"companies can no longer hope to be everything to everyone"

Em todos os sectores o mesmo aviso:

"In this complex environment, auto companies can no longer hope to be everything to everyone. There are simply too many technical options, markets, and social and demographic changes to address. And as the competitive landscape intensifies, being average at many things will not be good enough anymore; companies will need to pick their bets and become great at the things that truly matter for the customers they have chosen to serve. Each auto company must be very clear about how it plans to add value for its particular set of customers; in other words, it has to confidently choose its way to play. And auto companies must determine which distinctive capabilities — that is, which unique processes, tools, knowledge, skills, and organization — will allow them to deliver on this value proposition better than anyone else and create a clear right to win.
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Armed with a coherent system in which distinctive capabilities, a strong way to play, and suitable products and services are aligned, automakers can generate sustained profitable growth. Such a coherent system is hard to copy, provides real value to customers, and differentiates companies from competitors"

 Imagem e trecho retirado de "Auto industry growth strategies: Fasten your seatbelts"

Alinhar vendas com estratégia

Na sequência de "Fiquei com curiosidade ..." recordei "Executives and Salespeople Are Misaligned — and the Effects Are Costly":

"The results show that executives feel that they have a high level of understanding of their companies’ strategic priorities, while sales reps — who aren’t typically in the planning meetings, on the conference calls, or roaming the halls with the people crafting strategy — said they did not.
...
The sales force gets better and better at things that leaders and customers value less and less while remaining unclear about performance expectations.
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In order to achieve alignment, companies need to break these routines and treat causes, not symptoms.
...
They linked strategy to behaviors.
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They changed their approach to training.
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They revamped their compensation and performance evaluations."

Ainda o Schwerpunkt

Recordar:

• Schwerpunkt
• Schwerpunkt (parte II)

"O Schwerpunkt fornece focalização e orientação para que toda a organização se concentre e se empenhe nesse objectivo ou propósito."(fonte)

A propósito de "Top Ten Strategy Tricks: #10 Schwerpunkt":

"In the busi­ness world, schw­er­punkt is typ­i­cally imple­mented in the form of visions and mis­sion state­ments. And here I have to give Herb Ruben­stien credit; he says a strat­egy
should always be some­thing you can state in one sen­tence. That sen­tence is your schwerpunkt."

 Quando penso em schwerpunkt penso logo na blitzkrieg e no flash que foi chegar a Paris em 3 dias. Este trecho é importante:

"Sim­ply com­mu­ni­cat­ing the schw­er­punkt to every­one par­tic­i­pat­ing in the strat­egy allows them to use their own judg­ment in how their respon­si­bil­i­ties align to the schw­er­punkt. And it is the tar­get used to deter­mine pri­or­i­ties and rel­e­vance of efforts. If your using resources in such a way that don’t point towards your schw­er­punkt, why are you using them?"

Em Schwerpunkt (parte II):

"Schwerpunkt represents a unifying concept that provides a way to rapidly shape focus and direction of effort as well as harmonize support activities with combat operations, thereby permit a true decentralization of tactical command within centralized strategic guidance—without losing cohesion of overall effort.
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or put another way
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Schwerpunkt represents a unifying medium that provides a directed way to tie initiative of many subordinate actions with superior intent as a basis to diminish friction and compress time in order to generate a favorable mismatch in time/ability to shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances."

Que investimento?

"SHAREHOLDER VALUE CREATION is the outcome—not the driver—of effective business strategy, which should be aimed at profitably creating and retaining satisfied customers. But how can a business best do this? In this chapter, I will show how the actions of a firm at all levels can create value for shareholders and other stakeholders.[Moi ici: A nossa ideia de que há objectivos que devem ser encarados como consequências, a obliquidade]
...
how can a firm improve its ROIC? [Moi ici: Return on invested capital] Figure 4.1 suggests that the drivers of ROIC include actions that either increase the numerator (by improving operating margins) or decrease the denominator (by reducing the amount of investment required for a given level of business output). [Moi ici: Outra ideia que acarinhamos no nosso trabalho, a diferença entre o numerador e denominador] These measures themselves can be further deconstructed into a set of management actions that drive higher-level business results.
...

...
every business function can and should contribute to shareholder value enhancement. Business functions can do this by improving revenue growth, which is the primary domain of marketing and innovation, or through operational and capital efficiency, which is a shared responsibility throughout the organization. As such, every employee within an organization should clearly understand how the creation and retention of satisfied customers drives overall profits, revenue growth, and shareholder value, and how their actions contribute to this. If employees do not understand the value of their daily activities, they are probably working ineffectively, working for a company with a poorly communicated management strategy, or both."

Quantas empresas se preocupam com isto? Quantas empresas investem realmente em fazer com que os trabalhadores percebam o que é realmente importante?

Trechos e figura retirados de "If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth"

Orçamento e estratégia (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Começo por recuar a 2003, ou seria 2004?

"Smart leaders understand that their job requires them to identify trade-offs, choosing what not to do as much as what to do. Grading the importance of various initiatives in an environment of finite resources is a primary test of leadership.
...
There are three interdependent variables that are essential for executing any initiative — objectives, resources, and timing. You can’t produce the desired effect of a project without precise objectives, ample resources, and a reasonable time frame. If you push or pull on one leg of this triangle, you must adjust the others.
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All three variables are important, but resources reign supreme. Resources are what enable an objective to be accomplished within a set time; without dedicated means, an initiative is pure fantasy."

E não é raro encontrar fantasias.

E na sua empresa como se distribuem os recursos?

Trechos retirados de "A Better Way to Set Strategic Priorities"

Michelin low-cost?

Ontem ao ler "Costa garante: Malparado não vai fazer “nascer um banco mau”" lembrei-me logo de "Costa quer tirar 'lixo' dos bancos. E passá-lo para um 'banco mau'".

Hoje ao ler a pompa e a circunstância de "Estrelas Michelin assinam refeições de bordo na TAP" lembrei-me logo das ideias pouco sensatas:

• Divagações de um consultor de província (Setembro de 2016!!!!!)
• TAP: Por onde começar? (Novembro de 2015)

Não creio que estrelas Michelin casem bem com low-cost, pois não?

Quantas PME sofrem desta doença? Caro Paulo, está a ver o que quer dizer desalinhamento entre estratégia e orçamento? Ou entre estratégia comunicada e estratégia executada?

BTW, o que fazem aquelas meninas na foto? Bibelôs?

Orçamento e estratégia

"The way companies allocate resources and make investment decisions is critical to their ability to create shareholder value.
...
four practices that correlate closely with outperformance: tying budgets to corporate strategy, making evidence-based decisions, setting bottom-up performance goals, and formally ranking investments.
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tying budgets to strategic plans correlates more closely with higher growth and profitability than any of the other practices we identified." [Moi ici: E recuar a 2007!]

Trechos retirados de "The finer points of linking resource allocation to value creation"

A armadilha (parte III)

Parte II.

"A bad corporate innovation system will beat a good innovator (almost) every time. Period.
...
Major learning here: Even the greatest people will have a hard time driving innovation successfully within corporate systems that are dysfunctional, i.e. not set up properly for their actual purpose. Beside the fact, that an organization will not build up sustainable innovation capability this way, it will mostly result in frustration on the part of the engaged people and – eventually – quitting in many cases."

Trechos retirados de "Bad Innovation Systems Beat Good Innovators (Almost) Every Time"

"your organization’s biggest strategic challenge isn’t strategic thinking — it’s strategic acting"

"However hard it is to devise a smart strategy, it’s ten times harder to get people to execute on that strategy. And a poorly executed strategy, no matter how clever, is worthless.
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In other words, your organization’s biggest strategic challenge isn’t strategic thinking — it’s strategic acting.
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Because while strategy development and communication are about knowing something, strategy execution is about doing something. And the gap between what you know and what you do is often huge. Add in the necessity of having everyone acting in alignment with each other, and it gets even huger.
...
To deliver stellar results, people need to be hyperaligned and laser-focused on the highest-impact actions that will drive the organization’s most important outcomes."

Trechos retirados de "Execution Is a People Problem, Not a Strategy Problem"

Não há almoços grátis, só na cabeça de parlamentares

"This is what enterprise alignment looks like. It means winning through a tightly managed enterprise value chain that connects an enterprise’s purpose (what we do and why we do it) to its business strategy (what we are trying to win at to fulfill our purpose), organizational capability (what we need to be good at to win), resource architecture (what makes us good), and, finally, management systems (what delivers the winning performance we need). The enterprise value chain is only as strong as its weakest link."

Claro que este alinhamento aumenta o risco e a mortalidade, não há almoços grátis:

E isso mete medo, uma razão não incluída nesta lista "Four Reasons for Misaligned Enterprises".

Trecho retirado de "Four Reasons for Misaligned Enterprises"

E na sua empresa?

"Customer value is always relative, and what your competitors do is the primary point of comparison for the relative judgments you make. Pick the wrong competitors, forget one, get them wrong, or make the judgment on a flimsy or outdated basis, and you won't have an opportunity to correct yourself later in the process. Success with VBP starts here.
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What is your sandbox and your direct competition? Your sales teams may think you compete against the low-cost players, while your marketing teams may tell the world that your company is all about premium brands and premium products. This all-too-common situation creates confusion around alignment. It will manifest itself in further confusion when you negotiate with customers. You choose your competitors based on your strategy. If you are highly differentiated, you don't compete against low-cost players. You compete against the other differentiated ones. And vice versa. This is important to establish up front. And that is why you should create value maps and communicate them internally!"

E na sua empresa, é claro para todos quem privilegiam?

Trecho retirado de "Dollarizing Differentiation Value: A Practical Guide for the Quantification and the Capture of Customer Value" de Stephan M. Liozu.

Para reflexão

“We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop.”

“The first thing to do to attain tomorrow is to slough off yesterday.”

"96% of unhappy #customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back."

Roubado no Twitter

Uma estratégia deliberada?

"Pick a LaneWith enough money, you can be better and faster. Without the investment, you can only be cheaper. If you choose to be better, you have to charge more so that you have the ability to create greater value.
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Most sales organizations don’t spend enough time explaining to their sales force the competitive strategy they have chosen and why they have chosen it. This leaves many salespeople with the belief that they should have the best product, service, or solution while also having the lowest price. This mythical and unobtainable competitive strategy exists in only two places on earth: in the minds of some clients and some salespeople."

Uma PME quando vai para o divã e toma consciência dos seus pontos fortes e formula uma estratégia deliberada e a traduz num mapa da estratégia, fácil de ler e de interpretar, fica com uma poderosa ferramenta de comunicação e alinhamento, útil para os operários na linha de produção, útil para os comerciais no mercado, útil para os criadores de novos produtos e serviços.

A sua empresa tem uma estratégia deliberada? A sua empresa divulga internamente a sua estratégia?

Podemos ajudar?

Trechos retirados de "Once You Choose to Compete on Price"

Para pensar estrategicamente

Em "How Leaders Can Focus on the Big Picture" encontrei uma série de conselhos que fazem muito sentido para qualquer empresa:

"Make choices in the negative. For everything you decide you want (a particular market positioning, an investment in a new product, a new capability or function), articulate what that means you can’t do. This forces you to think through the consequences of choosing these options by thinking about what the trade-offs are for each choice you are making.[Moi ici: Cada vez me convenço mais de que estratégia mais do que escolher é renunciar]
...
Pretend you have no money. When organizations are strapped for cash, they have to make hard choices about what to spend money on because they don’t have enough. It’s often during such times that leaders describe themselves as at their most strategic.
...
Having too many priorities means you don’t really have any, which puts your organization’s implementation capability under strain. It also compromises your own leadership bandwidth, reducing your ability to macromanage. So pretend you’re cash-strapped — it will act as the ultimate constraint on your desire to choose everything.[Moi ici: Foco e alinhamento são fundamentais]
...
Talk to the unusual suspects. These could be inside or outside your organization, but whoever they are, choose them because they are likely to disagree with you, challenge you, or tell you something you don’t know."[Moi ici: Quando todos pensam o mesmo... alguém está a mais]

McDonald's - As minhas cartas em cima da mesa (parte IV)

Chamem-me bruxo!
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Só que eu não sou bruxo!
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Basta perceber de estratégia e de como ela não pode ferir o ADN de uma organização, e de como ela tem de ter por trás um mosaico alinhado para poder ajudar a gerar resultados positivos.
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Recordo, por exemplo:

• Quem são os clientes-alvo da McDonald's? (Julho de 2013)
• McDonald's - As minhas cartas em cima da mesa (parte I), (parte II) e (parte III) (Outubro de 2015)

E agora convido à leitura de "McDonald's Finally Realizes Fancy Build-Your-Own Burgers Aren't Worth the Effort":

"McDonald’s much-hyped “Create Your Taste” menu, which allowed diners to customize their burger orders, is kaput. ... Sandwiches will still be customizable in some markets, but not quite as customizable as the previous program allowed.
...
But as Business Insider notes, there were some problems with the program — namely, that it was too costly and slowed down operations.
...
will be able to do, allowing McDonald’s to focus on what it does best: cheap food and all-day breakfast."

A McDonald's não é uma empresa de vão de escada, tem CEO formados nos MBA mais conceituados que se possam imaginar, tem o apoio de consultores de empresas de renome mundial e, depois, cometem estes erros de palmatória.

Alinhamento é fundamental

"Fit5/ It’s not enough to have a distinctive value chain. Its various components  should also fit tightly together. Another Porter quote here:
Strategy is creating fit among a company’s activities. The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well — not just a few — and integrating among them. If there is no fit among activities, there is no distinctive strategy and little sustainability. Management reverts to the simpler task of overseeing independent functions, and operational effectiveness determines an organization’s relative performance.
Fit, I think, is the key strategic principle that has been the most ignored by traditional companies in the past 30 years. From what I have observed working with those companies and speaking with their managers, most transformative efforts in the past have tried to loosen fit rather than strengthen it."

Trecho retirado de "A Stout Porter: Business Strategy In the 21st Century"

"not all customers are created equal"

"In the enterprise space, sales are lumpy and a couple of deals may represent most of this quarter’s new revenue. So every prospect is strategic. We go the extra parsec on every opportunity; we see each proposal as a must-win. We’ve never met revenue that we didn’t want, and any technical challenge can be solved with a one-off fix. After all, there aren’t enough F2000 companies that we can chance losing even one to fussy product concerns.
...
But not all customers are created equal. At many enterprise software companies, I see one or two outlier customers consuming an inordinate share of support time, product management attention, engineering cycles and roadmap focus — hugely out of proportion to their actual revenue or market value. Maybe we should fire just those two, and free up scarce resources for dozens of more relevant customers.
.
Pareto analysis implies that 20% of our customers generate 80% of our profits. Philip Kotler suggests an even more unbalanced mix: that our top 10% of customers represent 150% of profits, and our bottom 10% account for minus 100% of total profit. (In other words, firing the right 10% of our current customers would double profitability!)
...
Aren’t They All Just “Customers”?
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Take the Lead with the Customer
Once we’ve sold the idea of firing a customer internally, we have two other big tasks: designing an equitable “out” for the customer/prospect, and having an uncomfortable discussion with them.
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Outlier customers misapplying our products can waste tremendous amounts of time and attention. Sometimes, we have to fire one or two to serve our core customer well."

Trechos retirados de "Let’s Fire a Few of Our Customers"

The Mid-market (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"Does all this activity mean the mid-market is finally disappearing, or can operators in this segment of the market evolve to survive? We ask the experts... [Moi ici: Seguem-se trechos da resposta de Richard Millman]
...
They need a clear strategy and proposition for the consumer, differentiating on quality of product and service. They need to find their point of difference, both as a chain and as individual clubs. Going upmarket — as some mid-market operators are trying or have tried to do — presents a marketing challenge. It's easier to do if you have just one club than a chain, because to successfully make this move, operators must really understand their local marketplace — what their USP is locally — and how to capture new groups of customers. There are still lots of new audiences out there, provided clubs can define their proposition and find something unique to offer their particular geographic and consumer market."

Acerca da importância do alinhamento.


Trechos retirados do número de Outubro da revista "Health Club Management"

"just keep it up"

"a dialogue between an English lord and his American visitor:
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“How come you got such a gorgeous lawn?” asks the American.
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“Well, the quality of the soil, is, I dare say, of the utmost importance,” replies the lord.
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“No problem.”
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“Furthermore, one does need the finest quality seed and fertilizers.”
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“Big deal.”
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“Of course, daily watering and weekly mowing are jolly important.”
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“No sweat, just leave it to me.”
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“That’s it.”
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“No kidding?! That’s it?!”
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“Oh absolutely. There is nothing to it, old boy, just keep it up for five centuries.”"

Lembrei-me logo deste diálogo quando vi este tweet:

Este ano estima-se que a Irlanda cresça uns míseros 4.9%. A conjuntura internacional não perdoa.

— MAL (@mlopes) June 7, 2016

E deste senhor que mimetiza bem a postura do americano do trecho "É preciso ser coerente". Nicolau Santos acha que um roadshow montado à última da hora resolve o problema do investimento externo... "Oh absolutely. There is nothing to it, old boy, just keep it up for five centuries"
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O que fez a Irlanda quando a UE tentou obrigá-los a aumentar o IRC? Manteve a coerência e reforçou a sua imagem "just keep it up".
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O que faz o governo português quando precisa de dinheiro?



Trechos retirados de "Stop Comparing Management to Sports"

Alinhados?

A merecer reflexão profunda:

"Growth creates complexity, and complexity is the silent killer of growth. This paradox explains why only about one company in nine has sustained more than a minimum level of profitable growth during the past decade, and why 85 percent of executives blame internal factors for their shortfall, not external ones beyond their control. The roots of sustained performance start deep inside.
...
The companies that have grown profitably to scale, while maintaining the internal traits that got them there in the first place, often consider themselves insurgents, waging war on their industry and its standards on behalf of an underserved customer, or creating an entirely new industry altogether. Such companies possess a clear sense of mission and focus that everyone in the company can understand and relate to (in contrast with the average company, where only two employees in five say they have any idea what the company stands for)."

E na sua empresa, quantos têm um sentido da missão?

Trechos retirados de "The 3 Things That Keep Companies Growing"