"The Great Resignation"

Julgo que foi no WSJ que no passado dia 18 de Setembro li isto:

"Nearly 3% of workers left their job in July, presumably because they believe they can get a better one."

Nos Estados Unidos, só num mês

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) September 18, 2021

Ontem aqui apanhei isto, "This is what’s really behind the Great Resignation":

"A recent study by Microsoft found that 41% of the global workforce would consider leaving their current employer within the next year. And a poll from Monster found that 95% of workers are at least contemplating a job change.

...

 In 2021 however, the quit rate shot back up and then some, with around 10 million people quitting their jobs by July 2021.

...

The pandemic has caused a lot of us to refocus and reevaluate our priorities, and the old adage, “You don’t quit a job, you quit a manager,” has never been more true." 

Nem uma vez o ouvi falar de subsídios ou apoios

Na semana passada, depois de sair de Mirandela a seguir ao almoço, liguei o rádio do carro e fiz algo que não fazia há muito tempo, sintonizei a rádio do regime, a TSF. Estavam a dar uma entrevista, julgo que a repetição de uma entrevista a um cantor brasileiro. Um tal Midé(?)

A companhia parece que já estava farta da pen com as canções dos anos 80. Por isso, fiz um sacrifício e lá continuei a ouvir a conversa com o Midé. A certa altura dei comigo a simpatizar com este desconhecido para mim. Alguém a residir há quatro anos em Portugal, deu-me uma lição sobre o que fez, o que inventou, o que testou, para sobreviver durante as quarentenas.

Nem uma vez o ouvi falar de subsídios ou apoios. Quando precisou de dinheiro para lançar um CD foi para a rua pedir um euro de financiamento. Falou de diversas experiências que fez e produtos que lançou ao longo do tempo.

A quantas empresas falta esta flexibilidade e experimentação.

Iludidos (parte II)

Parte I.

Um sinal dos tempos, "Alcains: DIELMAR, S.A. pede insolvência".

Iludidos

A nossa cultura prefere as mentiras doces às verdades cruas.

Iludimo-nos com os números da taxa de desemprego, iludimo-nos com os números do PIB, iludimo-nos com bazucas.

Lembro-me das palavras do ICI-man:

"Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. And the nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression." [BTW, olhar para o título do postal de Maio de 2009]  

Ontem no Dinheiro Vivo apanhei um discurso fora do comum em Portugal:

"Os encerramentos e insolvências neste ano estão ao nível de 2019, antes da pandemia. Os apoios públicos podem estar a adiar os fechos, numa altura em que o contexto económico é desfavorável. Já o nascimento de empresas é "muito desanimador", diz a responsável da empresa especializada em informação sobre o tecido empresarial, que explica que os dois fenómenos estão interligados.

...

Olhamos para a percentagem de empresas que conseguem fazer crescer o volume de negócios e, em tempos normais, de crescimento económico, esse aumento é sempre superior a 50%. Aquilo que tivemos efetivamente em 2019 foram 53% das empresas com o volume de negócios a crescer e apenas 35% a descer. Este número inverteu-se totalmente; em 2020, 51% das empresas que já apresentaram contas desceram o volume de negócios e tivemos apenas 33% das empresas com o seu volume de negócios a crescer. É a primeira ideia - mais de metade das empresas perdem músculo e volume de negócios em 2020. E também já podemos entender um pouco o sentido do volume total de negócio. Com esses 50% de empresas que entregaram as contas, vamos ter um decrescimento do volume de negócios total, que estará entre os 7,5 e 10%. Ou seja, há aqui quase uma semelhança entre a queda do PIB e a queda do volume de negócios das empresas. Neste momento está em 8,5%, para estes 50% de empresas.

Face a crises anteriores, como se compara? 

No pior ano da crise anterior, 2012, o volume de negócios das empresas caiu 5,6%. Estamos a falar, não digo do dobro, mas de um valor significativamente superior. Sendo que, olhando também para crise anterior, tivemos uma quebra de 5,6% no primeiro ano, em 2012, em 2013 não conseguimos recuperar nada e em 2014 recuperámos 2% face ao valor de 2013. Levámos cinco ou seis anos a voltar ao volume de negócios anterior.

...

nós tivemos esta quebra, mas as empresas não fecharam. Aliás, quando analisamos o número de empresas em atividade, temos mais empresas ativas neste ano do que tínhamos em 2019 e 2020. Ou seja, as empresas continuam a nascer, ainda muito menos do que anteriormente, mas como não fecham e não entram em insolvência... Há todo um conjunto de medidas e políticas de apoio que foram criadas, enquanto há restrições, há apoios. Há um efeito de desfasamento que está a ser mais prolongado do que em outras crises.

...

A nossa estimativa aponta para 10 a 15% de empresas que não vão resistir. E aqui não estamos a falar de insolvências, estamos a falar de encerramentos, empresas que não vão continuar, que vão sair do mercado. E, destas, eu diria que uma parte pequena serão insolventes. Este fenómeno de encerramentos ainda não aconteceu, e normalmente a subida do empreendedorismo tem a ver com a saída de empresas. Saem empresas, entram empresas, quanto mais saem mais entram. E isto não está a acontecer. E mesmo a questão do emprego, do aumento do desemprego, ainda não vimos números nenhuns. É impossível que não venha aí um conjunto de empresas que não resistem. As empresas que receberam apoios durante a crise, não podem despedir. Uma das condições muito claras tem a ver com isso. Não podem encerrar, não podem reduzir pessoal...

...

O que mostram os números deste ano relativamente ao nascimento de empresas? 

Muito desanimadores. Estamos com um crescimento de final de semestre de 14% face a 2020, mas tivemos um segundo trimestre do ano passado terrível, praticamente sem nascimentos, e ainda estamos 25% abaixo dos nascimentos do primeiro semestre de 2019. Espanha já vai com 10% acima de 2019. E também regista uma subida muito maior dos encerramentos. Tivemos um segundo confinamento muito mais agressivo do que Espanha. A subida de encerramentos e de nascimentos já está a acontecer em Espanha, nós aqui ainda estamos com encerramentos ao nível ou abaixo de 2019, e estamos ainda muito abaixo em nascimentos. E estes dois movimentos estão relacionados. Nós temos uma percentagem de 10 a 30% de sócios das novas empresas que já tinham empreendido antes. Se estão presos numa empresa não vão abrir outra."

Esqueçam a política politiqueira. Estamos a falar de economia e de preparação para a tomada de decisões. Estamos a falar de pessoas anónimas não serem surpreendidas na sua vida porque o discurso oficial é o de amanhãs que cantam. 

Trechos retirados de "Dez a 15% das empresas não vão resistir".

Cronyism

"Failure, and its consequences, is a necessary part of the system. Economic dislocation and crises have real costs, but they are also opportunities for renewal. Old relationships are severed, assets are freed up, and innovation demanded. A forest fire brings life as it destroys—so too, economic upheavals create light and air for innovation to flourish.

...

Once the government gets into the business of propping up the losers, you can predict who will be first in line for the handouts: the people with the most political power—corporations and rich people. It’s not just a matter of their lobbyists and their lawyers and their press flacks, though that’s a big leg up. There’s also something more insidious: cronyism.

...

Why “cronyism”? I write about tech executives, but I mostly refuse to meet with them. In part because I’m an introvert and don’t enjoy meeting new people. But also because intimacy is a function of contact. Often when I meet someone, I like them as a person, feel empathy for them, and find it harder to be objective about their actions. Most senior people at successful companies are very smart, involved in interesting work, privy to inside baseball, and got where they are in part because they are good with people. I’m sure if I met more of them, I’d like them. That’s why I don’t meet with them. As Malcom Gladwell points out, the people who did not meet Hitler got him right. Easy to be charmed, even by someone so macabre, when meeting in person."

Isto fez-me lembrar as portas giratórias entre a polítuca e as celuloses "Francisco Gomes da Silva é o novo diretor geral da CELPA"

Scott Galloway evita almoços e jantares com CEO’s para não se sentir influenciado nas suas decisões de investimento. Por cá, os CEO’s convidam os políticos seus funcionários.

Trechos retirados de "Post Corona" de Scott Galloway.

Para reflexão

"We are likely entering into the mother of overdue global slowdowns. Every executive team needs to explore the limits of their comfort zone and imagine a business with 20% less revenue, that commands twice the value. There is only one path to a dramatic increase in stakeholder value in the face of flat/declining revenues: The rundle—my term for “a recurring revenue bundle.”

This was a strategic move before the pandemic—now it’s gangster. That revenue is substantially immune to short-term pandemic disruptions and can cover for softness in the core hardware businesses."

Trecho retirado de "Post Corona" de Scott Galloway.

"an accelerant of trends already well underway"

Dedicado ao meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras... já há muito que não temos nenhuma... 

""In crisis, there is opportunity." Galloway argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has not been a change agent so much as an accelerant of trends already well underway.[Moi ici: Recordar isto]

...

One of the industries that will struggle in the new normal will be higher education, an industry that may not be able to maintain a value proposition that makes sense in a decentralized and digital economy, where scale, speed, and personalization are the new relevant currencies. 

...

 "E-commerce began taking root in 2000. Since then, e-commerce's share of retail has grown approximately 1% every year. At the beginning of 2020, approximately 18% of retail was transacted via digital channels. Eight weeks after the pandemic reached the US (March to mid-April), that number leaped to 28%. We saw a decade of e-commerce growth in eight weeks,"

...

He also referenced home delivery of groceries accelerating by six years. Working from home accelerated by 10 years in 2020. He shared some negative trends due to the pandemic, including one out of two young adults between the ages of 18 to 30 now living with their parents. Another negative trend in the pandemic is that one in five households with children in the US is now food insecure. 

...

In Post Corona, Galloway writes that few industries sit closer to the ground zero of COVID-19 acceleration than higher education. Even before the pandemic, the $700 billion business was ripe for disruption. 

...

"The pandemic's most enduring feature will be as an accelerant of existing trends. The trend that encapsulates the greatest reshuffling of stakeholder value in recent history is … the Great Dispersion. Similar to prior macro trends like globalization and digitization, it offers enormous opportunity, but also real threats. Amazon dispersed retail to desktop, to mobile, to voice. Netflix dispersed DVDs to our mailbox, then to every screen. The pandemic is causing dispersion in even larger industries — the greatest opportunity for wealth creation in decades. Work from home, telemedicine, and remote learning represent an impending disruption of over 25% of the U.S. economy. The largest sectors are about to leapfrog HQ, doctor's offices, hospitals, and campuses."

Trechos retirados de "Professor Scott Galloway: The great dispersion and future of higher education" 

Para reflexão - um travo do que aí vem

"O número de insolvências empresariais no concelho de Braga disparou em janeiro de 2021 cerca de 300 por cento face ao período homólogo. E o número de novas empresas criadas caiu mais de 40 por cento face a janeiro de 2021. 

...

O concelho de Braga iniciou o ano de 2021 com uma forte derrocada no tecido empresarial, que sinalizou um forte impacto da pandemia na destruição de empresas e, por erxtensão, dos postos de trabalho.

Durante o mês de janeiro deste ano, a maior economia do Minho perdeu 147 empresas para as insolvências, revela um relatório que acaba de ser publicado pelo Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE).

...

À escala da região do Minho, o mês de janeiro de 2021 fica marcado por 583 empresas declaradas  insolventes, ou seja, mais 245 por cento que as 238 que entraram em processo de falência em janeiro do ano passado.

Contas feitas, nos distritos de Braga e de Viana do Castelo faliram, em média, 19 empresas por cada dia do mês de janeiro.

O número de insolvências de empresas minhotas no primeiro mês do ano corresponde a mais de 36 por cento de todas as falências de 2020, que foram de 1607.

...

Os números avançados pelo INE dão conta que os oito concelhos que integram a sub-região do Ave acumulam a maior destruição absoluta de empresas e o maior agravamento das insolvências empresariais face ao período homólogo.

A maior área industrial do Minho acumulou, em janeiro último, 260 insolvências, mais 283 por cento que em as 92 registadas em janeiro de 2020."

Trechos retirados do artigo "Falências sobem 300 por cento entre as empresas de Braga" publicado no Diário do Minho de ontem.

Descongelar não é o inverso de congelar - histerese

Lembro-me no meu Foust, no meu McCabe, velhos manuais de "heat & mass transfer", do fenómeno da  histerese.

A histerese acontece quando o estado de um sistema não é independente da sua história. A viagem de ida de A para B é diferente da tentativa de regresso de B para A.

Ontem escrevi sobre a missiva de António Saraiva... a certa altura ele diz:

“No final da crise, outros vão partir da pole position, porque tiveram ajudas reforçadas às suas estruturas empresariais, e nós partimos atrás.”

Isto significa que ele acredita que quando a economia descongelar vamos estar no ponto em que a começamos a congelar. Não o creio!

Sim, sexta-feira estive com empresários em Felgueiras que estão muito animados com as perspectivas, com as encomendas que têm caído. Eu não estou tão optimista.

Entretanto, ontem li este artigo no WSJ de quinta-feira passada, "Future Europe Task: Unlocking Economy":

"For nearly a year, large swaths of Europe’s economy have been in a deep freeze. Trillions in state-backed subsidies and inexpensive loans have kept businesses alive, while governments pay millions of furloughed workers to stay home. In much of Europe, layoffs or forced bankruptcies are banned. In pursuing such policies, European leaders have bet that, once the pandemic subsides, they can defrost the region’s $18 trillion economy, allowing businesses to fire up quickly and bring back workers. It’s an intentional effort to slow an economic deep clean, dubbed by many economists creative destruction.  This reflects a political choice: Europeans are generally less tolerant of the brutal adjustments required by the U.S. model of capitalism.

But as the pandemic drags on and Europe’s vaccine rollout is expected to stretch through the year and beyond, some policymakers, economists and business executives worry that mothballing the economy for so long will leave it struggling to adapt to the seismic business and social changes the crisis is driving. That could stall an economic recovery.

“Trying to freeze work where it was and how it was is in many cases a profound mistake, because it delays the corporate reorganizations, new investments and new hires that are necessary,” [Moi ici: Este é o meu grande receio. O contexto muda brutalmente e ninguém se prepara para o que aí vem embalados que estão nas canções dos governos e no "soma" chamado "lay-off"] said Carlo Bonomi, chairman of Confindustria, the Italian employers’ federation. While Europe keeps the economy in suspended animation, the U.S. is already creating new jobs and businesses.

...

Bankruptcy gap [Segundo o última Barómetro Informa, nos últimos 12 meses a criação de empresas caiu 26,5%, o número de encerramentos caiu 22% e o número de insolvências manteve-se igual. Numa crise temos turbulência, há empresas novas a aparecer, empresas estabelecidas a falir ou encerrar, mas neste período estamos num aparente ponto morto. Aparente, porque entretanto o capital vai-se esvaindo. As empresas não morrem, mas viram zombies. E os zombies são perigosos, destroem o mercado das empresas saudáveis]

Europe registered far fewer business bankruptcies last year than in the previous five, while bankruptcies in the U.S. remained within the pre-pandemic range, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements. Applications to start new businesses in the U.S. rose 42% in the six months through September but declined slightly in France and Germany, according to Oxford Economics.

Worker productivity has risen in the U.S. but been flat or down in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, according to Deutsche Bank. Eliminating unviable jobs and businesses is responsible for about half of long-run productivity growth, some economists say. [Moi ici: A velha lição finlandesa que aprendi com Maliranta em 2007 "In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants" e sintetizado por Nassim Taleb em 2018 com este vintage "Systems don’t learn because people learn individually – that’s the myth of modernity. Systems learn at the collective level by the mechanism of selection: by eliminating those elements that reduce the fitness of the whole, provided these have skin in the game." Reparem no paradoxo. Os governos apoiam as empresas para que elas se tornem mais produtivas, mas elas, ao receberem os apoios, agem como as raposas na Austrália. As raposas foram introduzidas na Austrália para acabarem com a praga de coelhos, também eles introduzidos pelos humanos. As raposas rapidamente perceberam que havia uma quantidade muito mais interessante e fáceis de apanhar que os coelhos. Assim que as empresas recebem os apoios o seu negócio passa a ser captar mais apoios - OK, conheço excepções]

The pandemic is accelerating a shift toward new digital business models and automation of processes. Some habits may stick, such as working and shopping from home, permanently reducing demand for certain services. If the economy looks very different in a couple of years, anything that delayed the adjustment would be costly. [Moi ici: O mundo descongelado será diferente do mundo pré-congelamento]

...

At Germany’s Recaro Aircraft Seating GmbH, which makes seats for European, U.S. and Chinese airlines, sales fell 60% last year to about €300 million ($360 million). CEO Mark Hiller doesn’t expect sales to return to pre-crisis levels for five years.

Recaro cut about 30% of jobs at its factories in the U.S. and China, but in Germany it hasn’t reduced its workforce of roughly 1,100. Instead, it has tapped the government program, which pays its workers up to 87% of their salary, to a maximum of almost €5,000 a month, to stay home. Almost all of Recaro’s workforce is on furlough, working 40% fewer hours than normal.

Recaro has agreed not to lay off employees until at least mid-2023. The high cost and legal complexities of doing so in Europe deter many companies from cutting staff.

But job-retention schemes “can only bridge the gap until we’re back on a higher level,” Mr. Hiller said. “If we need to adapt to €300 million [sales] forever, it won’t work.”

Meanwhile, U.S. defense group Raytheon Technologies Corp. cut a fifth of the workforce in its commercial aerospace division after sales at a unit that competes with Recaro fell 26% last year. It doesn’t plan to hire all of the people back.

...

Half of German companies have halted or delayed transformation and innovation projects because of furlough programs, according to a survey by Boston Consulting Group.

Job-retention schemes are “a little bit too easy. You can delay decisions and remain in your comfort zone as a manager,” said Karl Haeusgen, president of the German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association, a lobby group for a sector that employs around 1.3 million people.

Economists and business executives also say business subsidies could increase the share of “zombie” companies that struggle to earn enough over time to cover their debt servicing costs, and that can undercut prices charged by healthier competitors. In Germany, the share of zombie companies could increase to 20% of all businesses this year from 7% before Covid, according to research by Creditreform, a German credit agency.

Alexander Alban, managing partner at German mechanical parts manufacturer Walter Schimmel GmbH, hustled last year to keep his business in the black—cutting staff, putting workers on furlough and canceling plans for a new factory— as he coped with a 25% decline in sales.

Price reductions 

Though demand fell, a third of that revenue drop was due to a roughly 12% fall in market prices, Mr. Alban said, as struggling local competitors using government support offered low prices to stay afloat.

“These zombie companies... run their business for a couple of months below costs,” Mr. Alban said. “They ruin the market. Afterwards, it’s very hard to get this business back. Usually it’s good if the market is cleaned.” 

In Italy, widespread use of job-retention schemes hurt labor productivity growth during the 2008-09 financial crisis, according to a 2018 paper by Giulia Giupponi of Bocconi University in Milan and Camille Landais, a professor at the London School of Economics. The least productive firms were three times more likely to tap the job-retention scheme than their stronger peers, the researchers found.

...

Germany’s sweetened job furlough scheme has “crazy consequences,” said Friedrich Merz, a senior politician in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party. “Employees are kept in businesses even though they are needed in other places.” Still, some businesses say the European model is better in the long run."

Uncertainty versus ambiguity

"The biggest challenge to businesses right now isn’t uncertainty, but ambiguity — a condition in which the future is unclear, the past is no help, and we don’t even know what we don’t know. There is no predicting when the pandemic will end, nor what ‘business as usual’ will look like when it does."

Trecho retirado de "Charting a Path Forward Without A Map" publicado na revista Rotman Management Winter 2021

Para reflexão

“Spain’s experience was not unusual or unrepresentative. Lottery winners often do worse in life than if they had bought a losing ticket. The sudden infusion of money acts like a hit of cocaine and distorts behavior in similarly unhealthy ways. Something similar happens to countries on the receiving end of unsolicited financial inflows. Few societies have been able to absorb sudden, large sums of capital from abroad without experiencing soaring debt, asset bubbles, and economic crises. It is an almost inevitable consequence of a rapid and unexpected increase in real purchasing power.”

Trecho retirado de “Trade Wars Are Class Wars” de Matthew C. Klein. 

Para reflexão!

“By 1825 problems were already beginning to lay themselves out in a pattern that would later become familiar. It became clear, for example, that many of the investments were of very questionable value, a common problem whenever a small country attempts to absorb large financial inflows. There are simply not enough productive opportunities available. Instead, the excess credit invariably finances boondoggles, surging imports of consumer goods, or, as was often the case in the 1820s, imports of weapons to fight one of the many civil wars that immediately broke out after independence from Spain.”

E comparar com:

"A comissária europeia Elisa Ferreira assinalou esta quinta-feira, num evento online, que, "ao fim destes anos todos de apoio maciço de fundos estruturais, Portugal ainda é um país atrasado", e apelou a "uma leitura territorializada das políticas"."

 

Trecho retirado de “Trade Wars Are Class Wars” de Matthew C. Klein. 

Vamos ficar todos bem

"o setor europeu de retalho de vestuário e calçado está a ser altamente penalizado pela pandemia. Até setembro, a queda acumulada ascende a 24,4%, de acordo com dados do World Footwear. 

O índice de volume de negócios no setor de retalho na União Europeia nos artigos especializados de vestuário, calçado e artigos em couro tem revelado perdas constantes ao longo dos primeiros nove meses do ano, sempre na casa dos dois dígitos, revelando-se mesmo superior a 20% quando comparado com o mesmo período do ano anterior. No verão, nos meses de julho a setembro, verificou-se uma ligeira recuperação, ainda assim insuficiente para a hecatombe desde o início pandemia. 

“Trata-se da confirmação de um sentimento generalizado, mas que ajuda a perceber melhor a dinâmica do mercado”, considera Luis Onofre. Para o Presidente da APICCAPS “estas quebras afetam particularmente as empresas portuguesas que, exportando mais de 95% da sua produção, têm na União Europeia o seu mercado de referência”.

Curiosamente, é em Espanha a e Portugal onde o setor do retalho na fileira moda mais está a sofrer, com perdas acumuladas de 33 e 31%, respetivamente. Os melhores registos ocorrem na Polónia (quebra de 10%), Lituânia (perda de 12%) e Estónia (recuo de 14%).

Entre os mercados de referência para as empresas portuguesas de calçado, o retalho de moda no Reino Unido caiu 29% entre janeiro a setembro deste ano. Em Itália o recuo acumulado é de 27% e em França 25% relativamente ao ano anterior. Na Alemanha o prejuízo ronda os 22% e na Holanda 16%."

Trechos retirados de "Retalho europeu colapsa"

Vamos viver uma época de partos difíceis

Uma parte importante da economia privada vive e viverá um tempo de mudança. Muitas empresas ou já fecharam ou vão fechar em breve, outras vão ter de renascer para tentarem adaptar-se a um novo nível do jogo competitivo.

Há muito que escrevo aqui sobre a relação entre a biologia e a economia. Por isso, sublinhei:

"We found that populations under strong selection ... subsequently evolved ... most rapidly ... Compared to populations under weak or no selection, they reached higher green fluorescence during each generation of phase II and evolved a green emission peak more rapidly. Strong selection promoted both the elimination of deleterious mutations and the accumulation of foldability-improving mutations. As a result, proteins under strong selection evolved higher efficiency of protein folding (foldability) and, to an even greater extent, higher robustness to mutations than proteins under weak or no selection."

Vivemos, viveremos, pois tempos de evolução acelerada... 

Talvez por isso nos últimos dias tenho encontrado vários artigos sobre a transformação das empresas. Por exemplo, "Why Business Transformation Efforts Often Fail".

No Twitter ainda uso como avatar a mesma imagem desde 2004:

A imagem é sobre a urgência em agir:

• O sentido de urgência (Agosto de 2008)
• Sentido de urgência (Abril de 2016)

Conheço John Kotter há muito tempo:

"Not Establishing a Great Enough Sense of Urgency

“Bad business results are both a blessing and a curse in the first phase. On the positive side, losing money does catch people’s attention.  But it also gives less maneuvering room.  With good business results, the opposite is true: convincing people of the need for change is much harder, but you have more resources to help make changes.”

...

Strong leadership is required to rally a company into action.  “A paralyzed senior management often comes from having too many managers and not enough leaders,” said Kotter.  “Management’s mandate is to minimize risk and to keep the current system operating.  Change, by definition, requires creating a new system, which in turn always demands leadership.  Phase one in a renewal process typically goes nowhere until enough real leaders are promoted or hired into senior-level jobs.”"

Outros sublinhados:

"Lacking a Vision

“In every successful transformation effort that I have seen, the guiding coalition develops a picture of the future that is relatively easy to communicate and appeals to customers, stockholders, and employees,” noted Kotter.

...

[Moi ici: Lembrei-me logo da TAP ao ler o trecho que se segue] Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of Ten

“Transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices, wrote Kotter.  “Employees will not make sacrifices, even if they are unhappy with the status quo unless they believe that useful change is possible.  Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of the troops are never captured.”

Transformative changes are generally based on new, innovative ideas that few may understand in their early stages.  It’s thus important to explain what’s unique and different about the new innovation to key constituencies, including clients, partners, analysts, reporters, and, most important, the company’s own employees. Effective communications are thus essential."

                 

Para reflexão

Não é propriamente uma empresa de vão de escada: 

"But Ideo has shared with Fast Company that, due to the economic downturn of COVID-19, the company will be laying off 8% of its global workforce. Its current headcount is 725 people."

Vamos ficar todos bem ...

Trecho retirado de "Breaking: Ideo is laying off 8% of its global workforce"

E agora...

 "In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, companies will face a heightened degree of competition as customer demand is depressed due to a reduction of income, persistent unemployment, and looming uncertainties. While everyone desires a V-shaped economic rebound, it will be difficult for companies to overcome the current financial distress once they are locked into a hopeless game of dividing a shrinking pie. More than ever, firms need to create blue oceans of new demand in order to generate revenue, profit, and new growth. It is far more urgent for managers to think like a blue ocean strategist.

...

The pandemic has had a shock effect on economies and businesses and is bound to trigger more changes and disruptions in many industries. Will you go down as a victim of change and disruption? Or are you going to rise above the challenges and reshape the business environment in your favor? [Moi ici: O que deve ser alterado para fazer face às alterações do contexto?] 

...

Most organisations are stuck in the trap of competition. Having accepted their industry structure as a given, executives benchmark rivals and focus on outperforming them to achieve a competitive advantage. The irony is that the more you focus on benchmarking and outpacing the competition, the more your strategy will look like your competitors. [Moi ici: Não esquecer a lição da biologia e das toutinegras de McArthur]

A blue ocean strategist, instead, focuses on how to make the competition irrelevant.

...

What are the factors that you and your industry thought were important but don’t seem to matter so much to your customers in terms of serving their essential needs? What are the factors that they fundamentally value and don’t want to compromise on even during this difficult time? Are these temporary shifts under extreme conditions or do they provide insight into reconfiguring your offerings in a post-pandemic world? Think through these questions and ask yourself, “What would it take to win over the mass of buyers, even with no marketing?” ... Stop looking at what industries are competing on and start looking at what most buyers really value.

...

In a time of sluggish and contracting demand in many industries, fighting for a bigger share of existing customers does not often lead to profitable growth. You need to expand the pie. Again, the pandemic may have exposed and amplified some of the pain points previously assumed by your industry. It is up to you to find creative ways to address them to unlock and attract the mass of noncustomers."

Trechos retirados de "How to Be a Blue Ocean Strategist in the Post-Pandemic World"

"Covid-19 will push ..."

Aquela mensagem de que o coronavirus não mudou nada, apenas acelerou o que já estava em marcha... 

"Challenging the location of production

The global economy is highly dependent on China. China’s share of global trade in some industries exceeds 50%—in the global trade of telecommunications equipment, for example, China’s share (by volume) was 59% in 2018. China’s importance in global trade and supply chains has grown ever since it was accepted into the World Trade Organisation in 2001. This led to the latest wave of globalisation as multinationals took advantage of the trading opportunities that China offered, both in terms of production and as a source of demand for their products. However, as a result of Covid-19, it is likely that this period of globalisation will not only come to a halt, it will reverse.

...

Covid-19 will push more companies in other sectors to relocate parts of their supply chains. By building quasi-independent regional supply chains in the Americas and Europe, a global company will provide a hedge against future shocks to their network. [Moi ici: Uma tendência em curso já já alguns anos]

For those companies that have this luxury already, they have been able to shift production of key components from one region to another as lockdowns and factory closures resulting from coronavirus have unfolded. Supply chains are difficult to set up and even more difficult to move, especially in the automotive sector. As more firms make this decision, therefore, the shift to regionalised supply chains will be an enduring outcome of this crisis.

...

For the sake of efficiency, multinationals tend to optimise the logistics process of their supply chains to minimise storage costs. However, in a world of increasing uncertainty and ongoing risk, a sole focus on the efficiency of transportation and production will leave firms vulnerable to shocks. In the current crisis, companies are seeing greater value in storing inventory in strategic locations from where it can be easily accessed and delivered to customers."

Trechos retirados de "The Great Unwinding - Covid-19 and the regionalisation of global supply chains" do The Economist.

"we have to think for ourselves every day and help make our networked society smarter"

Ontem, guardei este tweet:

Se há coisa que me preocupa desde o início da declaração da pandemia é a pressão para que não haja espírito crítico ou dúvida metódica sobre nada do que se escreve ou diz sobre o vírus, medidas de contenção ou profilaxia.
As certezas não eram bem-vindas na ciência que conhecia.

— Miguel E. (@PilotInComm) November 17, 2020

Um outro tweet mandou-me para aqui:

"Feynman says we learn from science that you must doubt the experts: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says ‘science teaches such and such’, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it”"

Também li isto logo pela manhã:

"If this pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s that experts disagree, nobody has all the answers, and we are mostly making things up as we go. In a crisis it is important to act but even more importantly to learn as we take action. Add in the human factor that some people are always trying to take advantage of any situation and we start to float in a liquid surround of misinformation, propaganda, half-truths, and sometimes utter crap of the post-truth machines. 

...

As of yesterday our government started to promote the wearing of non-medical masks in public. Last week our public health experts said that people did not know how to wear masks properly so they should not wear them. Overnight we have become professional mask wearers, as we are all expert hand-washers.

...

I am not saying that we should ignore all expert advice. However, we have to think for ourselves every day and help make our networked society smarter. An expert is merely one node in an entangled knowledge network."

Trechos retirados de "entangled thinking" 

 

Para reflexão

 "I’m haunted by the headline about 47 percent of jobs vanishing by 2035, not just because nobody can make reliable forecasts that far out. Not just because it feels more like PR than anything else. But because it was so quickly absorbed as fact. Instead of appearing unknown, debatable, and uncertain, suddenly the future looked foreclosed. In that guise, it becomes propaganda. When we trade the effort of doubt and debate for the ease of blind faith, we become gullible and exposed, passive and irresponsible observers of our own lives. Worse still, we leave ourselves wide open to those who profit by influencing our behavior, our thinking, and our choices. At that moment, our agency in our own lives is in jeopardy."

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan. 

Tenha medo de ter medo

 Ao escrever o último postal, quando procurava o link para o postal onde inicialmente citei "for at least the next couple months every organisation in the world is a startup" encontrei esta imagem daqui:

Entretanto, esta manhã assisti à Missa e durante a leitura do Evangelho ouvi uma das duas parábolas que para mim definem o cristão, a Parábola dos Talentos (Mt 25, 14-30).

O medo do terceiro servo paralisou-o. O medo não ajuda a construir! 

Tenha medo de ter medo!

Interessante que os poderes instituídos sejam tão amigos de criar medo!