Problemas como a base para o sucesso

Li algures durante o mês de Maio um título que rezava mais ou menos assim "Os problemas de uma empresa são a base para o seu sucesso". Infelizmente não consigo rastrear esse artigo para o recuperar. No entanto, encontro agora um outro que vai no mesmo sentido "Your greatest constraint is your greatest advantage":

"Constraints get a bad rap. People see them as wholly negative: they impede progress and diminish potential. Entrepreneurs, in particular, seem locked in a perpetual grim struggle against scarce resources and abundant obstacles.
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But constraints can also be fertile, enabling--even desirable. They can make people and businesses more than they were rather than less than they could be. Constraints force people to reframe problems and get creative. And from that fresh perspective and creativity emerge new opportunities: superior alternatives at which smooth, open roads would never have arrived."

Aproveitar a restrição (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.
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Continuando com a leitura de "A Beautiful Constraint" encontro mais uma ponte para as técnicas que costumo usar:

"The way we tend to think about resources, in other words, is a form of path dependence. We see the resource available to us as only what is given to us, or is directly within our control. When that is taken away from us, we see our resource as depleted; when it is increased, we think we have more.
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But those who are genuinely resourceful see available resources in a very different way. They see resources as not simply what they control, but what they can access: what the rest of the company has, what those in their network have, what their neighborhood (literally or metaphorically) has, and indeed what the big resource owners they have yet to meet may have that they can use. A key part of being resourceful is seeing those sources of abundance for what they are, recognizing  that they are available, and finding innovative ways to enable them to flow in the desired direction. Resourceful people see, in other words, that if they lack something (money, time, people, ideas), and that scarcity is one of their apparent constraints, it is an opportunity to access abundance from elsewhere. And for people who want to make constraints beautiful, this will quickly become an essential capability.
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In time, this will become an entirely natural way of thinking, seeing, and behaving.
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creating abundance because it is in itself an act of creativity: creatively looking for sources of resources, creatively reframing what we have to maximize our own sources of value to others, and creatively trading that value to allow us to access the abundance we need."

Isto é, nem mais nem menos que o racional para se pensar ao nível do ecossistema da procura. Como chegar à atenção de um cliente que não valoriza o que tenho? Quem o inflencia? Quem "manda" nele?
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Como conseguir, sem subornar, sem poder hierárquico, sem truques, sem ilegalidades, sem enlamear a ética, que alguém independente, suporte a nossa causa como forma de também ele ganhar?

"In Quadrant A we’ll find those that represent the Immediate Opportunity. These are potentially willing partners who both share an agenda with us and have something it would be mutually beneficial to trade.
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Quadrant B reveals the Unmotivated Traders who would recognize that we have something of value that they would benefit from in exchange, but do not yet see us both as sharing the same agenda. Because they will have a number of potential partners also offering the kind of value that we represent, it may be necessary to persuade them that we also share an agenda in order for the value exchange to take place.
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Quadrant C is where a Coalition of The Willing resides. The parties may share an agenda but don’t need to trade anything concrete in order to have a mutually beneficial relationship. By their collective contributions, they can create abundance for many, including themselves.
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Quadrant D are the Distant and Oblivious. Here our sources of resource neither see any apparently shared agenda or anything of mutual value to trade. This doesn’t matter if we don’t need their permission to use their resources (if we are stealing with pride from their publicly available insights and ideas, for example—the technique that method refer to as appropriation). But if we do need their permission, this will clearly be the group whose potential resources it will take the most creativity and tenacity to unlock here."

Relações ganhar-ganhar-ganhar, relações sem controlo, o mundo da co-criação.

Aproveitar a restrição (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.
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Como é que tendo a nossa empresa uma estrutura de custos mais pesada e, operando num mercado onde os clientes valorizam sobretudo o preço, pode ter uma oportunidade de futuro interessante?
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Como é que a nossa empresa que tem máquinas velhas e obsoletas, pode competir com a concorrência que tem máquinas novas, eficientes e muito rápidas?
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Como é que a nossa empresa conseguirá ter os produtos com a sua marca, expostos nas prateleiras controladas pela distribuição grande que tem marcas próprias, sem perder margens?
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A resposta será sempre do tipo: can... if

"When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.
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If you’ve seen any improv theatre, or the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway? you’ve seen two actors walk out on stage to improvise a scene. They start with nothing, get a couple of suggestions from the audience about who they are and what they are doing, and make up a scene on the spot: “You’re at a job interview at  NASA, but you are a pianist. Go!”
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Robert Poynton is an expert in applying the techniques of improv to the world of business and leadership. A prerequisite for success in the world of improv, he observes, is finding value in what you have. The uninitiated find this hard and might adopt the victim mindset - “What am I supposed to do with that!?” But the  skilled performer finds the value in the offer, accepts it, and builds on it.
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We have seem something akin to this in the way that transformers of constraints accept a constraint as an offer...
They recognized the opportunities inherent in constraints. It's this positive mindset coupled with a simple, repeatable method that gives improvisers and transformers the confidence to know that they can make something out of very little every time. They see offers everywhere. So when faced with apparent scarcity and constraints, we need to find and build new value in what we have, no matter how meager it may initially appear to us. And we need to understand how to trade this value with other parties [Moi ici: Aprender a pensar a nível de ecossistema e em relações ganhar-ganhar-ganhar] in order to get what we want, in the way improvisers trade offers to get a story. What can we offer them in exchange for what we need and they have in abundance? What might we do together that could have more impact than what we can do alone? How might we combine limited resources with others to create collective abundance?" 

E continuo a minha leitura de livro "A Beautiful Constraint".

Aproveitar a restrição (parte II)

Parte I.
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E volto ao livro "A Beautiful Constraint". Um excelente livro que recomendo sem hesitações. Por exemplo, em "Douro e o Evangelho do Valor", sublinhei:

"Mas há ainda «muito potencial a explorar» nas castas que o Douro oferece e no que se pode fazer com as vinhas velhas, as mais antigas e por isso menos produtivas,[Moi ici: Como podemos tirar partido das vinhas velhas, das mais antigas, das menos produtivas?] que podem proporcionar pequenas produções de excepcional qualidade."

"Propelling questions—using a higher level of ambition to force us to find the opportunity in apparent constraints—require us to work towards solutions that lie outside our experience and comfort zone.
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Some scientists have suggested that there’s an evolutionary advantage to optimism. Optimism underpins progress by allowing us to believe in a better future, and so  make it more likely that we will plan for and begin creating it.
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But our optimism bias can’t be fully relied upon. It tends to overestimate our chance of success, so that we underprepare for challenges, and it tends to be far more personal than collective: I am optimistic about my future, but pessimistic about our future.
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the potentially strong solutions his team proposed were frequently blocked by others explaining that “we can’t do this because. …” The nature of the “can’t because” varied. Sometimes it had to do with cost or capability, sometimes impact on other processes, sometimes simply the sheer degree of difficulty involved. But the effect was the same: every time someone introduced a “can’t because,” Kelly noted, the conversation reached a dead end. The flow had stopped. Kelly couldn’t change the nature of the organization, but he could change the nature of the conversation, particularly the beginning of each sentence in the problem-solving  process. He didn’t let people start with “We can’t because.” He forced them to start with “We can if.”
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It keeps the conversation on the right question. It keeps the conversation about how something could be possible, rather than whether it would be possible.
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It keeps the oxygen of optimism continually in the process. It keeps optimism and inquisitiveness alive at the same time.
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It forces everyone involved in the conversation to take responsibility for finding answers, rather than identifying barriers. It doesn’t allow someone to identify obstacles, without looking for a solution to that obstacle in the same sentence.
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The story it tells us about ourselves is that we are people who look for solutions, rather than a group of people who find problems and obstacles. It builds and  reinforces our thinking about ourselves as a culture of potential transformers, rather than impotent victims of insuperable circumstance.
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It is a method that maintains a mindset. The failure to generate an answer with one line of enquiry simply leads to another can-if, another how."

Aproveitar a restrição (parte I)

Mais um exemplo interessante do sector do calçado "Reinventar calçado militar com rendas e flores".

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Uma empresa nascida para a produção mecanizada, para a produção de grandes séries de modelos funcionais para o exército, e a sua história de reposicionamento, de conjugação do seu ADN com outras alternativas.

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Relacionei logo este exemplo com a mensagem do livro "A Beautiful Constraint". Uma empresa limitada a uma experiência de produto [uma restrição] num mundo em mudança:

"a key difference between being victim to a constraint and transforming it is the relationship between the constraint and the ambition attached to it - they are intrinsically linked. We saw that people in the victim stage tended to reduce the ambition to fit the constraint, while those in the transformer stage tended to leave the ambition high, and use the tension between the ambition and the constraint to drive the search for solutions....A propelling question is one that has both a bold ambition and a significant constraint linked together. It is called a propelling question because the presence of those two different elements together in the same question does not allow it to be answered in the way we have answered previous questions; it propels us off the path on which we have become dependent."

Como poderemos vencer a nível de facturação e margens sem abdicar da nossa experiência de produção?

"A Cortebel decide então usar o que tem à mão para criar colecções com marca própria. Inspira-se no espólio vintage, nas botas militares, na sapatilha de ginástica de biqueira resistente, mantém o formato do calçado e procura novos padrões e materiais para reinventar o seu produto. O burel de Manteigas, tecido de lã artesanal, já está a ser utilizado. Tem também botas e sapatos com flores, rendas, bordados, riscas."

Continua.

Mudar é um acto de coragem!

Ontem favoritei no Twitter este:

#Inovação em Processos é a + demandada. A última: inovação em RH e Inovação em Produção. via @luisarnal @insitum pic.twitter.com/bnX38qkOxa

— Paulo Peres (@pauloperes) September 11, 2015

Reparem naquele trecho sublinhado:

"Você não imagina como é difícil mudar processos que existem há anos e que têm funcionado bem."

Precisamente ontem, terminei a leitura do segundo capítulo, "Break Path Dependence" do livro "A Beautiful Constraint":

"Path dependence is the term, borrowed from mathematics, that is used to describe the persistence of features like the width of railway tracks. We can see it in the QWERTY keyboard, the internal combustion engine, and even in formulations like the famous Moore’s Law. And we can also see it in how organizations lock-in self-reinforcing processes and the cognitive rigidities that can come with them.

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organizations go through three phases in developing path dependence. In the first phase, there is a broad range of approaches used within the organization, and a high degree of managerial discretion on which to use and when.

During this phase, an event occurs (an important success of some kind, for instance) that leads to a dominant approach developing in phase two (“That worked well—let’s do more of that”); in this phase there is still some flexibility, but the dominant example is visible and celebrated. Phase three is the lock-in phase in which a greater degree of self-reinforcing processes and behavior patterns predominate, and there is much less room for variations in approach.

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In a workplace culture that prizes efficiency and repeatability, these are the ones that endure, because they have worked before. They have become part of the identity of the company. And they can be almost invisible to the people working there,

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In other words, today’s approaches are in effect yesterday’s approaches, based on what was appropriate then, not necessarily now. [Moi ici: Pois... Zapatero et al] They are not simply processes, but paths made up of self-reinforcing bundles of beliefs, assumptions, and behaviors, whose nature—and underlying rationale—may no longer be visible, and rarely questioned.

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Because path dependence is about beliefs and behaviors, it is a personal phenomenon as much as an organizational one.

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the faster and harder we are asked to work, the more we will want to lean on these protocols. You don’t want your team to use their finite resources questioning every good decision you made yesterday, when the pace of work is only increasing.

Indeed, research suggests that we’re more likely to stick to habits when stressed, because change requires more cognitive energy than we have in those moments. When a track record of proven success meets an increased demand to do more, the tendency to become locked-in is greater than ever."

E, depois, o mundo muda... e continuamos agarrados às práticas e comportamentos que resultaram... mas deixaram de resultar.
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Reclamamos o nosso queijo!
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Lançamos providências cautelares!
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Gritamos por direitos adquiridos!
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E o mundo boceja, e continua a girar indiferente, sem deixar de nos lançar uma provocação:

- É a vida! Amanhem-se!

Mudar é um acto de coragem!