western companies wanted to make money; the Japanese instinct was to build share at any cost.
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What sets Japanese companies apart is the consideration that they may have less room to maneuver than others, given their historical experience and present situation. For all these companies, there is a pressing need for a middle strategic course, a way to flourish without being forced to go head-to-head with competitors in either a low-cost or an upmarket game. Such a course exists—indeed, it leads managers back to the heart of what strategy is about: creating value for customers. (Moi ici: Perguntem ao Gordon Ramsay)
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strategy does not mean beating the competition. It means working hard to understand a customer’s inherent needs and then rethinking what a category of product is all about. The goal is to develop the right product to serve those needs—not just a better version of competitors’ products.
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Conventional marketing approaches won’t solve the problem. You can get any results you want from the consumer averages. If you ask people whether they want their coffee in ten minutes or seven, they will say seven, of course. But it’s still the wrong question. And you end up back where you started, trying to beat the competition at its own game. If your primary focus is on the competition, you will never step back and ask what the customer’s inherent needs are or what the product really is about. Personally, I would much rather talk with three homemakers for two hours each on their feelings (Moi ici: Os fantasmas estatísticos, a miudagem) about, say, washing machines than conduct a 1,000-person survey on the same topic. I get much better insight and perspective on what customers are really looking for."
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Excelente artigo!!! Incapaz de ser compreendido por quem só vê custos unitários do trabalho...
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BTW, ontem vi os primeiros minutos de um programa de Júlio Isidro (na RTP Memória?) onde apareceu um dos primeiros anúncios de televisão? (ou seria para o cinema?) em Portugal. Um anúncio que realçava as propriedades do "Sabão Activado da CUF" ... foi estranho ver um anúncio de um produto doméstico falar, por uma vez, do desempenho superior e não do baixo preço.