"However, if surprises happen"

"When the environment is stable, AI can surpass humans. If the future is like the past, large amounts of data are useful. However, if surprises happen, big data - which are always data from the past - may mislead us about the future. Big data algorithms missed the financial crisis of 2008 and in 2016 predicted Hillary Clinton's victory by a large margin.

In fact, many problems we face are not well-defined games but situations in which uncertainty abounds: finding true love, predicting who will commit a crime and reacting in unforeseen emergency situations are examples. Here, more computing power and bigger data are of limited help. Humans are the key source of uncertainty. Imagine how much more difficult chess would be if the king could violate the rules at a whim and the queen could stomp off the board in protest after setting the rooks on fire. With people involved, trust in complex algorithms can lead to illusions of certainty that become a recipe for disaster."

Trecho retirado de "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms" de Gerd Gigerenzer 

Um regabofe

“One of the reasons why you may pay too much into health insurance is a form of fraud practised by corrupt doctors and pharmacies. Here is how it works. If a drug costs £100 and the reimbursement rate is 90 per cent, then the pharmacy gets £90 back from the insurer. If the pharmacy presents prescriptions written by a doctor without actually having sold the medication, it can make an illegal profit. In Portugal, for instance, one doctor wrote 32,000 prescriptions for expensive drugs in one year – which boils down to one fake prescription every three minutes. The prescriptions bore the names of deceased patients or the faked signatures of deceased doctors. These doctors and pharmacies caused some 40 per cent of all public expenditure fraud in the country. To put a stop to this, the Portuguese National Health Service introduced an electronic prescription programme requiring doctors to complete the prescription and send it to their patients by text message or email, and reported that the system could reduce fraud by 80 per cent. In this case, the surveillance potential of software has been clearly used for the benefit of the health system.”

Lembro-me de colega consultora contar-me cenas deste tipo nos anos 90.

Excerto de "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World" de Gerd Gigerenzer

Risco versus incerteza e Big Data

Há muitos anos que nos rimos de quem acredita piamente no Big Data:

•  "a human touch becomes more important than ever" (Março de 2016)
• Cuidado com o Big Data (Junho de 2017)
• Outra religião, a do big data (Setembro de 2019)
• Dedicado aos fans do Big Data (Junho de 2022)

"‘Google Flu Trends completely flopped for the simple reason that uncertainty exists — the future is not like the past,’ Gigerenzer says, stroking his walrus moustache. ‘When using big data, you are fine-tuning the past and you’re hopelessly lost if the future is different. In this case, the uncertainty comes from the behaviour of viruses: they are not really predictable, they mutate. And the behaviour of humans is unpredictable.’ In other words, AI can’t predict ‘Black Swan’ events — major surprises that aren’t anticipated in modelling and plans.

Gigerenzer worries that important decisions are being handed over to AI, despite its clear limitations."

Trecho retirado de "The algorithm myth: why the bots won’t take over"

"This is the age of big data. We are constantly in quest of more numbers and more complex algorithms to crunch them. We seem to believe that this will solve most of the world’s problems - in the economy, society and even our personal lives. As a corollary, rules of thumb and gut instincts are getting short shrift. We think they often violate the principles of logic and lead us into making bad decisions. We might have had to depend on heuristics and our gut feelings in agricultural and manufacturing era. But this is the digital age. We can optimise everything.

Can we?

...

In the real world, rules of thumb not only work well, they also perform better than complex models, he says. We shouldn’t turn our noses up on heuristics, we should embrace them.

...

In short, Gigerenzer's arguments go like this. There is a big difference between risk and uncertainty. You are dealing with risk when you know all the alternatives, outcomes and their probabilities. You are dealing with uncertainty when you don’t know all the alternatives, outcomes or their probabilities.

When you are dealing with risk, complex mathematical models and fine-tuning them for optimisation work. However, when you are dealing with uncertainty, they don’t work well, because the world is dynamic.

What you then need is a set of simple rules of thumb that are robust and gut instincts sharpened by years of experience. 

...

I asked Gigerenzer if his work - spanning books, lectures, research papers - had one big message. He said, “We need to dare to think for ourselves, instead of anxiously adapting to our environment. We have in western world fewer and fewer people who are willing to take responsibility, to make decisions on their own and the tendency of the management to delegate to consulting firms which is often a waste of time and money.”

“My advise would be to trust more in expert knowledge, in long years of experience. Don’t buy statistical algorithms you don’t understand. Many managers buy big data algorithms which come in black boxes because they are not sure, they don’t really understand what all these are about. But they think, ‘if I don’t buy that, and if things go wrong, I am responsible, and have to take the blame. If I buy that, it costs the company something, but I am safe’. There is a lot of defensive decision in society and unwillingness to take responsibility, and the fear of one’s own common sense.”"

Trechos retirados de "Gigerenzer’s simple rules"

Como é possível? (parte II)

Ontem questionava-me, "Como é possível?". Como é possível aplicar a receita da redução de custos a torto e a direito e as empresas que não competem, nem podem competir pelo preço, embarcarem na onda?

À noite, já deitado, um tweet remeteu-me para um artigo sobre Gerd Gigerenzer, que me fez chegar a um tweet de Rory Sunderland onde era citado este artigo de Roger Martin, "Why Planning Over Strategy?". Reli-o e ficou claro como água como é possível:

"As with many things in life, an outcome that doesn’t make sense, ironically, is often the product of a process that makes lots of sense. There is an enormous amount of planning in the modern world of business and very little strategy — for a reason. 

...

The world’s penchant for data analytics causes analysis to be strongly encouraged, supported, and rewarded in business. And planning fundamentally concerns the analysis of the known and setting forth a sensible set of initiatives that collectively manage the known — or at least appear to until things change and then the ensuing problem is blamed on ‘unforeseen chance events.’

Strategy, in contrast, imagines a desirable future and makes a set of choices with the best chance of bringing it about. It is fundamentally not analytical, which causes it to conflict with the analytical bent encouraged in and supported by business. [Moi ici: Agora aqui, recordo Gigerenzer e o que ele escreve sobre a incerteza]

...

This belief in analysis that drives a love for planning renders the business world very friendly to technocrats. Technocrats focus more on inputs than outputs. They are driven to check all the boxes and follow the prescribed procedure (often prescribed by themselves for themselves). Planning is all about inputs: these are all the things that we are going to do, and since we have been thorough and analytical, all these initiatives are justifiable.

In contrast, entrepreneurs are laser-focused on outputs. They don’t check the boxes and rarely follow any prescribed process. And strategy, as I argue in the video, is all about producing outputs that you don’t directly control. [Moi ici: Como não recuar a 2007 e aos monumentos à treta]

...

The planning-oriented business technocrats are more interested in and comfortable with buying planning services from the so-called ‘strategy consulting firms’ than strategy services. They want smart and capable planners, and they find plenty of them in the ‘strategy consulting firms.’

Consequently, strategy is a tiny business within the ‘strategy consulting firms.’ I recently spoke with a partner of one of the ‘big three’ (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) who had recently left to pursue other interests and I speculated that strategy as a percentage of billing at his former firm was probably about 10–15%. He laughed at how high my estimate was and told me that it was closer to 3%."

Curadoria, num mundo de tribos

Uma série de artigos que se encadeiam para retratar algo.

Primeiro, este artigo "Personalization Has Failed Us":

"Curation by algorithm hasn’t lived up to expectations
...
Now everything is so curated that it’s difficult to find content that’s truly surprising.
.
Recommendation algorithms (also called curation algorithms) have been a staple of online services for decades. These formulas operate on a simple premise: They collect data about your habits, compare that data with other people’s habits, then recommend items based on that data.
...
Behind every “you might also like” recommendation is an algorithm built on data you’ve provided.
...
Our tastes are rarely simple enough for an algorithm to make sense of."

Enquanto o lia pensava num exemplo de um livro de Gerd Gigerenzer, algo do género. Imaginem um algoritmo a descodificar o significado de:

- Obrigado querida

Imaginem a quantidade de entoações, em diferentes cenários e circunstâncias que podem dar significados diferentes à frase. O algoritmo percebe?

Enquanto o lia pensava num outro exemplo, o algoritmo da Amazon España, manda-me recomendações ou que não quero ou de fornecedores que não expedem para Portugal.

Entretanto, ontem no Twitter vi este vídeo interessante:


Como não recordar a redução da fricção, consequência da novidade do desconhecido ou complexo:

Por fim, um artigo lido já há dias, "Why a top VC and a former LinkedIn exec think hobbies are the future of commerce":

"Curated was co-founded by Eduardo Vivas, a former LinkedIn executive. The platform is designed for consumers who are about to embark on a new hobby or passion project but don’t know where to start. Instead of making products available on the site, Curated connects consumers with experts and enthusiasts in the field who can answer questions and steer a person toward the right product for them.
...
“When you’re planning to spend more than $500 on a highly specialized product, you want to talk to an expert who really knows what they are talking about,” he says. “We’re trying to replicate the experience of talking to your friend who happens to be super enthusiastic about that hobby and really enjoys talking about it. We believe we’re giving our ‘experts’ a way to monetize their passions and talk about the thing they love doing most in life.”"

  Curadoria, num mundo de tribos.

Evitar o seu Tancos

Ontem de manhã, na minha caminhada matinal, li:

“Blame, unlike credit, always finds a home, and no one ever got fired for booking JFK. By going with the default, you are making a worse decision overall, but also insuring yourself against a catastrophically bad personal outcome. In his book Risk Savvy (2014), the German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer refers to this mental process as ‘Defensive Decision-Making’ – making a decision which is unconsciously designed not to maximise welfare overall but to minimise the damage to the decision maker in the event of a negative outcome. Much human behaviour that is derided as ‘irrational’ is actually evidence of a clever satisficing instinct – repeating a past behaviour or copying what most other people do may not be optimal, but is unlikely to be disastrous. We are all descended from people who managed to reproduce before making a fatal mistake, so it is hardly surprising that our brains are wired this way."

De tarde estive numa reunião onde me descreviam os comportamentos de um cliente... fiz logo a associação.

O cliente despeja as coisas para que os seus funcionários evitem problemas. Até comentei:
- Parece que querem evitar o seu Tancos. Por isso, chutam para o fornecedor.

Excerto de: Rory Sutherland. “Alchemy”. Apple Books.

Para reflexão

"The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire.
...
Even faced with their results, many experts never admitted systematic flaws in their judgment. When they missed wildly, it was a near miss; if just one little thing had gone differently, they would have nailed it. “There is often a curiously inverse relationship,” Tetlock concluded, “between how well forecasters thought they were doing and how well they did.”
...
Hedgehogs are deeply and tightly focused. Some have spent their career studying one problem. ...
Foxes, meanwhile, “draw from an eclectic array of traditions, and accept ambiguity and contradiction,” Tetlock wrote. Where hedgehogs represent narrowness, foxes embody breadth.
.
Incredibly, the hedgehogs performed especially poorly on long-term predictions within their specialty. They got worse as they accumulated experience and credentials in their field. The more information they had to work with, the more easily they could fit any story into their worldview.
.
Unfortunately, the world’s most prominent specialists are rarely held accountable for their predictions, so we continue to rely on them even when their track records make clear that we should not."

Trechos retirados de "The Peculiar Blindness of Experts"

BTW, este anónimo da província apostou em Agosto de 2013 quando todos falavam da espiral recessiva, foi no dia 25 de Abril de 2013. Recordo Outubro de 2013 e sobretudo "Uma espécie de Agosto de 2013".

Há dias publiquei a segunda parte de "O fim de um ciclo":

• Parte I 
• Parte II

E reparem como andam os funcionários do governo no semanário [sim, porque não eu não me esqueço de Gigerenzer], "INE deve apresentar esta semana a taxa de desemprego mais baixa dos últimos 15 anos":

"Economistas ouvidos pelo Expresso apontam, em média, para uma taxa de desemprego de 6,5% no primeiro trimestre deste ano, o que compara com 6,7% nos últimos três meses de 2018. A confirmar-se, será o valor mais baixo desde 2004"

E comparem com "Taxa de desemprego sobe pela primeira vez em três anos":

"No primeiro trimestre de 2019, a taxa de desemprego foi 6,8%, acaba de divulgar o Instituto Nacional de Estatística, registando uma subida de 0,1 pontos percentuais (p.p.) face ao trimestre anterior, mas também uma descida de 1,1 pontos percentuais face ao período homólogo, o primeiro trimestre de 2018. A subida trimestral acontece pela primeira vez desde o primeiro trimestre de 2016."[Moi ici: Recordar "Acerca do desemprego"]

A maré já mudou, agora só está a ser atenuada pela boleia demográfica.

"you do not fight complexity with complexity"

"“Modern finance is complex, perhaps too complex. Regulation of modern finance is complex, almost certainly too complex. That configuration spells trouble. As you do not fight fire with fire, you do not fight complexity with complexity. Because complexity generates uncertainty, not risk, it requires a regulatory response grounded in simplicity, not complexity”
...
Heuristic strategies are simple rules of thumb that solve complex uncertain situations precisely because of their simplicity, not despite it. More calculation, time, and information are not always better. Less can be more.
...
A good heuristic can be better than a complex strategy when used in the proper environment. Less can be more. The recognition heuristic is ecologically rational when a correlation exists between recognizing an option and the criteria for judgment.
...
One main point in the business world is that entrepreneurs can generate profit in the markets, à la Knight, precisely because they intelligently deal with immeasurable, irreducible uncertainty.
...
In most business situations knowledge is much less than perfect and uncertainty prevails over risk. Heuristic strategies that are successfully used in business decision-making exploit the structure of information in the environment, rely on simplicity to overcome the complexity of situation, and are indispensable when faced with irreducible uncertainty. One central observation is that less can be more. That is, less information, calculation or time, can be beneficial under particular circumstances to achieving a given task."

Trechos retirados de "Risk, uncertainty, and heuristics" de Shabnam Mousavi e Gerd Gigerenzer, publicado por Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1671–1678

Nada atraente

o Paulo Peres chamou-me a atenção para um artigo que me parece muito bom, "Value-based pricing and cognitive biases: An overview for business markets" de Mario Kienzler e publicado online por Industrial Marketing Management. O artigo lida com 4 vieses cognitivos que afectam a temática do pricing por parte dos agentes económicos.

Mal comecei a ler o artigo apreciei a quantidade de autores que ao longo dos anos li e que agora aparecem num texto sobre pricing. Nomes como: Kahneman, Gigerenzer e Ariely. Depois, quando encontro uma relação entre um tema que há longos anos aqui tenho referido, o locus de controlo, com o pricing, foi ouro sobre azul. 

Vejamos então o primeiro viés cognitivo: A percepção da falta de controlo.

"Proposition 1: The extent of managers' internal (external) LOC is positively (negatively) related to the extent to which firms practice value- based pricing."

Racional para isto?

"Control is an important concept in psychology and sociology, frequently operationalized as a subjective, domain-specific, and outcome- oriented construct related to locus of control (LOC) ... individuals with an external LOC perceive luck, coincidence, or influ-ential others as shaping external events that they must passively bear.
..
Research in psychology has frequently investigated the illusion of control—that is, overestimation of one's perceived control in chance situations. In contrast, perceived lack of control is defined as the tendency to underestimate one's control over events. The evidence suggests that people tend to under- estimate their control in situations where they actually have control.
.
In the context of pricing, perceived lack of control manifests as a subjective perception of managerial control over pricing that leads to a concrete price outcome. As such, a range of evidence suggests that LOC affects managerial pricing practices. More precisely, managers with an external LOC react positively to pricing practices that emphasize cost- or competition-based pricing.
...
many managers believe they have no control over pricing and that “‘we determine our costs and take our industry's traditional margins’ or ‘the market sets the price and we have to figure out how to cope with it.’”
...
entrepreneurs with an external locus of control prefer low-cost strategies—that is, strategies with a focus on costs and low prices.
.
Managers characterized by perceived lack of control over pricing are passive and rely on docile pricing practices such as adding a margin to costs or matching market prices. In contrast, value-based pricing requires managers to actively and confidently influence pricing through their behavior—a view associated with an internal LOC."

Depois destes sublinhados, regresso ao primeiro postal, de 2007, onde mencionei aqui o tema locus de controlo e a duas perguntas que fiz na altura:

"E quando um gestor tem o seu Locus de Controlo no exterior?.
Aparecem-nos comportamentos deste tipo.
Os telejornais, os foruns, os jornais e as antenas abertas, são o palco para quem se queixa dos chineses, esses malvados, ou dos espanhóis, ou dos polacos, ou dos marroquinos, ou dos portuenses, ou dos lisboetas, ou dos bracarenses... a culpa é sempre dos outros.
...
E quando numa comunidade a maioria dos seus membros tem o seu Locus de Controlo no exterior? Nada atraente!!!"

Não será porque ...

"If you look at what’s happened in big cities around the U.S. in recent years, it’s easy to think we’re living in Startup Nation. Thanks to the plummeting cost and increased availability of digital tools, as well as greater access to early-stage funding, we’ve seen what the Economist has called a “Cambrian moment,” with digital startups “bubbling up in an astonishing variety of services and products.”
...
Meanwhile, though, a host of economic researchers have been telling a much bleaker story: American entrepreneurship is actually on the decline, and has been for decades.
...
According to the Commerce Department, the number of new businesses started by Americans has fallen sharply since 2000, and so too has the percentage of American workers working for companies that are less than a year old.
...
So has America lost its appetite for risk? Not really. It is true that the number of new businesses has fallen, but much of that decline has been concentrated in what economists call “subsistence” businesses. These are businesses whose founders have no interest in creating a big company.
...
A small percentage of new businesses, though, are different: from the start, their ambition is to become big. These businesses are run by “transformational” entrepreneurs
...
While Stern and Guzman show that high-growth firms are being formed as actively as ever, they also find that these companies are not succeeding as often as such companies once did. As the researchers put it, “Even as the number of new ideas and potential for innovation is increasing, there seems to be a reduction in the ability of companies to scale in a meaningful and systematic way.” As many seeds as ever are being planted. But fewer trees are growing to the sky.
...
Stern and Guzman are agnostic about why this is happening. But one obvious answer suggests itself: the increased power of established incumbents. We may think that we have been living in a business world in which incumbents are always on the verge of being toppled and competitive advantage is more fragile than ever."

Há dias, num dos episódios da série "Endeavour" no canal Fox Crime, um autista era excepcional a desenhar, a pintar, algo que tinha vista uma só vez. No final do episódio, num raro momento de exteriorização o autista confessava: "quem me dera saber criar, ser inovador" (e não um copiador, um recitador da realidade). Lembrei-me logo de algo que li em Gigerenzer "the art of focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest", acerca de um russo que conseguia citar de memória o conteúdo da página 237 de um livro mas era incapaz de dizer o que queria dizer o que tinha acabado de citar.
.
Fico sempre a pensar nestes casos quando leio trechos como os que retirei de "Why Startups Are Struggling". Sigam-me por favor:

1. American entrepreneurship is actually on the decline, and has been for decades.
2. but much of that decline has been concentrated in what economists call “subsistence” businesses. These are businesses whose founders have no interest in creating a big company.
3. A small percentage of new businesses, though, are different: from the start, their ambition is to become big.
4. high-growth firms are being formed as actively as ever, they also find that these companies are not succeeding as often as such companies once did.

Não será porque há mais startups do mesmo tipo a tentar seduzir o mesmo número limitado de potenciais clientes?

Não será porque a realidade acelerou?

Custa-me a crer que sejam os incumbentes.

Subscrição: uma forma de ajudar a melhorar a tomada de decisões?

Ao olhar para esta série de subscrições "14 Product Subscription Services to Simplify Your Life", afinal uma nova forma de desenvolver uma relação comercial com base num modelo de negócio diferente.
.
Dei comigo a pensar se não podiam ser vendidas de uma forma diferente... "escolher cansa o músculo do cérebro".

"Improving your decision-making
.
Switching from System 1 to System 2 is difficult, but research indicates it isn’t impossible. Here are some steps to switching on your conscious thought and making better decisions.
.
Automate as much as possible.
.
Our brain gets tired just like a muscle. When our brain is exhausted, we tend to make worse decisions. Researchers from the Harvard Business Review explain, “The busier people are, the more they have on their minds, and the more time constraints they face, the more likely they will be to rely on System 1 thinking.” In short, our brains are just like a muscle. They can become overwhelmed and tired.
.
This effect is referred to as decision fatigue." (aqui)

Interessante:

• Why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day
• Why Zuck and other successful men wear the same thing every day
• Decision Fatigue Exhausts Self-Regulatory Resources

"The present findings suggest that self-regulation and effortful choosing draw on the same psychological resource. Making decisions depletes that resource, thereby weakening the subsequent capacity for self-control. The impaired self-control was found on a variety of tasks, including physical stamina and pain tolerance, persistence in the face of failure, and quality and quantity of numerical calculation.
.
Decision making and self-control are both prominent aspects of consumer behavior. It is therefore useful to recognize that they draw on a common psychological resource and that one may affect the other. In particular, making many decisions leaves the person in a depleted state and hence less likely to exert self-control effectively.
...
If consumers can learn not to do their shopping after a day of making hard decisions, or at least to know that when they do shop after making decisions they are vulnerable to buying more products and paying more for them, they can perhaps avoid the worst outcomes. Conserving their self-resources may therefore contribute to conserving their financial resources also, thus ultimately increasing their quality of life."

Para que servem as marcas?

Para ajudar a fazer escolhas.
.
Para reduzir o esforço de escolher.
.
Como dizem Gigerenzer, Kahneman e os irmãos Heath, escolher cansa o músculo do cérebro.

Ponto da situação

Ontem ao princípio da noite, um desafio do @pauloperes permitiu desenhar esta figura, para sistematizar o nosso progresso:

Um JTBD e vários contextos possíveis (recordar link "Não começar sem saber qual o trabalho e o contexto seleccionado")
.
A unidade de análise é a combinação JTBD e um contexto concreto.
O serviço prestado por uma organização é contratado pelo cliente para realizar um trabalho na sua vida, no âmbito de um certo contexto, para atingir um resultado (outcome).
Falamos de resultado (outcome) como uma consequência na vida do cliente, como um benefício, como uma experiência procurada e valorizada. Não falamos de ouput, não falamos de uma coisa concreta que é transaccionada e que tem especificações independentemente do cliente concreto. O cliente não procura a coisa, o objecto, o produto! O cliente procura o que a coisa faz na sua vida.
A coisa, o objecto, o produto transaccionado, é um recurso processado pelo cliente na sua vida para produzir o benefício, a experiência procurada.
.
Durante esse trabalho o cliente vai sentir resistências e problemas (barreiras). Por exemplo, porque não tem o know-how ou a paciência, para tirar o melhor partido dos recursos que lhe são disponibilizados. A monitorização do progresso, durante a realização do trabalho, pode dar força para seguir em frente, criando uma espécie de espiral de motivação positiva:

"People don’t want just the outcomes; they want the progress outcomes represent."

Recordei os objectivos proximais, para vencer as barreiras.
.
O olhar para trás no fim é o sublinhado a amarelo daqui:

"When you design for outcomes, you’re designing for your customers’s future past — the moment, at some end, when they look back and evaluate."

Como Kahneman e Gigerenzer escrevem, o que recordamos das experiências não é o mesmo que o que sentimos durante a sua vivência inicial. Há aqui qualquer coisa de Damásio?

Falta incluir a co-criação na primeira figura.

"and new situations, in which such intuitions are worthless"

"A firefighter running into a burning building doesn’t have time for even a quick decision tree, yet if he is experienced enough his intuition will often lead him to excellent decisions. Many other fields are similarly conducive to intuition built through years of practice—a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to develop true expertise, the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson famously estimated. The fields where this rule best applies tend to be stable. The behavior of tennis balls or violins or even fire won’t suddenly change and render experience invalid.
.
Management isn’t really one of those fields. It’s a mix of situations that repeat themselves, in which experience-based intuitions are invaluable, and new situations, in which such intuitions are worthless. [Moi ici: Recordar "Parte VII – Zapatero e os outros."] It involves projects whose risks and potential returns lend themselves to calculations but also includes groundbreaking endeavors for which calculations are likely to mislead. It is perhaps the profession most in need of multiple decision strategies.
.
Part of the appeal of heuristics-and-biases research is that even if it doesn’t tell you what decision to make, it at least warns you away from ways of thought that are obviously wrong. If being aware of the endowment effect makes you less likely to defend a declining business line rather than invest in a new one, you’ll probably be better off."

Trechos retirados de "From “Economic Man” to Behavioral Economics"

Como não pensar logo numa série de políticos...

Ontem de manhã, durante uma caminhada, li mais um pouco de "Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions" de Gerd Gigerenzer onde encontrei uma referência a esta tira:

Depois, há noite, encontrei "We Are All Confident Idiots":

"What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge."

Como não pensar logo numa série de políticos...

"statistical calculation is not enough"

"Don’t Confuse Risk and Uncertainty
Given the many unknowns, few situations in life allow us to calculate risk precisely. In most cases the risks involved are a mixture of more or less well known ones.
...
In health care, another world with a high degree of uncertainty, a doctor needs statistical thinking to understand the results of medical research, but also good intuitions to understand the patient. Similarly, in the world of business, statistical calculation is not enough; to know whom to trust, one needs good intuitions about other people."

 Trechos retirados de "Risk Savy" de Gerd Gigerenzer.

Como será com as outras?

Mais uma figura que me fascina...
.
Quem haveria de dizer que ambos os tampos são iguais...
.
Se é tão fácil iludirmos-nos em coisas que se comprovam com régua e esquadro, como será com as outras?

A merecer exploração

No ano passado realizei um trabalho para uma empresa em que fui confrontado com as falhas que decorrem de não se seguirem os protocolos. As falhas ocorriam com os trabalhadores com mais experiência, as falhas ocorriam nos trabalhos que, supostamente, eram os mais simples.
.
Formei a teoria de que essas falhas resultavam do excesso de confiança. E, desde então, não tenho deixado de pensar em como se pode contrariar esse facilitismo. Como tornar a boa-prática tão rotineira que, mesmo distraídos, ela faz parte do hábito.
.
Nos últimos meses tenho dedicado as minhas sessões de jogging à audição de alguns livros em que os autores discorrem sobre a natureza humana:

• "Gut Feelings" de Gerd Gigerenzer;
• "Thinking, Fast and Slow" de Daniel Kahneman; e
• "The Power of Habit"de Charles Duhigg

Chegado aqui, parece que encontrei uma abordagem que julgo valer a pena tentar.

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Quando Duhigg me contou a técnica de Michael Phelps:

"“If you were to ask Michael what's going on in his head before competition, he would say he's not really thinking about anything. He's just following the program. But that's not right. It's more like his habits have taken over. When the race arrives, he's more than halfway through his plan and he's been victorious at every step. All the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected. The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension.”

Duas horas antes da corrida começar ele começa um ritual que controla e que prolonga para a corrida.
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Quando Duhigg me contou a história de um hospital assolado por erros no bloco operatório e que mudou de resultados com o recurso a checklists antes do início de cada intervenção.
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Comecei a pensar, como é que conseguimos pôr os trabalhadores a fazer o mesmo no início de cada intervenção? Como os pôr a realizar uma preparação?
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E lembrei-me dos tempos em que dava catequese e colaborava numa série de actividades da paróquia das Antas, antes de uma reunião a primeira tarefa era... rezar uma breve oração. E comecei a ver um padrão.
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Como conseguir pôr um grupo de velhos lobos-do-mar, tarimbados por anos e anos de experiência, moldados na nossa cultura de desenrasque e facilidade, a "rezarem a sua oração" antes de iniciarem um trabalho?
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Ontem, numa estação de serviço em Mangualde, enquanto tomava um café e olhava para a televisão, li que Portugal e a Macedónia vão jogar. E a minha mente começou a navegar... o que fazem os jogadores de uma selecção antes de começarem a jogar? Seguem um ritual! Ouvem e cantam o hino. Daí a mente voou para a Haka:


Será que consigo criar uma abordagem que inspire os trabalhadores a seguirem uma checklist, um ritual no início de cada intervenção, tendo em conta o exemplo do hino e da haka?
Algo que os sintonize no que há a fazer, nas exigências e nos riscos da intervenção?
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Há aqui qualquer coisa a merecer exploração... vamos tentar.

Na companhia de Siegfried e Parsifal

Jeremy Gutsche em "Exploiting Chaos" escreve:

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"Accept that the world never returns to normal.

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Successful innovators do not get caught up in the turmoil of change. They don't wait for the world to return to normal. Impervious to the clutter that surrounds them, these vanguards adapt to opportunity.

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The only things slowing you down are the rules you need to break.

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The pursuit of opportunity will require you to think differently and break the rules that paralyze change."

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Durante a minha última audição de "Gut feelings" de Gerd Gigerenzer fixei isto:

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"Imitation can pay in a stable environment. How should a son run his father’s company? When the business world in which the company operates is relatively stable, the son may be well advised to imitate the successful father, rather than starting from scratch by introducing new policies with unknown consequences.

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When is imitation futile? As mentioned before, when the world is quickly changing, imitation can be inferior to individual learning. Consider once again the son who inherits his father’s firm and copies his successful practices, which have made a fortune over decades. Yet when the environment changes quickly, as in the globalization of the market, the formerly winning strategy can cause bankruptcy. In general, imitating traditional practice tends to be successful when changes are slow, and futile when changes are fast."

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Ambos os autores chamam a atenção para, em pleno caos, em plena turbulência, arriscar e quebrar as regras que impedem a adaptação a novas oportunidades. 

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E dei comigo a pensar nos gerentes com a 6ª classe que fazem o que Daniel Bessa e a galeria de encalhados da tríade dizem que é impossível, competir com sucesso num mundo globalizado, apesar de terem o marco alemão como moeda. Os que não conhecem as regras... alteram as regras!!! Os que não conhecem as regras... criam novas regras!!! E, de repente, encontro a harmonia e sintonia com Gigerenzer:

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"The power of ignorance to speed up social change is a common plot in literature. Among the many heroes in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Siegfried is the most clueless one. Siegfried grows up without parental care. He is the naive hero who acts impulsively, whose adventures happen to him, rather than being deliberately planned. Siegfried’s combination of ignorance and fearlessness is the weapon that eventually brings down the rule of the Gods. Similar to Siegfried is Parsifal, the hero of Wagner’s last work. Brought up by his mother in a lonely forest, he knows nothing about the world when he begins his quest for the Holy Grail. The strength of Siegfried, Parsifal, and similar characters lies in their not knowing the laws that rule the social world. ... Ignorance of the status quo, and so a lack of respect for it, is a great weapon with which to revolutionize the social order. These heroes’ intuitive actions were based on missing knowledge, but the gut feeling “I can do it!” can succeed even when based on false information."

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Hoje, encontro este texto "Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually" (BTW, ao lê-lo, pensem na reacção do comércio tradicional à chegada das grandes superfícies. Façam o paralelismo com a reacção das grandes superfícies ao advento das Amazon e outras) e pensei logo nos encalhados e na sua fixação doentia nos custos, apesar das evidências factuais de que algo de diferente está a funcionar (o valor):

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"First comes the strategic bankruptcy, ..., where management’s sole focus is improving some arbitrary metric from last quarter, even when doing so actually interferes with customers trying to buy something else."

"the art of focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest"

Quando comecei a ler/ouvir "Gut feelings: the intelligence of the unconscious" de Gerd Gigerenzer, apesar do autor estar constantemente a repetir que "Less is More", nunca pensei na relação directa entre o trabalho do autor e as reflexões que faço sobre o meu trabalho de intervenção nas empresas.
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Contudo, comecei a juntar as peças quando ouvi:
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"Common sense suggests that forgetting stands in the way of good judgment. Earlier in this book, however, we met the Russian mnemonist Shereshevsky, whose memory was so perfect that it was flooded with details, making it difficult for him to get the gist of a story."
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E relacionei com os casos que Gigerenzer conta, uma e outra vez, em como os ignorantes, em n testes, conseguem bater os especialistas, em previsões desportivas ou concursos sobre geografia.
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Estou sempre a chamar a atenção para:

• Concentrar uma empresa no que é essencial;
• Responder à pergunta quem são os clientes-alvo e trabalhar paranoicamente para os servir;
• Ao modelar o funcionamento de empresas, não sejam como os franceses, não tentem incluir, não tentem contemplar tudo;
• Ao cartografar um processo, começar pela sua finalidade, pela sua razão de ser, pelo seu propósito;

Quando se sabe muito sobre um tema, podemos ser prejudicados pelo excesso de conhecimento quando a resposta não é lógica:

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"Imagine you are a contestant in a TV game show. You have outwitted all other competitors and eagerly await the $1 million question. Here it comes: 

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Which city has the larger population, Detroit or Milwaukee?

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Ouch, you have never been good in geography. The clock is ticking away. Except for the odd Trivial Pursuit addict, few people know the answer for sure. There is no way to logically deduce the correct answer; you have to use what you know and make your best guess.

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Daniel Goldstein and I asked a class of American college students, and they were divided—some 40 percent voted for Milwaukee, the others for Detroit. Next we tested an equivalent class of German students. Virtually everyone gave the right answer: Detroit. One might conclude that the Germans were smarter, or at least knew more about American geography. Yet the opposite was the case. They knew very little about Detroit, and many of them had not even heard of Milwaukee. These Germans had to rely on their intuition rather than on good reasons. What is the secret of this striking intuition? The answer is surprisingly simple. The Germans used a rule of thumb known as the recognition heuristic:

• If you recognize the name of one city but not that of the other, then infer that the recognized city has the larger population.

The American students could not use this rule of thumb because they had heard of both cities. They knew too much. Myriad facts muddled their judgment and prevented them from finding the right answer. A beneficial degree of ignorance can be valuable, although relying on name recognition is of course not foolproof."

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O nono capítulo "Less is More in Healthcare", um capítulo que mete medo, ao dissecar o pensamento dos médicos que os leva à sobre-prescrição, à sobre-medicação, e ao sobre-tratamento, termina assim:

• "Truly efficient health care requires mastering the art of focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest. "

BANG! Aquelas palavras "the art of focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest"

• "Good intuitions must go beyond the information given, and therefore, beyond logic."

Outro BANG!!! Uma estratégia, ou muitas estratégias bem sucedidas resultam porque não têm uma lógica linear... porque são fundamentadas em... "optimismo não documentado", em intuição.