Cuidado com o benchmarking

Greg Satell em "Why You Shouldn't Copycat Strategy" expõe muito bem como tantas e tantas empresas grandes praticam "cargo cult strategy":

"Yet many modern executives believe by mimicking the tactics of other businesses they will somehow achieve the same results.[Moi ici: Cuidado com as melhores práticas. Cuidado com a cópia indiscriminada do que é publicitado] These “cargo cult strategists” don’t do much better than the islanders.
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The executives at Blockbuster understood the Netflix threat and built a viable strategy to compete with it. What they did not understand was that, unlike Netflix, they were not a startup. They had investors who expected consistent profits and franchisee partners that depended on revenues for their incomes. That was the part of the Netflix model they couldn’t replicate.
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Unlike Apple and Blockbuster, IBM follows a strategy that is built to fit its unique capabilities and culture.
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Every organization can benefit by learning about the best practices of others. Certainly, Apple needs to find a way to compete in a new cognitive era that advances in artificial intelligence are bringing to the fore. Blockbuster’s management team was smart to borrow tactics from Netflix. IBM should try to be as agile as it possibly can.
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Yet at the same time, we also must accept certain realities. Apple does not have the organizational culture in place to explore scientific horizons. It never has. Blockbuster, as a public company with thousands of investors and franchisee partners, had limitations that Netflix didn’t. IBM, with nearly 400,000 employees, will never be as nimble as a startup.
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You can’t simply decide to build an airfield, without learning how to build machines that can fly first. In much the same way, you can’t expect to adopt the strategies and tactics of another organization and enjoy the same success, without building the capabilities and culture that will make those tactics effective."[Moi ici: Não resisto a recomendar uma nova leitura do texto sobre o erro infantil da McDonald's.]