Puf! Não há magia!

Na segunda-feira, aproveitei o feriado do 13 de Junho em Estarreja e fui passar o dia no Porto passeando com a minha mulher.
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A meio da manhã resolvemos entrar numa das imensas leitarias que abriram na baixa da cidade para tomar um chá e trincar algo.
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Uma desilusão.
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Quando se entra numa leitaria, entra-se pela expectativa da experiência. E quando falamos de experiência:

"with experiences, customers pay for the time they spend with a company, rather than for the activites the company delivers"

Se os clientes pagam pelo tempo, o preço não tem nada a ver com os custos.

"to availability of commodities, cost of goods, and quality of service, businesses now [Moi ici: Os gestores] must add authenticity of experience as something to be managed.
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No longer content just with available, affordable, and excellent offerings, both consumers and business-to-business customers now purchase offerings based on how well those purchases conform to their own self-image. What they buy must reflect who they are and who they aspire to be in relation to how they perceive the world - with lightning-quick judgments of "real" or "fake" hanging in the balance.
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for to compete with such experiences, authenticity must become the primary source of differentiation for commodities as well as commoditized goods and services. ... To succeed, managers across most all industries must add to their expertise in supply-chain management, cost containment, and quality enhancement an understanding of what their customers consider real and fake—or at least which elements influence such consumer perceptions—about their company's offerings.
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understand that there is no such thing as an inauthentic experience—because experiences happen inside of us; they are our internal reaction to the events unfolding around us. How we react to what happens at a particular venue depends on who we are, what we've experienced before, how we feel at the time, who accompanies us, and so on. No two people ever experience anything alike. This intrinsic characteristic of experiences makes them inherently personal.
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Therefore, we remain free to judge our experiences with any economic offering as authentic or not. Businesses that offer them therefore can, whether intentionally or by happenstance, gain the perception of authenticity. The best word to describe this process is, once again, render. Businesses can render their inauthentic offerings as authentic. Doing so requires embracing this essential paradox: all human enterprise is ontologically fake—that is, in its very being it is inauthentic—and yet, output from that enterprise can be phenomenologically real—that is, it is perceived as authentic by the individuals who buy it."

E a experiência gerou um sentimento de fake-fake

Um espaço a tentar transmitir autenticidade, através da individualidade rústica, através da decoração. No entanto, o disco fica riscado quando:

• a oferta de chás resume-se às saquetas de marcas comerciais que vêm para a mesa para escolha do cliente, e que este pode comprar num Pingo Doce;
• a pastelaria é igual à das pastelarias mais recônditas deste país, sem um exemplar para amostra de algo feito na casa, de algo único, de algo específico;
• para cúmulo o bule e as chávenas trazem o logotipo da Sical e são de um branco imaculado.

Puf! Não há magia!

Trechos retirados de "Authenticity" de James Gilmore e Joseph Pine.

Fugir da comoditização

Começar pelo fim

Há alguns anos li o livro “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage” de Gilmore e Pine.
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Trata-se de um livro que me encheu as medidas, escrito numa linguagem mobilizadora e muito concreta (postais aqui, aqui e aqui). Logo que soube que esta dupla tinha publicado um novo livro decidi adquiri-lo: "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want".
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Assim que tive uma aberta na minha lista de leituras, atirei-me a ele de cabeça e... foi uma desilusão, trata-se de uma leitura muito mais complexa, muito mais densa, a merecer muito mais atenção. No final do 1º capítulo pus o livro de lado até uma nova oportunidade.
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Em Julho passado voltei a folhear o livro e encontrei um texto sobre o espaço de Minkowsky que serviu de base a estes dois postais que registei aqui no blogue.
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Ontem, ao aproveitar uma viagem de comboio de 2 horas resolvi encarar a leitura do capítulo 9 "From Strategy to Decision Making" como um teste definitivo para decidir re-encarar a leitura futura do livro ou não e ... UAU!!!
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Trata-se de um capítulo a merecer tratamento de ruminante, uma vez lido, tem de voltar a ser lido, para não perder pitada do conteúdo.
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Neste postal, vou chamar a atenção para uma postura mental que sigo, e que procuro divulgar a toda a gente, porque facilita a vida e o processo de pensamento: começar pelo fim (tema já abordado aqui , aqui e aqui, por exemplo), algo na linha do que escreveu Ortega Y Gasset "O meu presente não existe senão graças ao meu futuro " e que encontrei retratada no capítulo.
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Gilmore e Pine escrevem:
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A figura … … mostra como pensar acerca das iniciativas estratégicas a partir da perspectiva Aqui – Agora. O ponto indicado pela conjugação do Ali – Antes representa o posicionamento actual da empresa, enquanto que o Aqui – Agora representa o posicionamento futuro que pretendemos atingir. Para concretizar esse posicionamento futuro, há que agir como se esse posicionamento futuro já tivesse sido atingido, e então trabalhar daí para trás até ao presente, vendo exactamente o caminho que deve ter sido seguido para atingir o fim.
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… management should view that future here-and-now as a certainty, and then determine what the immediately preceding steps would have to be for that certainty to have happened in the future, and then figure out the steps before that, and the steps before that, connecting the dots link-to-link until it constructs the as if vector (como se) that reaches back in time to the present and back in space to its current place.
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Once management constructs its as if vector … it can then proceed to execute that plan, following the vector from the company’s current positioning to that future certainty.
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“managing in the future perfect tense” where “the present is the past of the future, and organization can be used to push the strategy toward its realization rather than be pulled along by it.” Here-and-Now Space shows that “the present is the past of the future” represents no mere tautology but a profound principle of strategy formulation. You can’t divorce where you want to be from where you are now, any more than you can divorce the present from the past and ask for a “do-over.” Time connects them all in space.
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Reaching points close to the line of perfect execution requires very disciplined execution, which proceeds when every decision and every action of managers and workers align to move the company in the direction of its strategic intention, and the activity of those workers is performed in order to effect a movement in that direction. Any wrongheaded decisions, errant moves, or poor performances only steer the strategic intention closer to the edges of the execution zone, making achievement difficult. In other words, in the here-and-now, everything matters. You cannot afford anything that detracts from reaching your intention, lest it become a strategic impossibility.
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That’s because any movement outside the shaded box, what we call here the zone of future achievability, means that the company eliminates that future possibility forever. It can no longer be achieved, no matter what happens; that would require more than perfect execution, a strategic impossibility akin to exceeding the speed of light.
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Peer into your future until determine where you should go. Envision a future, affix that point as the here-and-now of a declared motivation for all to hear and embrace, and then link from that point back to the present, treating it as a there-and-then position. And this above all: treat your future not as a destination but as the very origin of the path before you. Such provides the best means of ensuring you not only have a future but that it will be a prosperous one.”