Para reflexão

Imagem retirada daqui.

Capabilities Versus Assets

Um dos pontos que mais apreciei da leitura de "The Essential Advantage" de Paul Leinwand e Cesare Mainardi é sobre a diferença entre capacidades e activos:
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"Capabilities Versus Assets
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Many corporate leaders assign insufficient weight to their differentiating capabilities in developing strategy. Instead, they base their strategy on an assessment of their assets - their patents, brands, land, facilities, machinery, supplier and customer connections, and cash. Guided in part by this "asset-forward" view of the world, they tend to compete most heavily wherever they have assets at sufficient scale.
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That's shortsighted. If assets were the primary factor underlying success, then any company in an industry could win by adopting the same strategy, as long as it had enough capital to buy the assets it needed.
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Moreover, assets tend to depreciate in value and can diminish unexpectedly . For example, the value of a patent expires, and in many sectors, it has become easier to manage around them.
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A capability, by contrast, is yours. It can't be stolen or easily bought by competitors; by the time they copy what you know how to do, you will already had evolved the capability further. Even if they duplicate some of your methods, they will not be able to make use of them as you do.
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We do not suggest that you ignore assets; they play a major role in how you go to market.
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A capabilities system consists of the three to six capabilities that distinguish a company and that the company invests in; these capabilities reinforce one another in the service of the company's way to play. To put it more broadly, the capabilities system is the integrated group of activities that enables a company to create value in the path it has chosen." (Moi ici: o mosaico)

The process audit

O número de Abril da Harvard Business Review, traz um artigo de Michael Porter "The Process Audit", onde o autor discorre sobre os processos.

"Companies need to ensure that their business processes become more mature—in other words, that they are capable of delivering higher performance over time. To make that happen, companies must develop two kinds of characteristics: process enablers, which pertain to individual processes, and enterprise capabilities, which apply to entire organizations.


There are five process enablers…
Design: The comprehensiveness of the specification of how the process is to be executed.
Performers: The people who execute the process, particularly in terms of their skills and knowledge.
Owner: A senior executive who has responsibility for the process and its results.
Infrastructure: Information and management systems that support the process.
Metrics: The measures the company uses to track the process’s performance.

…and four enterprise capabilities.
Leadership: Senior executives who support the creation of processes.
Culture: The values of customer focus, teamwork, personal accountability, and a willingness to change.
Expertise: Skills in, and methodology for, process redesign.
Governance: Mechanisms for managing complex projects and change initiatives.

O que considero mais interessante do artigo, até porque está na secção "tool kit", é uma proposta de esquema de classificação do estado de evolução de cada um dos enablers e capabilities.

Por exemplo, para o enabler Design, numa vertente "Context" o autor propõe quatro graus:

P-1: The processes's inputs, outputs, suppliers, and customers have been identified.
P-2: The needs of the process's customers are known and agreed upon.
P-3: The process owner and the owners of the other processes with which the process interfaces have established mutual performance expectations.
P-4: The process owner and the owners of customer and supplier processes with which the process interfaces have established mutual performance expectations.