quarta-feira, agosto 31, 2016

Cuidado com as fantasias do Excel

Há os políticos que escrevem cenários para uma década mas que não duram 6 meses.
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Há os comentadores que sonham com políticos cheios de certezas e cheios de conhecimento privilegiado que indicam o caminho único para o futuro
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Depois, há os que como este anónimo engenheiro da província têm medo dos Grandes Planeadores, os Grandes Geometras, e preferem a humildade do fuçar, a alternativa do concreto, o reconhecimento do anything goes, o MacGyver versus Sandy. Economia não rima com ciência newtoniana, é tudo transitório
Por tudo isto, gostei muito de "When Strategy Becomes Fantasy":
"Ironically, when managers think they have all the answers, strategy can turn into fantasy.
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Many organisations have an obsession with certainty, a must-know attitude to strategic initiatives.
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Companies, therefore, often end up dedicating more energy towards maintaining the illusion of pursuing a strategic aspiration than actually trying to make a strategic aspiration real.
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As a strategic aspiration moves from an idea to the active pursuit of that idea, a feedback loop starts to form. This feedback loop generates data about the feasibility and worthiness of the aspiration. Feedback is also produced about the organisation’s delivery capabilities. People in leadership roles can be receptive to this data or they can manipulate, normalise and post-rationalise the data.
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Inevitably, the inherent uncertainty in a strategic initiative means that true understanding of the underlying business problem is going to emerge as the project progresses.
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But from my observations, the unearthing of this uncertainty threatens fragile ego-identities. The more fragile the egos in positions of power, the more fertile the soil for a shared fantasy to take hold, i.e the more defended and narcissistically oriented the people in leadership roles, the more vulnerable the company is to fantasy usurping a reality based pursuit of a strategic aspiration.[Moi ici: Acabo de me lembrar de Weick e da genial estória do oficial húngaro nos Alpes que salvou os seus colegas porque tinha um mapa ... dos Pirinéus. Outro exemplo do fuçar, do começar pela acção.]
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A shared fantasy’s best ally is the belief that no one has time to think. [Moi ici: Estão a ver onde isto nos leva? Indicadores para quê? Reunir para quê?] It is almost a dead giveaway that a group is entrapped in a shared fantasy if they are running from meeting to meeting, fire fighting, exhausted and mentally unavailable.
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Reflection brings awareness to one’s situation, which for some companies can be very painful. As Ronald Heiftz says, “There is no such thing as a broken system. The system is working for someone.” Bringing greater awareness into an organisation participating in a shared fantasy means going against the system that is “working for someone.”
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Without maintaining time for reflection, I believe the strategy realisation process will likely succumb to the grips of fantasy and ultimately fail. Worse, the path to failure will likely be one of significant suffering."
O artigo é muito mais rico e extenso e merece uma ou duas leituras integrais, para começar.

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