Relacionar pessoas e desempenho nas organizações

Um artigo interessante na MIT Sloan Management Review deste Outono, "Identify Critical Roles to Improve Performance" de Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin, Abhijit Naik, e Sascha L. Schmidt. Em linha com o que aprendemos e desenvolvemos há quase 20 anos na perspectiva dos recursos e infraestruturas do mapa da estratégia de um balanced scorecard.

"Talent can be a source of competitive advantage only if great people are in the most critical roles. Having stars in jobs that aren't critical is just a waste of talent. [Moi ici: Este trecho não sublinhado fez-me recordar o valor da morte, do qual saltei para a monotonia dos Brothers Dawn, Day e Dusk da série Foundation]

It's accepted wisdom in strategy execution that focused application of concentrated strength - identifying, developing, and leveraging critical capabilities - is required for success. Yet until these capabilities are translated into specific roles, with systems in place to ensure that high-quality employees occupy such positions, a strategy is just an intention. 

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Every organization or function is similarly likely to have its own underappreciated roles. While the sales team may land the account, it could be the service department that keeps that account renewing each year.

Talent scarcity matters, too.

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In critical roles where exceptional talent is scarce, having performers in such roles is doubly important.

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Moving people through different settings not only gives them a chance to develop and grow, it also enhances the data, allowing more precise measurements of the impact of roles and the people performing them.

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The hallmark of a good strategy is one where the sources of competitive advantage are interlocked with other strategic commitments, making it difficult to copy. Finding key roles and building an organization around those roles may be more defensible than finding hidden stars, since the strategic advantage is tied to how organizations support these roles and develop pipelines to fill them.[Moi ici: O que é isto senão o que faz o empreendedor. Recordar a effectuation. Trabalhar com o que se tem à mão (Bird in Hand Principle)]

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Strategy is about defining how to win - it requires committing to capabilities that are unambiguously the best in class. But no company can be the best at everything; a winning strategy requires focus and a keen awareness of what roles are disproportionately critical - and investing appropriately. Failing to acknowledge this puts the entire strategy at risk. By translating abstract capabilities into concrete jobs, organizations are much better positioned to make their strategies a reality.

Leaders can take a page from the soccer playbook and consider the following lessons for their own organizations: Know your critical roles and where you need to invest. Despite being a less visible role, defenders matter more than other positions for winning soccer games. Insight into where difference-making roles exist should guide attention and investment when it comes to recruiting, developing, and retaining talent. While it is important to know your key contributors, it is just as important to know where you have deficits in critical roles.

Additionally, critical roles may change over time. As the competitive landscape evolves, difference-making positions can also change. Winning consistently requires monitoring not only what the critical roles are but how they might be shifting. [Moi ici: E voltamos ao papel da morte]

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Having insight on critical roles may not only inform your strategy - it may be a source of competitive advantage in itself."

Há falta de trabalhadores?

"The conventional wisdom in retail and other low-margin service industries has been that bad frontline jobs - with low pay, unpredictable schedules, and few opportunities for advancement are necessary to compete. Yet for decades a handful of companies - including Costco and QuikTrip in the United States and Mercadona in Spain - have been proving that false. They remain market leaders in their very competitive industries without the bad jobs on which those industries supposedly depend - and it's no secret how they do it: by adopting "good jobs" systems. Meanwhile, in a tight labor market, organizations with bad jobs are finding it hard to stay open because they can't attract and retain workers.

If good jobs can make companies more competitive, more resilient, and more humane, why don't more companies create them? I see doubt, fear, and a lack of imagination - which stem from misguided views of the value of frontline workers, how to make business decisions, and the risks of system change as the reasons. 

In my earlier work I have found that companies that continually improve the value and service offered to their customers and the productivity of their employees operate in a system with two key-and mutually dependent-components: (1) A heavy investment in people, in the form of higher-than-market pay, better-than-usual benefits, predictable schedules, full-time jobs whenever possible, and clearly described opportunities for advancement; and (2) an operational model that helps those workers be more productive and serve customers better. The system includes (a) identifying the value proposition and simplifying operations to eliminate wasteful and low-value-added activities, respect workers' time, and enable employees to serve customers well; (b) standardizing processes when that makes sense and empowering employees to help customers, improve their work, and manage customer flow; (c) cross-training employees to perform both customer-facing and noncustomer-facing tasks in an area they own; and (d) staffing units with enough people to handle unexpected surges ant allow time for developing employees and improving work. Companies with a good-jobs system have high customer satisfaction and loyalty, superior productivity, low employee turnover, and greater resilience. Those that rely on bad jobs risk falling-or have already fallen -into a vicious circle of high turnover, poor operational execution, customer dissatisfaction, low unit sales and profits, and vulnerability to a better-run competitor."

O autor chama a atenção para quatro falsas ortodoxias que impedem muitas empresas de criar "good jobs" systems:

1. Our business model won't support higher investment in people. 
2. We can't trust frontline employees.
3. Our financial analysis shows the investment won't pay off.
4. Implementing system change is too risky.

Trechos retirados de "The Obstacles to Creating Good Jobs" de Zeynep Ton e publicado no número de Maio-Junho de 2023 da HBR.

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Para reflexão

"In 2021 companies convinced themselves that the labor shortages they were experiencing were a passing phenomenon, and in response they trotted out the standard short-term fixes: raising wages by a few dollars an hour, awarding signing and referral bonuses, and even offering more flexibility in working shifts. But none of those measures were particularly effective. So in 2022, with the labor situation worsening, some companies resorted to tactics that ran counter to their core strategies. CVS and Walgreens began closing stores earlier or shutting down on Sundays. Domino's, unable to find drivers, reversed its focus on deliveries and instead offered customers a $3 "tip" if they picked up their own orders. Others took extraordinary measures to fill frontline jobs. When it didn't have enough baggage handlers,

Qantas begged senior executives to volunteer to sort, scan, and transport baggage for three months.

Companies blamed everyone but themselves for the labor shortages:

The pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime shock to the system that had provoked the scarcity. The government had exacerbated the problem by issuing stimulus checks. High rates of churn were a fact of life in the world of low-wage work. But that thinking was misguided.

After studying this topic for several years we have concluded that the real problem lies in the way that organizations mismanage their hourly workers: They are underinvesting in those employees and harming their own strategic interests.

How are companies going astray? By not recognizing the contribution that low-wage workers make to executing their strategies. By not measuring all the hidden costs of constant churn. By not implementing management practices that could improve the productivity of low-wage workers and encourage them to stay and prosper at the company. By devoting vastly more attention-when it comes to such basics as hiring, skill building, on-the-job feedback, career development, and mentorship-to salaried workers than to hourly workers, even though the latter constitute more than 40% of the U.S. labor force.

This pattern of denial and neglect hurts workers in ways that have profound societal costs. No matter how hard or how long they work, many low-wage workers cannot climb out of poverty. We studied the fortunes of 181,891 workers who started low-wage jobs in 2012, and we found that five years later 60% of them remained stuck in such positions. People who had managed to escape those jobs had most often done so by quitting industries such as hospitality, food services, and retail, which are classic low-wage traps. Across industries, women were overrepresented in low-wage jobs and most likely to stay impoverished.

The pattern also inflicts all sorts of direct and indirect costs on companies, including lower retention and higher absenteeism, more overtime, a reliance on staffing agencies to provide temporary workers, constant recruitment and training of new employees, a lowering of morale, a loss of institutional and process knowledge, a decline in customer goodwill, a damaged reputation among job seekers, stagnant or lower rates of productivity-and less revenue."

Trecho retirado de "The High Costof Neglecting Low-Wage Workers" na HBR de Abril-Maio.

Diferentes forças em jogo

Na primeira página do WSJ do passado dia 12 de Abril pode ler-se:

"The idea came to Johnny Taylor Jr. early last year, after one of his employees made a case that her technology position could be done anywhere. She wanted to leave Virginia, where she held job at the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association based in Alexandria. She asked to work remotely in North Carolina.

"Then a lightbulb went off," said Mr. Taylor, the association's chief executive.

Instead of having the employee work in another state, he outsourced her job to India, where his organization is saving around 40% in labor costs, he said.

Welcome to the next wave of remote work. During the pandemic millions of people in the U.S. worked from home and many decamped to cities such as Boise, Austin and Phoenix. Companies learned that employees could be productive from afar because of remote-working tech like Zoom and Dropbox.

Those moves were usually at the behest of workers who wanted a change of environment, sought more living space or somewhere cheaper. Companies agreed to these arrangements largely to retain employees in a competitive labor market.

Now companies are responding to lingering labor shortages and rising wages by sending jobs overseas, according to labor consultants.

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The exodus of office jobs overseas is still a trickle. But it is accelerating and some economists see it as the beginning of a new era. About 10% to 20% of U.S. service support jobs such as software developers, human-resources professionals and payroll administrators could move overseas in the next decade, according to Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University."

Entretanto, ontem  durante a minha caminhada matinal li:

• Só 4% das empresas com alta maturidade em people analytics. Falta talento qualificado e compreensão sobre potencial dos dados
• Taxa de desemprego na OCDE em mínimo histórico dos últimos 22 anos
• Playing With Fire - ChatGPT (muito interessante)
• The Great Stapler Crisis: The End Of Tech Company Perks? (muito interessante)

Entretanto, nos últimos dias publicámos aqui:

• Qual será o resultado deste choque?
• Por que se pedem paletes de mão de obra estrangeira barata? (Parte II)

Diferentes forças em jogo e a provocar mudanças ao nível do mercado do trabalho, das empresas e dos trabalhadores. Como é que isto vai influenciar o futuro da sua empresa? 

Entretanto, Carga fiscal dispara para 36,4% do PIB e bate novo recorde em 2022.

Uma preocupação

 Um título, "Technology alone won’t solve your organizational challenges", que retrata uma preocupação de anos do meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras.

Há anos que o oiço enunciar o seu espanto com as empresas que julgam que a tecnologia é a condição necessária e suficiente para aumentar a produtividade das empresas, o seu espanto com as empresas que não colocam as pessoas na equação. Quem vai operar a tecnologia? Quem vai encontrar os novos clientes para a nova produção?

Um clube de leitura

Julgo que foi neste almoço que começaram as nossas conversas oxigenadoras:

"O empresário lá de cima, há meses que criou um clube leitura na empresa porque, explicou-me então:
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- Como posso aspirar a ter gente com espírito crítico se as pessoas não lêem.
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E depois, o desafio seguinte foi libertar as pessoas para a possibilidade de criticar, de não concordar com o que estava escrito.
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- Sabe Carlos, para quem não está habituado a ler o que está escrito tem uma aura de sagrado, de não criticável."

O nosso próximo almoço, que era para ser hoje, será amanhã. E um dos temas que levarei para a mesa será: "The quiet power of reading with your coworkers":

"As with most initiatives, the most important thing is to take action. I tell the teams I work with, “Start scrappy and know that doing something is infinitely better than doing nothing.” So, get going today."

“Manufacturing bootstraps people out of poverty.”

Muitos Sarumans, do alto das suas colunas de marfim, quase todos lesboetas (naturais ou emigrados), desprezam as PME industriais dos sectores tradicionais, não lhes dão pica, não são boas para eles aparecerem em reportagens ou em revistas de social travestido de economia.
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Como ocupo a posição oposta, gostei muito de ler "Small Factories Emerge as a Weapon in the Fight Against Poverty":

"What altered Mr. Branch’s fate? There was his own discipline, of course, like completing a two-year course in metalwork between his shifts at Popeyes. Or getting up at 3:45 a.m. and taking three buses to avoid being late for his first factory job.
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But his success is also because of the unlikely survival of Marlin Steel, a rare breed: the urban industrial manufacturer.
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Marlin is a thriving factory in a place where, over the last half-century, factories have fled — first to the South, and later to Asia. That flight haunts the United States perhaps most in its urban areas — especially neighborhoods that once housed the nation’s working class — and helps explain why many African-Americans in particular today live in poverty in metropolises like Baltimore, Detroit, Newark and St. Louis.
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small manufacturers like Marlin are vital if the United States is to narrow the nation’s class divide and build a society that offers greater opportunities for everyone — rich and poor, black and white, high school graduates and Ph.D.s.
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“The closing of factories has taken the rungs out of the ladder for reaching the middle class in urban areas,”
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Many service jobs do not pay as well, nor do they offer the same opportunities for advancement. And as the service sector has expanded in recent decades, less-educated workers in big cities have largely been bypassed as demand has grown for well-compensated professionals in what Mr. Johnson calls F.T.E., or finance, technology and electronics.
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“Manufacturing jobs involve a skill base that you develop over time, and that fortifies your negotiating strength,” Mr. Johnson said. But in lower-skilled jobs, the competition is with someone who will do the same work for less. “The marketplace doesn’t give you any leverage,” he said.
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Today, smaller plants are particularly important to job creation in factory work, … “Small manufacturing is holding its own — and you are seeing some interesting developments in urban centers.”
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Out of 252,000 manufacturing companies in the United States, only 3,700 had more than 500 workers. The vast majority employ fewer than 20.
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While they may not rival the scale of 1950s assembly lines, these smaller “craft type” producers hold out hope for cities, Mr. Paul said, particularly as some companies look to move jobs back from overseas to be closer to customers and more nimble to supply customized, small-batch orders.
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What is more, these jobs pay people more.”"

Depois, uma queixa que este blogue percebe bem a discriminação dos governos contra os pequenos a favor dos grandes:

"In addition to uniquely local challenges like these, Marlin — along with plenty of other small manufacturing companies — faces a forbidding landscape simply because of its size. “I’m not Under Armour. I can’t get concessions,” Mr. Greenblatt said, referring to the giant sports clothing company that received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other subsidies as part of a plan to build a new headquarters here."

A propósito da Marlin Steel, fábrica citada no artigo, recomendo a leitura de:

• A receita deste blogue (parte I e parte II)

É interessante que uma fábrica que serve de base à demonstração empírica de como funciona a minha abordagem com as PME sirva, por sua vez, de exemplo para ilustrar como estas PME são muito importantes e necessárias para o funcionamento de uma economia com espaço para todos, mesmo os que abandonaram a escola.

As pessoas e o balanced scorecard

O semanário Expresso publicou no passado sábado 22 de Novembro, na página 14 do seu Caderno de Economia, um artigo assinado por Nicolau Santos intitulado “As pessoas são o melhor das empresas?” (não encomendei o artigo mas bem parece que o fiz).
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Alguns trechos que extraí:
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“a comunicação é das áreas mais fundamentais para gerir os recursos humanos” ("Engagement begins with understanding. All the people in an organization need to know as much about the big picture and critical systems of business as the leaders, so they can see how they “fit” and why they’re important.")
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“É importante dizer para onde a empresa vai, quais os seus compromissos.” (A força, o poder de uma estratégia depende também do alinhamento da equipa no cumprimento, na compreensão do que é essa estratégia e do que é que ela implica.)
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“as valências das pessoas a contratar. “É muito perigoso que os candidatos só tenham capacidade técnica.”
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“E o objectivo destas deveria ser “fornecer um sonho, alinhar recursos e motivar pessoas”, porque, como acrescenta, “nós somos sobregeridos e subliderados.” (Só com uma cultura forte e uma comunicação eficaz se consegue conciliar sintonia de propósitos, convergência de vontades, concerto de motivações, com flexibilidade organizacional e com rapidez organizacional.)
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“por causa do nível de salários em Portugal” muitos profissionais estão a sair para o estrangeiro. “Portugal tem de ter salários próximos da média europeia, sob o risco dos nossos crânios emigrarem. Já está a acontecer.” (As pessoas não emigram só por causas dos salários, é mais complexo, muito mais complexo do que isso. É também a rejeição da politiquice, a rejeição da falta de estratégia, a rejeição das negociatas, a rejeição da ausência de uma carreira, a rejeição da ausência de planeamento, ...)
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Os portugueses ganham pouco, mas o pouco que ganham é absurdamente elevado face ao valor criado. É do senso comum que o salário médio português é baixo, pelos padrões dos países fundadores da zona euro.O que o gráfico mostra, é como esses "magros" salários, apesar de magros, terem um peso enorme no PIB. Basta comparar as linhas do gráfico que correspondem a Portugal e aos outros países europeus.)
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Só aumentando a produtividade à custa da criação de valor, e não só à custa das migalhas da redução de custos. (Criar valor é mais importante que reduzir custos)
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“é preciso fazer “a gestão da paixão na empresa”, porque “a competência sem paixão leva a bom rendimento mas não à excelência”. Por isso, “temos de falar mais de eficácia do que de eficiência. De atingir o objectivo mesmo que seja mais caro.” (Eu sei que isto é bê-á-bá, mas há tanta gente que se esquece da eficácia e só pensa na eficiência…)
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(Para onde quer que eu me vire é esse o desafio. Abandonar os mitos da eficiência, da quantidade, da uniformidade, e abraçar a eficácia, o feito à medida, o nicho, a diferenciação.)
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(Não é uma questão de eficiência, é uma questão de eficácia!!!)
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“E tudo desagua finalmente na forma como os colaboradores não são informados dos objectivos, dos valores e da missão da empresa, nem se lhes pede a colaboração com sugestões ou se tenta perceber as suas expectativas.”
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“além de se tratar de uma impossibilidade e de uma visão pequenina da vida, assim, não se vai a lado nenhum, a não ser à falência, a mais ou menos curto prazo. Num mundo globalizado, em que a concorrência exige que as empresas se dotem da massa cinzenta que lhes permita inovar para vencer, os empresários portugueses têm de pensar em captar os melhores, seja no país ou no estrangeiro, e que o barato sai caro. E têm também de assimilar que a formação não é um custo mas um investimento, pelo que anda a ser contabilizada do lado errado do balanço.”