"Never be reactionary if you can help it."

Imaginem a quantidade de sectores económicos a quem o título se aplica "So Your Industry Is Changing. Now What?"

• Lacticínios;
• Suinicultores;
• Táxis;
• Calçado;
• Vestuário;
• Retalho físico;
• Mobiliário;
• Construção;
• ...

"Even the savviest founders aren't always the first ones out of the gate with the next big idea. But the best ones don't panic. They learn from what their fellow entrepreneurs are doing, sure, but they also know that the key to staying one step ahead and not letting new, shiny innovation swallow them whole lies not in replicating the technology of their peers, but in digging in deeper with their audience."

Como é que os dirigentes associativos mais mediatizados costumam reagir perante a mudança? Defendendo o passado e anatemizando a mudança:

"Think of disruption as one big, jarring piece of user feedback on your industry as a whole and you'll have a good jumping off point to make the necessary adjustments.
...
When your industry is thrust into change, you have only one acceptable outcome: product transformation. Get excited, embrace it - these opportunities to grow don't come around every day. Stay one step ahead by first taking a big step back and doing an audit on yourself.
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First, assess your current customer experience. What's missing from making it more seamless? Draw up a roadmap of your product compared to your newest, flashy competitor's. Where are the forks in that road? Put yourself back in the mindset of your customer and ask where the pain points, however small, exist on your road."

Esta é demasiado forte:

"Never be reactionary if you can help it." 

Trechos retirados de "So Your Industry Is Changing. Now What?"

Uma questão de postura

Acerca dos que abraçam a mudança em vez de lhe resistir:

"When in doubt, try wings.
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Wings use finesse more than sheer force. Wings work with the surrounding environment, not against it. Wings are elegant, not brutal."

A propósito de "Comissão diz que proibir serviços como a Uber e Airbnb só em “último recurso”"

Trecho retirado de "Add engines until airborne"

"mesmo sem ter nada a ver com tecnologia"

"Hackathons Aren’t Just for Coders" pois não, até poderiam ser úteis na sua PME, mesmo sem ter nada a ver com tecnologia.

"Hackathons are no longer just for coders. Companies far outside the tech world are using these intense brainstorming and development sessions to stir up new ideas on everything from culture change to supply chain management.
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At their best, hackathons create a structure and process around idea development. Sure, breaking out of the day-to-day routine can reinvigorate and inspire staff, but hackathons also demonstrate to employees that innovation is not only welcomed but also expected. Well-run hackathons lead to concrete ideas for new products and processes that can improve the customer experience and increase growth."

O facto de no fim as equipas terem de apresentar uma proposta... não chega mandar bocas e voltar ao ramram.

O que pode correr mal

Vi esta figura ainda antes deste século ter começado. Nunca a esqueci:

Sistematiza o que pode correr mal num projecto.

Inovação versus incumbação

"A colleague recently minted a new word by accident — incumbation”. It won’t catch on but its fleeting appearance made me wonder what such a term, if it existed, might define: the opposite of innovation.
As grimy layers of admin accrete on the original bright ideals of their founders, incumbent companies become prone to inertia and what Gary Hamel, the management thinker, has called “bureausclerosis”. Such complacency is bad. But some of the methods that established companies use to protect themselves are worse.
...
Recumbent incumbents are almost always doomed. The good news is that technology and transparency have already cut away at the distribution and information monopolies that used to shelter large, lazy companies. The bad news is that survivors will continue to use foul means as well as fair to protect themselves. Their misguided attempts at self-preservation can hobble the advance of more original, more innovative competitors."

Como não recordar "Abraçar a mudança" ou "Engaging emergence".
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Como não recordar o tempo perdido, a largura de banda da atenção ocupada com tantos recursos desviados para defender o passado nos têxteis:

• Já tenho dado para este peditório ao longo dos anos neste blogue (Maio de 2011)
• "Por que é que calçado e têxtil têm tido desempenhos tão diferentes?" (Março de 2013)
• O tempo que se terá perdido... (Julho de 2014)

Trechos retirados de "Incumbents, dark arts and the opposite of innovation"

O sucesso passado é um perigo, porque cria uma nova realidade

E Joe Calloway em "Becoming a Category of One" continua a merecer ser lido.
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Recordando o postal de ontem "Reflexão sobre a competitividade, com ou sem euro" e aquele momento em que a taxa de esemprego chegou aos 3,9%, julgo que estes trechos explicam parte do que aconteceu:

"Success Means You Know What Used to Work (Moi ici: Julgo que há uma frase de Hayek neste mesmo sentido)
...
The way you used to do it won ’ t work much longer. It ’ s not because you ’ re necessarily doing anything wrong, it ’ s just that everything about the way we do business is changing. It ’ s changing now, as you read this. And it ’ s going to keep on changing. (Moi ici: Basta olhar para os jornais para ver essa mudança. Por exemplo, o esboroar do modelo de negócio da Nespresso em "Nespresso brews plans to see off rivals", uma alteração local que muda uma certa paisagem competitiva "London Tube plans grocery services at stations". BTW, acho estranho que só agora é que o Tube se tenha lembrado desta possibilidade. Como dizem os especialistas do retalho "Location, location, location")
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It ’ s become a challenge to even defi ne what business you ’ re in anymore.
...
New competitors are everywhere for everybody.
...
Past Success Is the EnemyPast success can be, and usually is, the enemy of future success. This is a rule that I live by in my own business. What it means is simply that if you have a track record of past success, and you are
good at what you do, then I would say two things to you.
...
you have put yourself in a very dangerous position. When companies or individuals become successful, they inevitably experience the pull of an almost irresistible force — complacency. The greatest danger of past success is that you might relax into thinking that you “ know how this business works. ” Every successful company must be on guard against the threat of complacency. You have to create a sense of urgency every day in every thing you do.
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if you ’ re successful, that means you know what used to work . If you ’ re successful, that means that you can compete and win in markets that no longer exist . They ’ re gone. The game starts over today and it will start over again tomorrow. ”(Moi ici: Não há direitos adquiridos, tudo está sempre em questão)
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don ’ t make assumptions about what will work tomorrow based on what worked yesterday, especially in the area of processes, procedures, strategies, and operations.
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Prosperity can be very dangerous for any company. It can lead you to believe that you ’ ve cracked the code, or “ figured this business out, ” or that you “ know how this business works. ”
No. You know how it used to work. To stop and relax for more than a brief moment is one of the most dangerous things you can do in a marketplace that changes constantly."

E, para terminar, relacionando com o desempenho das empresas que, perante a derrocada do mercado interno, acordaram, nos últimos anos, para a necessidade de exportarem, este trecho:

"Looking back over my own career, it ’ s clear that some of the most significant periods of progress that I experienced were caused by what seemed at the time like crisis, not opportunity.
I had fallen prey to relaxing because my business was experiencing success and customers were happy, and I could see absolutely no reason to do anything other than what was already working. It was as if someone had installed one of those invisible fences around me, like the ones you would use to train your pet not to wander away from your yard. My invisible fence was made up of the boundaries that complacency had erected in my mind. I thought I was safe because nothing was changing."

Claro, o truque é este:

"learn to create their own sense of urgency without waiting for a crisis to come down the road and shake them out of complacency.
...´
Far from resisting change, they are running with change to create their own future (Moi ici: Abraçar a mudança, em vez de lhe resistir) rather than leave it to chance and circumstances that are out of their control."

E recordando a artesã:

"The product may not change, but the reasons people buy the product will change. Nothing stays the same.
Success Creates a New Reality
The very act of becoming successful demands that you change."

.A vida das empresas é este eterno ir e vir de estratégias, como as ondas numa praia... como aprendi com Beinhocker:

“We discovered that there is no one best strategy; rather, the evolutionary process creates an ecosystem of strategies – an ecosystem that changes over time in Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction.”

"there are three things that are really critical"

""What does it mean to be a leader in this kind of environment today?," asked Gary Hamel. "Beyond all the technical skills and so on, for me there are three things that are really critical.
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One is, you have to be a contrarian in your heart. You have to be able to look at what everybody else takes for granted and say, is there another way of doing this? (Moi ici: Só assim se dão os saltos quânticos que ultrapassam a melhoria incremental)
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Number two, you have to have a lot of courage today. You have to be able to look beyond what everybody else takes as best practice. (Moi ici: A coragem de seguir o caminho menos percorridol)
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And I think the third and most important thing is, if you really want to be a change leader, is you have to have compassion. People have to believe that you are not fighting your corner. This is not about IT; it's not even just about the business. It's about working from the customer backwards. And when people understand that that's who I'm here for, and that's my ultimate reference point, and how do I improve the quality of life, people will give you enormous amount of runway to try things, to take risks, to experiment. I think that that contrarian heart and that compassionate spirit, that courage, those are huge multipliers for anybody today who's trying to be a leader in this chaotic world we're in."

Trecho retirado de "How CIOs Can Change the Game"

Abraçar a mudança

• "Abraçar a MUDANÇA em vez de lhe resistir"
• "Abraçar a MUDANÇA em vez de lhe resistir (parte II)"

A propósito de "Embrace the Business Model That Threatens You":

"If your company is already well established and has smart management, it is likely that it will become a hybrid in the next ten years, blending its legacy business with a new business model that is rising to threaten it."

“Ready or not, here I come!”

À atenção das associações empresariais.

“Market transitions wait for no one.” Not for your customers. Not for your partners. Not for your competitors. And not for you. When the time comes, that sets the time. And just like when you were a kid playing hide and seek, there’s a voice that comes out of nowhere calling, “Ready or not, here I come!”

À atenção dos empresários.

"But step back and take stock. The world is more powerful than you. The market is more powerful than you. Your customers are more powerful than you. And the sum of all your partners and competitors—the ecosystem—is more powerful than you. And just to put the cap on it, nobody really cares about you except you."

À atenção de quem olha para as empresas como vacas leiteiras sempre à mão para impostar.
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Trecho retirado de "Escape Velocity - Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past" de Geoffrey A. Moore.

Por vezes, o mundo muda de tal forma que até práticas centenárias têm de mudar

Novos tempos, quase sempre exigem novas abordagens, novos métodos, algum tipo de experimentação.
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Quanto mais antigo é o método estabelecido, mais as mudanças são recebidas como um sacrilégio pela comunidade incumbente.
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A propósito de "A Revered French Winery Breaks With a Bordeaux Tradition" recordo logo a situação dos pequenos vitivinicultores do Douro, o mundo está em mudança e eles ou não a percebem ou não querem ver o status-quo perturbado. Difícil quando até os produtores grandes já perceberam que o volume não é o caminho do futuro (aqui e sobretudo aqui).
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Não sei se o Chateau Latour está no bom caminho ou não, não é esse o ponto. O ponto é que, por vezes, o mundo muda de tal forma que até práticas centenárias têm de mudar.

Defender o passado é sempre tramado

"Polaroid comes to my mind here ... They were so blinded by their inventive tradition and the money they made on their original breakthrough of “instant” self-developing film that they didn’t realize the growing threat posed by digital imaging.
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If we turn the clock back to 1990, Polaroid’s biggest asset was a global user-base that bought the company’s cameras but also - and more importantly - bought its film. On paper, Polaroid looked agile, with about $3 billion in revenues. Internally, however, the company was at odds with the vision of its founder and inventor, Dr. Edwin Land. Instead of developing the inventive and innovative thinking that brought so much success in the first place, Polaroid used much of its capital to defend itself against copycat technologies. The company refused to explore digital imaging, even as new start-ups out of MIT sprang up along Route 128 and on Kendall Square, offering a glimpse of the digital future. What killed Polaroid was its patent-centric mindset and its firm focus on the past, rather than the future. When the technology it defended so hard against competitors became obsolete, the company became obsolete.
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But what if Polaroid had opened up instead of hunkering down? Just imagine if the designers among its loyal global user-base had collaborated on an open-source “image system” based on, but not limited by, the company’s previous success. First of all, there would have been a different mindset within the company. Polaroid’s brand and product experience was about instant images, not necessarily about cameras and instant film. An opensource strategy would have kept Polaroid on the path of “instant imaging” because, as the technology developed, the choices would have become more varied and flexible."

Trecho retirado de "A fine line" de Hartmut Esslinger.

Abraçar os constrangimentos sem dramas

"Don't Relax Constraints, Embrace Them"
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Em sintonia com o que escrevi aqui no passado, sobre a vantagem de abraçar a mudança estrutural em vez de lhe resistir, por exemplo em: "Abraçar a MUDANÇA em vez de lhe resistir"

Abraçar a MUDANÇA em vez de lhe resistir (parte II)

Relacionar o ponto 4 deste postal "O momento Janus (parte II)" com estes postal de Seth Godin "Embracing constraints".

Engaging emergence

Volta e meia escrevo aqui no blogue sobre "abraçar a mudança". Por exemplo:

• "Abraçar a MUDANÇA em vez de lhe resistir"
• "Defender o passado impede-nos de abraçar um futuro"

Assim, foi com interesse que descobri o livro "Engaging Emergence -Turning Upheaval into Opportunity" de Peggy Holman.
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"Change begins with disruption. Whether caused by something small—a broken promise—or large—a hurricane sweeping across a city—disturbance interrupts the status quo.
...
Disruption, disturbance, tension, upheaval, dissonance, chaos. These conditions stress us. They often challenge our ability to work together toward common goals. Some disruptions, like upheaval and chaos, are more extreme, but they all stimulate change. And though we usually relate to such situations negatively, one key shift to engaging emergence is developing a positive relationship with these sorts of stressors. In fact, disrupting compassionately is a particularly effective approach.
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Most of us avoid tension and disturbances. We attempt to plan them away, control them, or destroy them. Perhaps we hold in our anger because we don’t want to cause a fuss. We feel a little more isolated as a result, but order is maintained. We learn to walk around these isolation zones, sometimes forgetting they exist. Yet they typically worsen with time. Alienation, rigidity, greed, intolerance, and inaction or violence grow. Such characteristics are present in many of our current crises.
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What if tensions inspired curiosity? What if we knew how to express our anger, fear, or grief so that it contributed to something better?"
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O que a autora faz é convidar a encarar a mudança como um convite para uma aventura positiva:
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"Diversity and dissonance as resources, with problems inviting exploration."
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"Welcome and use disturbance in a creative dance with order."
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"Focus on the mysterious from a foundation of what we understand." 
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"Pay attention to the dance between the mainstream and the margins."
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"Follow the energy, using the plan as useful information."
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Isto é material perigoso na nossa sociedade que protege e venera os incumbentes.