Um conselho-provocação

Ainda a propósito do artigo "Mexico's new furniture revolutionaries", nele há uma foto que me captou a atenção:

Isto faz-me pensar na service-dominant logic e que tudo é serviço.
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Mesmo um produto que se compra não passa de um avatar de um serviço, como tão bem sintetizou Dave Gray.
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Depois, a imagem recordou-me um conselho-provocação que deixei a uma empresa esta semana:

- Olhem para a vossa política da qualidade. Leiam-na. Ela descreve uma empresa que vos orgulha mas que vocês querem deixar para trás. Ela descreve uma empresa que vivia e vive de produzir um produto. Ela já não descreve a empresa do futuro que vocês estão a criar, uma empresa em que o mais importante é o intangível que o vosso produto proporciona, o serviço.
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Recordar o poder do intangível em "É contar uma história"

"Culture map"

Ontem no Twitter alguém publicou esta foto acerca de uma ideia de Dave Gray ainda em desenvolvimento, o "Culture Map":

Assim que a vi pensei logo no mapa da estratégia:

• Outcomes = Resultados, consequências financeiras procuradas;
• Behaviors = Comportamentos que queremos que os clientes sintam ou evidenciem (sedução, satisfação, relação/fidelização);
• Stated levers = As actividades concretas a desenvolver para gerar os comportamentos desejados nos clientes;
• Unstated levers = Onde investir para que as actividades possam ser executadas correctamente?

SMN e produtividade

Nos últimos tempos tenho lido e ouvido muitas referências ao salário mínimo nacional (SMN) e à necessidade de o aumentar.
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Na última semana apareceu uma palavra nova associada ao SMN, a palavra produtividade:

• "Governo quer ligar salário mínimo à produtividade mas não se compromete com datas ou valores";
• "Governo quer indexar aumento do salário mínimo à produtividade";
• "Governo quer salário mínimo a depender da produtividade".

""O Governo quer com os parceiros sociais discutir um aumento do salário mínimo que não fique num só ano, que seja plurianual e que tenha também um conjunto de elementos ligados à produtividade. O aumento da produtividade é o critério mais justo do ponto de vista social mas também o que mais protege a criação de emprego e a competitividade da economia portuguesa", afirmou Pedro Mota Soares, à saída da primeira reunião de um grupo de trabalho sobre este assunto."

Há tantas conversas que se poderiam iniciar a partir daqui dado que tantos são os temas ...
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Se o Governo quer um acordo, então, temos de ser claros, temos de usar termos e definições que signifiquem o mesmo para todos, temos de ser profundos na análise, temos de ancorar as coisas em alicerces resistentes.
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Relacionar salário mínimo e produtividade faz sentido?
Aumentar a produtividade faz sentido?
Mais produtividade gera criação de emprego?
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Fiquemos por aqui, pois mais questões se podiam colocar...
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Aumentar a produtividade faz sentido?
O Paulo Peres há dias mandou-me este vídeo:

Percebo a mensagem do autor, até concordo com a mensagem do autor.
Algumas coisas que ele diz:

"In manufacturing you're trying to do everything the same ... standardization will decrease costs. But in service, tipicamente não é isso que queremos, não queremos tudo igual. Cada cliente é diferente e tem necessidades diferentes. Nesse caso queremos que a empresa personalize e não padronize.
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[Ao minuto 6:30] "Na produção de coisas, produtividade e satisfação dos clientes estão alinhadas. Nos serviços isso não acontece, as empresas têm de escolher entre produtividade e satisfação, quanto maior a produtividade menor a satisfação dos clientes"

Segundo ele, nos serviços não faz sentido aumentar a produtividade, pois vai prejudicar a satisfação e, por tabela, a rentabilidade!
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Engraçado é que aqui no blogue já por várias vezes manifestamos o nosso acordo com Dave Gray e o seu:

"Everything is Service!"

E também o seu:

"In the same way, a product can be considered as a physical manifestation of a service or set of services: a service avatar." 

Estão a ver a implicação disto?
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O Governo propõe: vamos relacionar produtividade com o SMN.
Entretanto, assistimos à implementação da service-dominant logic no mundo dos negócios que nos diz que tudo é serviço.
E assistimos a quem afirme que nos serviços, cuidado com o aumento da produtividade!!!
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Perdidos?
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Sinto-me como alguns deputados da oposição; a falar sobre um tema só revelando uma perspectiva e escondendo outras.
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Vamos pôr ordem na narrativa. Neste blogue defende-se o aumento da produtividade?
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Sim, claro que sim!!!
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Neste blogue concorda-se com a mensagem do vídeo? Sim, claro que sim!!!
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Como conciliar as duas posições? Definimos e medimos a produtividade de forma diferente!
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Outro artigo que o Paulo Peres me fez chegar foi "Innovation in Services: A Literature Review" de Rabeh Morrar e publicado em Abril passado pela Technology Innovation Management Review. Nele pode ler-se como não há formas estabelecidas de medir a produtividade nos serviços:

"the intangibility of service products hinder the measurement of the service output
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the link between innovation in services and economic variables such as productivity should be clarified. Indeed, in the service economy, the innovation gap is associated with a performance gap.
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Conceptually, there is no specific answer to the question of the degree and sign of the relationship between innovation in services and productivity, but it is related to the service specificities that “influence the definition and measurement of productivity”.

Mas se nos concentrarmos só na produção de coisas:

• Em 1994 a produção de calçado quase chegou aos 110 milhões de pares;
• Em 2012 a produção de calçado chegou aos 65 milhões de pares.

Em qual dos anos a produtividade foi mais alta?

• Em 1994 a produção de calçado chegou quase aos 67 mil pares de sapatos por empresa
• Em 2010 a produção de calçado chegou quase aos 45,5 mil pares de sapatos por empresa

Em qual dos anos a produtividade foi mais alta?

• Em 1994 a produção de calçado por trabalhador foi um pouco acima dos 1840 pares
• Em 2010 a produção de calçado por trabalhador quase chegou aos 1880 pares

Em qual dos anos a produtividade foi mais alta?
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Qual o erro desta abordagem?
Estamos a comparar quantidades, assumindo que os pares têm todos o mesmo valor...

• Em 1994 o preço médio de um par de sapatos à saída de uma fábrica portuguesa foi de 14,88€
• Em 2013 o preço médio de um par de sapatos à saída de uma fábrica portuguesa foi de 23,45€

O indicador produtividade foi criado num tempo em que a economia girava em torno de commodities:

Hoje, num mesmo sector de actividade temos empresas que podem produzir o mesmo output estatístico para o Fisco e; no entanto:

• umas produzem commodities;
• outras produzem produtos;
• outras fornecem um serviço, ainda que embebido em produtos;
• outras produzem experiências; e
• outras ainda, transformam vidas.

Portanto, para relacionar produtividade com SMN, era importante que primeiro se definisse o que se entende por produtividade.

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BTW, o Governo podia ler o que Clayton Christensen e Jeremy Rifkin, por exemplo, escrevem sobre a relação entre aumento da produtividade e emprego... pelo menos emprego no sentido clássico, aquele que conta para as estatísticas. Estão a ver o destino dos portageiros da Brisa...

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BTW2, o que me tira do sério é os Governos aumentarem o SMN e, depois, torrarem dinheiro dos contribuintes para ajudar as empresas a contratar os trabalhadores que não conseguem contratar, pois estes estão demasiado caros para a riqueza que vão gerar.

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BTW3, claro que um bom exemplo do calibre do políticos a falar de produtividade é este: 

• "Pires de Lima: "Com meia hora a mais aumentava 7% a produtividade"" (Dezembro de 2011);
• "O ministro da Economia, António Pires de Lima, disse hoje que não quer que os trabalhadores do sector privado trabalhem mais horas para aumentar a produtividade em Portugal." (Maio de 2014)

Se quiserem um exemplo da oposição sobre o mesmo tema é pesquisar aqui no blogue as declarações de Vieira da Silva e Teixeira dos Santos, ao tempo ministros, na Autoeuropa sobre o gato-e-o-rato (salários e produtividade)

"before you can get better, you will need to get worse" ("Via Negativa" (parte II))

Dave Gray em "The Connected Company" descreve em linguagem corrente o que acontece às empresas e às economias dos países:

"Evolutionary biologists use something called a fitness landscape to represent the journey that organisms and organizations make as they negotiate tradeoffs between conflicting constraints and coevolve, trying to achieve optimal fitness for their environment. The journey is called an adaptive walk. As organisms make adaptive moves and countermoves, trading off one functional trait for another, they move upward on the landscape, toward an optimum fit. But with every move, those tradeoffs make it more and more difficult to go anywhere else but up toward the top of that particular peak. Eventually, you reach a point where you can’t go any farther up - or, you will have to go downhill before you can scale another peak. And that means that before you can get better, you will need to get worse.
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This adaptive walk toward fitness peaks is another way to visualize the experience curve and its diminishing returns. As you move upward toward an optimum - or peak - efficiency, there are fewer and fewer choices that will take you higher on the landscape, until you reach the top. And once you have reached a peak, moving in any direction will take you downhill.
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If you are at the top of a fitness peak and the landscape starts changing, it can really throw you off. Companies doing the right thing at the time - making the right moves for their situation, trying to optimize their production lines to squeeze out all the costs and inefficiencies so they can run lean and mean operations - may later find that they have optimized for a business environment that no longer exists."

Tínhamos um ecossistema de empresas de bens transaccionáveis adaptado a competir pelo baixo-preço e:

• A paisagem competitiva começou a acelerar a mudança quando o escudo deixou de dar boleias a clandestinos com a sua desvalorização deslizante;
• Acelerou ainda mais com a adesão dos países da Europa de Leste à UE;
• E sofreu um evento tipo-Fukushima com a adesão da China à OMC.

Estas alterações sucessivas da paisagem competitiva levaram os intervencionistas ingénuos nos vários governos a maquilharem os números do PIB e do desemprego com mais de uma década de investimento público com rentabilidades negativas, assaram sardinhas com o lume dos fósforos (recordar a argumentação do secretário de estado Paulo Campos).

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Recordando:

• "O modelo NK de Kauffman - uma introdução"
• "OMG... e vão viver de quê? (parte VIII) ou Mt 11, 25"
• "Muitos picos, muita arte"

Para muitas empresas, o que era um pico, transformou-se num vale, ou numa depressão, ou numa colina insignificante, para encontrar um novo pico, é preciso seguir um "adaptive walk" que terá de passar algures por "before you can get better, you will need to get worse", outra forma de dizer: ""Se tudo correr bem o desemprego vai aumentar""

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Quem disser o contrário, na situação, ou na oposição, mente com todos os dentes.

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A falta de dinheiro, e alguma, pouca, influência da troika, têm imposto a "Via Negativa"

Para reflexão

"When a company is large and successful, its size can be its worst enemy, especially when it is so dominant that it lacks serious competition. A company culture that drove success in the early days can become overly codified, rigid, and ritualistic. Over time, bold new moves become much more risky; new business models may compete with existing businesses and cannibalize their sales. Even when it’s obvious that change will someday be necessary, it’s not hard to find excuses to put it off just a little bit longer. Slowly, great companies can lose touch with reality."

Quando o mundo muda... quanto tempo se perde a enganarmos-nos a nós próprios à espera que o momento negativo que se vive passe depressa para que voltem os "bons velhos tempos".
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Trecho retirado do capítulo 5 "How companies lose touch" de "The connected company" de Dave Gray.

"Processos e experiência dos clientes" (parte V)

Parte IV, parte III, parte II e parte I. 

"You can’t run service operations like a factory, because customers just walk onto the factory floor and mess everything up. They interfere. You can’t schedule when they show up. They just come in massive waves at the most inconvenient times. Then they get angry when they have to wait. Why can’t they make an appointment? They don’t understand how things work, so you have to train them to use the equipment. Sometimes they can be really slow to figure things out.
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They ask for things that aren’t on the menu. They want everything to be customized and personalized for them. They have no interest in efficient operations.
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They don’t follow the processes we lay out for them.
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And customers want to get on with their days. They don’t want to wait in the waiting room or stay on hold for the next customer representative. They want services to be convenient for them.
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As customers, competitors, and partners make adaptive moves and countermoves, they not only affect each other but they affect the landscape itself, so an organization that was fit for yesterday’s world cannot be certain that they will be fit for tomorrow’s world. Our companies have all been optimized for a perfect one-way stream, the line of production, and these pesky customers are mucking about in our operations, and we have now a completely different problem to solve. We need to optimize not for the line of production but for the line of interaction, the front line - the edge of the organization - where our people and systems come into direct contact with customers. It’s a whole different thing.
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Many service companies just aren’t designed for service delivery. They are designed like factories, optimized for the mass production of inputs into outputs. This makes perfect sense in a rapidly-industrializing economy. But in an economy where manufacturing is shrinking and services are expanding, it doesn’t work anymore. Traditional management thinking looks at a customer service call as an input to the service factory. For a factory, it’s not difficult to get standard inputs from suppliers. But inputs from customers come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes. Every problem, every job that customers need to do, has its own unique profile. Most companies try to standardize these inputs as much as possible so they can process them efficiently. The factory’s job is to produce “resolutions.” This is how we end up with complicated voice menu systems that attempt to route calls to the appropriate department while keeping costs as low as possible. As companies try to fit customer demands into standard boxes, customers become frustrated and angry. They give up. Sometimes they leave to find another provider, but even then they often hold little hope that anything will change."

Trechos do Capítulo 4, "Services are complex", do livro "The Connected Company" de Dave Gray.

"Processos e experiência dos clientes" (parte IV)

Parte III, parte II e parte I.
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Trechos do Capítulo 4, "Services are complex", do livro "The Connected Company" de Dave Gray:

"Competitive intensity is rising all over the world. Global competition and the Web have given customers more choices than they have ever had before. This means that customers can choose from an ever-widening set of choices, and it seems that variety only breeds more variety. The more choices that become available, the more choices it seems people want.
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And you have lots of competitors who are trying to offer them better, cheaper, faster, easier ways to do those things. And while customers are always looking for these better, faster, cheaper ways to do things, technology isn’t standing still. As the front edge of technological change gets bigger, its surface area also grows, like an ever-expanding balloon.
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In the coming century, the world will create a lot of variety. This is great for people who want more choices, but it creates a real problem for companies. From drugs to microchips, from food service to entertainment, your customers will be expecting a lot of variety from you. They will want better quality, and they will want it faster and cheaper. They will expect you to respond quickly to their demands for personal and customized services. This change is real and it’s accelerating. For most companies, business as usual just won’t cut it. What the market requires is not incremental improvement, but order-of-magnitude increases in performance."

Um prólogo para o que aí vem.

"Processos e experiência dos clientes" (parte III)

Parte I e II.
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Trechos retirados do Capítulo 3, "Everything is a service", do livro "The Connected Company" de Dave Gray:

"Most companies today are designed to produce high volumes of consistent, standard outputs, with great efficiency and at low cost. Even many of today’s services industries still operate in an industrial fashion.
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But most of these services are not really services at all. They are factory-style processes that treat people as if they were products moving through a production line. Just think of the last time you called a company’s “customer service line” and ask yourself if you felt well served. Sure, many services require some level of efficiency, but services are not production processes. They are experiences. Unlike products, services are often designed or modified as they are delivered; they are co-created with customers. Services are contextual—where, when, and how they are delivered can make a big difference. They may require specialized knowledge or skills. The value of a service lies in the interactions: it’s not the end product that matters, so much as the experience. Service providers often must respond in real time to customer desires and preferences. To this end, a company with a service orientation cannot be designed and organized around efficiency processes. It must be designed and organized around customers and experiences. This is a complete inversion of the mass-production, mass-marketing paradigm, which will be difficult for many companies to adopt.
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The first step to a service orientation is to change the way we think about products. Instead of thinking about products as ends in themselves, we need to think of them as just one component in an overall service, the point of which is to deliver a stellar customer experience. (Moi ici: Mas mais do que só "delivery", a experiência continua após a entrega e prolonga-se para o uso, e para lá do uso, prolonga-se nos sentimentos que ao longo do tempo vão emergir com a experiência vivida e, com a reflexão ao longo do tempo sobre essa experiência)
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We have developed a tendency to think of flows in terms of process, but services and processes are not the same. Processes are linked, linear chains of cause and effect that, when managed carefully, drive predictable, reliable results. A service is different. While processes are designed to be consistent and uniform, services are co-created with customers each and every time a service is rendered. This difference is not superficial but fundamental." (Moi ici: Recordar "Cuidado com a cristalização")

"Processos e experiência dos clientes" (parte II)

Em sintonia com o tema de fundo abordado em "Processos e experiência dos clientes", encontrei estes trechos no Capítulo 2, "The service economy", do livro "The Connected Company" de Dave Gray:

"The producer-driven economy is giving way to a new, customer-centered world in which companies will prosper by developing relationships with customers - by listening to them, adapting, and responding to their wants and needs.
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The problem is that the organizations that generated all this wealth were not designed to listen, adapt, and respond. They were designed to create a ceaseless, one-way flow of material goods and information. Everything about them has been optimized for this one-directional arrow, and product-oriented habits are so deeply embedded in our organizational systems that it will be difficult to root them out.
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It’s not only companies that need to change. Our entire society has been optimized for production and consumption on a massive scale. Our school systems are optimized to create good cogs for the corporate machine, not the creative thinkers and problem-solvers we will need in the 21st century."

E no campeonato das experiências?

Dave Gray em "Everything is a service" escreveu a interessante frase:

"a product can be considered as a physical manifestation of a service or set of services: a service avatar. (Ou seja: "A product as a service avatar")"

Então, se tudo é serviço, se os os produtos não passam de representações de serviços, o que dizer das implicações deste texto "Ritual and the Service Experience" para quem produz:

"The interplay between efficiency and quality in a service experience is often what separates a merely transactional interaction from a valuable and pleasurable one. The former gets the job done; the latter does so while creating a more human connection and an enduring relationship between service provider and customer. Unfortunately, in most cases efficiency wins out. Most organizations lean heavily on analytical methods to define rigid processes and procedures that are designed to reduce waste and increase predictability in service delivery. This approach views the organization as a machine to be fine-tuned and the customer as a rational actor who enters and exits processes like a rat in a well-designed maze.
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Yet, customers are less rational than they would like to admit and more complicated (i.e., human) than process engineers would prefer."

É aqui que se separam as águas entre os apaixonados e os assépticos, entre os artesãos e a produção em massa.
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A sua empresa consegue competir no campeonato da eficiência? É a estratégia em que consegue ser dominante?
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E no campeonato das experiências?

Leituras para reflexão

Um conjunto de textos interessantes que merecem ficar no meu arquivo:

• "You better not bake your costs into pricing" - um texto em sintonia com a mensagem deste blogue e em contramão, face à maioria dos economistas, políticos e comentadores (a tríade):

"customers are not paying to offset your costs. They are paying to fulfill their needs –utilitarian or hedonistic. It does not matter to them what your costs are or how you are allocating them. When was the last time you were at a coffee store and paid separately for employee salary or the decorative lighting?
It is not the cost that comes first, it is the price that comes first."

Enquanto os membros da tríade só pensam nos custos, este blogue pertence ao clube da minoria que prefere falar do preço, que prefere falar do valor co-criado. Por falar em valor co-criado:

• "What Really Replaces Marketing (Madness).." - texto curto mas cheio de sumo, tenho de exercer uma forte contenção para não o colocar quase todo aqui: 

"The bottom line in my thinking is that, since Value is dominantly created in-use and is a result of co-creation between company and Customer, marketing strategies should shift their focus from creating momentum for value exchange (the sale) to creating momentum for interactions that support Customers in creating value for themselves. And since value is something that can only be defined by its beneficiary we need to understand what outcomes Customers desire when they hire a company’s resources to get their jobs done. The Customer’s journey towards that outcome is where opportunity for marketing lies to design service that support Customers, employees and partners to co-create more (or better?) value together."

"Service Dominant Logic, Customer Jobs-to-be-Done, Service Design" - BTW, ando a aprender umas coisas muitos interessantes sobre Customer Jobs-to-be-Done com Anthony Ulwick.
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Outro tema recorrente neste blogue é a tareia ao "eficientismo" acima de tudo, por isso:

• "Wrangling complexity: the service-oriented company" - texto que merecia uma reflexão séria pelos gestores da coisa pública, claro que deliro. Sobretudo, na área da Saúde, ou na área da Justiça, ou na área da Educação, com as suas instituições gigantes, lentas e comandadas a partir de Lisboa:

"Most businesses today are not designed with agility in mind. Their systems are tightly coupled, because their growth has been driven by a desire for efficiency rather than flexibility.
Consider the difference between a car on a road and a train on a train track. The car and the road are loosely coupled, so the car is capable of independent action. It’s more agile. It can do more complex things. The train and track are tightly coupled, highly optimized for a particular purpose and very efficient at moving stuff from here to there – as long as you want to get on and off where the train wants to stop. But the train has fewer options – forward and back. If something is blocking the track, the train can’t just go around it. It’s efficient but not very flexible.

Many business systems are tightly coupled, like trains on a track, in order to maximize control and efficiency. But what the business environment requires today is not efficiency but flexibility. So we have these tightly coupled systems and the rails are not pointing in the right direction. And changing the rails, although we feel it is necessary, is complex and expensive to do. So we sit in these business meetings, setting goals and making our strategic plans, arguing about which way the rails should be pointing, when what we really need is to get off the train altogether and embrace a completely different system and approach."

Fugir à abordagem eficientista (parte II)

Por um lado, estamos praticamente todos de acordo que a "servitização" é um facto.
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Cada vez mais, os produtos fabricados são um artificio para o desenvolvimento de uma relação. Cada vez mais camadas de serviços são fundidas com os produtos criando um híbrido.
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A lógica da servitização é a de fugir à comoditização crescente dos produtos. Produzir é fácil, produzir é o mais fácil. Quem compete na produção de produtos, aposta na escala, no volume, por isso, recorre o mais possível à uniformização, à padronização que reduz custos e aumenta a eficiência.
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O que acontece é que a mentalidade eficientista invade a parcela do serviço e comoditiza-a eliminando a vantagem que ele poderia trazer.
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"Many service companies just aren’t designed for service delivery. They are designed like factories, optimized for the mass-production of inputs into outputs. This makes perfect sense in a rapidly-industrializing economy. But in an economy where manufacturing is shrinking and services are expanding, it doesn’t work anymore.
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Traditional management thinking looks at a customer service call as an input to the “service factory.” Most companies try to standardize these inputs as much as possible so they can process them efficiently. The factory’s job is to produce “resolutions.” This is how we end up with complicated voice menu systems that attempt to route calls to the appropriate department while keeping costs as low as possible.

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In a service-driven marketplace, the focus needs to shift from the line of production to a different line; the front line. The line of production is a one-way arrow, starting with raw materials and suppliers and ending with the customer who buys the product.
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A production line requires efficiency.(Moi ici: Depende da proposta de valor) Inputs can be standardized, and environments and processes can be internally controlled. But a front line requires optionality. Front line people deal with environments and circumstances that cannot be predicted."

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Trecho retirado de "Can’t get no satisfaction: Why service companies can’t keep their promises"

Mongo e a Lei de Ashby

Ontem à noite Dave Gray brindou-nos com uma série de reflexões sintonizadas com a narrativa deste blogue:
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Acerca de Mongo:
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"Competitive intensity is rising all over the world. Global competition and the web have given customers more choices that they have ever had before. This means customers can choose from an ever-widening set of choices, and it seems that variety only breeds more variety. The more choices that become available, the more choices people want.
Customers have lots of things they are trying to do, and lots of ways they are trying to do them. And you have lots of competitors who are trying to offer them better, cheaper, faster, easier ways to do those jobs.
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In the coming century the world will create a lot of variety. This is great for individuals but creates a real problem for companies.
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From drugs to microchips, from food service to entertainment, your customers will be throwing a lot of variety at you. They will demand more from you. They will want better quality, and they will want it faster and cheaper. They will expect you to respond quickly to their demands for personal and customized services. This change is real and it’s accelerating."
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Se a variedade vai aumentar... convém recordar a Lei de Ashby:
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"You can reduce variety by simplifying your system and finding ways to limit your inputs. 

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You can absorb variety by developing a capability to accept a wider variety of inputs into the system. 

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In the real world you probably will want to reduce variety in some parts of your business and absorb it in others. Tradeoffs like this are at the core of company strategy and design."

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Por fim, o problema que representa a normalização, a uniformização, num mundo que aspira à variedade:

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"Another core idea from the industrial revolution is the concept of, interchangeable parts. Standardization does make it easier to mass-produce quality products. Standards also make it easier to connect things.
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We run into problems, though, when we try to apply standards to things that inherently have a high degree of variety: for example, a customer service call. Customer problems come in all shapes and sizes, and even problems that might seem very similar on the surface can be subject to a lot of variability based on the context.
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We have gotten so used to the idea of standards as a good thing that we tend to apply them in the wrong places. For example, consider the idea of a “best practice.” The concept of a best practice assumes that there is one “best way” to solve a problem: that every problem can be isolated from its context, and a single best way of solving it can be described and shared. Unfortunately, this has caused a lot of problems in the business world, because it’s impossible to isolate problems from their context.
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A system is not just the sum of its parts. What makes a system work is not the parts in isolation, but the interactions between them, and the inherent tradeoffs that must be made to achieve different kinds of system performance. Standardization is something you apply to the parts of a system, not a whole. A best practice from one company, or from one part of a company, cannot necessarily be applied successfully elsewhere."

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Lembram-se da minha crítica à malta da Qualidade encalhada na normalização?

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"O perigo da cristalização"

Tudo é serviço (parte II)

Parte I.
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Oportuna reflexão de Irene Ng em "Dematerialisation & Density: The Value of Things in context":
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"We hear it all the time and I've certainly said it again and again. Value comes from use, value is in context but why is it we still hear firms talking about value as the money they get for their things, and we still hear how they firms 'add value' as though the things in themselves have value?
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THINGS HAVE NO VALUE IN THEMSELVES. repeat after me. ok. (Moi ici: O marxianismo entranhado em todos nós é que nos faz querer que trabalho traduzido em objectos é valor... estão a imaginar aquele inventário tremendo que tantas empresas mantêm... pode ter um valor contabilístico, mas aos olhos dos potenciais clientes?) then you go back to business and start talking about getting more value from the things, keeping the factories open, keeping the jobs coming in and you have forgotten what you said. so let me join the dots for you.
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THINGS HAVE VALUE BECAUSE YOU IMAGINE IT'S USE. so basically, its not the thing you value, its what you THINK the thing is going to do in your life.

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so.....WHEN YOU IMAGINE ITS USE, YOU IMAGINE THE CONTEXT. so not only do you think about what the thing is doing in your life, you had an imagined scope of where and how and when the thing is used for (the context). that's why you think the thing is good. you are really thinking thing-in-context is good, which you believe means the same thing (wrong) (Moi ici: Vou tentar ajudar um empresário que pensa desta maneira mas que tem uma equipa comercial que não percebe a ideia, que foi educada a vender produto e tem dificuldade em em pôr o produto em 2º plano e começar pelo contexto do potencial cliente. Ou seja, criar personas ( aqui e aqui) que representem grupos de clientes-alvo, identificar as suas aspirações, as experiências que procuram e querem integrar na sua vida. Depois, em função disso, desenvolver os argumentos que relacionam as personas com os produtos mais adequados à sua vida. O ponto de partida é o contexto, a situação, a vida da persona. Ver nota 1, Ver nota 2)
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YOU IMAGINE THE CONTEXT IS CONSTANT BECAUSE THE THING IS CONSTANT. yup, so when you buy an iPad, the iPad doesn't change its form, get moody, or become a different iPad at different times so you believe the context of use can stay the same too........so when you buy the iPad, you are thinking about lying in bed, reading. when you're thinking of buying that apple, you are thinking about eating it in the next hour, the toaster and the warm toast etc. etc. etc. so when you're buying something, you're actually evaluating the value of the THING thinking that it is a THING-IN-CONTEXT
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here's the bad news, firms don't manufacture context. they manufacture things. (Moi ici: Queremos, temos de tornar esta afirmação falsa. Temos, como tão bem escreveu Dave Gray há dias, de pensar no produto como um avatar do serviço. O produto, como escrevo há n tempo aqui, tem de ser uma desculpa, um pretexto para a criação de uma relação com um cliente)
and the good news? YOU 'manufacture' the context. and then magically, they come together and it is good. .
that's co-creation for you.
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so... for all those who really want to know what is value, how it's created and why people buy at higher or lower prices etc...........IT'S THE CONTEXT S****D....."

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Nota 1: "The first imperative is to put people at the heart of services. If we try to produce a service without the participation of the customer it cannot either satisfy that customer or achieve its potential. We must find ways to re-engage people in the services they use. ... In order to put people at the heart of services we need to know who they are. We need to listen to them and gain accurate information that helps us give them what they need, when they need it. Organisations across the spectrum have the potential to personalise services and to create huge benefits for themselves and their customers."
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Nota 2: "The Way of Marketing in an Experience Economy" e "CHANGE. The Way of Marketing in an Experience Economy", por todo o lado, a base para a definição da proposta de valor é a experiência, não o produto.
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Nota 3: "Do You Really Want Fries With That? How to Find a Customer Service Perfect Match" Sem formação, como pretender que as pessoas que estão na categoria 2 e 3 actuem, pensem, imaginem, cenários ganhar-ganhar?

Tudo é serviço - Uma história sobre como Mongo se torna inevitável

O título do artigo é "Everything is a service"... tudo, repito, TUDO é serviço.
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Há anos que escrevo aqui sobre a importância da proximidade e da vantagem que as PMEs podem retirar desse factor.
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Há anos que escrevo aqui que a vantagem mais importante das nossas PMEs é a flexibilidade que a sua localização permite, muito mais importante que a flexibilidade laboral (importante sem dúvida nos momentos maus). A proximidade tem o potencial de gerar relação, gerar troca, gerar conhecimento sobre o outro, gerar cooperação, gerar parceria.
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"Most companies today are designed to produce high volumes of consistent, standard outputs, with great efficiency and at low cost. Even many of today’s services industries still operate in an industrial fashion. (Moi ici: A nossa luta constante contra o pensamento único, contra a batalha da eficiência à custa da eficácia, contra a superioridade do denominador (dos custos) em detrimento do numerador (do valor), contra a treta dos CUTs assumindo que a qualidade, os atributos do que se produz mantém-se constante)
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Sure, many services require some level of production efficiency, but services are not processes. They are experiences. (Moi ici: Este "services are not processes" é poderoso e merece um postal só para ele, faz-me lembrar o ... greve de zelo) (Moi ici: Serviços são experiências! Quais são as experiências que os clientes-alvo procuram e valorizam? Recordam-se desta frase, tantas vezes repetida aqui no blogue?)
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Unlike products, services are often designed or modified as they are delivered; they are co-created with customers; and service providers must often respond in real time to customer desires and preferences. Services are contextual – where, when and how they are delivered can make a big difference. They may require specialized knowledge or skills. The value of a service comes through the interactions: it’s not the end product that matters, so much as the experience. (Moi ici: Proximidade, intimidade, relações amorosas, relação, parceria... quem está a contar os cêntimos da eficiência acha tudo isto perda de tempo)
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To this end, a company with a service orientation cannot be designed and organized around production processes; it must be designed and organized around customers and experiences. (Moi ici: Recordar, como abordamos o desafio estratégico? Primeiro, quem são os clientes-alvo? Segundo. que experiências desejam, procuram, valorizam? Tudo parte daí... o mosaico de actividades que constitui os processos existe para produzir as experiências, não para ser eficiente... ) This is a complete inversion of the mass-production, mass-marketing paradigm that will be difficult for many companies to adopt.
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In product-dominant logic, production is the core of the value-creation process, while customer service is a cost to be minimized. But in service-dominant logic, products are the cost centers, and services become the core value-creation processes.
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In the same way, a product can be considered as a physical manifestation of a service or set of services: a service avatar.
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Products come with knowledge and services embedded within them.
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Products aren’t just things. They are servants.
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In a product-dominant world, value is exchanged in transactions between buyers and sellers. But in a service-dominant world, value is co-created by companies and customers working together. (Moi ici: Esta é, IMHO, a grande força por detrás do regresso dos clientes que foram para a Ásia, como aqui abordei em 2006, muito antes de se falar em crise e de aumento de salários chineses. Não se pode co-criar com gente do outro lado do mundo e, como sublinha Ghemawatt, com uma cultura tão diferente) This kind of exchange requires a relationship, and the product is only an intermediate step in the value-creation process.
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Value is co-created: A company can’t create value. Value is only created through exchange. The customer must participate in defining and determining that value.
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Co-created value requires a relationship: Products can play a role in relationships – even a key role – but products can’t have relationships. The relationship between a company and its customers develops gradually, as customers build trust in the company and its ability to deliver on their promises over time.
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The product is an intermediate step, not an end in itself: Even after a customer buys a product, they must learn how to use it, maintain it, repair it, and enjoy it. If the company is lucky, they will like it enough to tell friends about it, educate others, promote it, buy additional services around it and so on.
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A service-dominant world changes the game significantly. Service-orientation is a fundamental shift and creates opportunities for new business strategies, new sources of competitive advantage, new ways of interacting with customers, and new ways of organizing work."
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Por fim, Dave Gray vai cair em... já adivinharam? Mongo!!!
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"As if change wasn’t already difficult enough, service orientation for many companies will require a whole new approach to business partnerships.
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Because services map to increasingly demanding customer preferences, companies must find ways to make them more granular, as well as easier to bundle with other services. Customers want services to be convenient for them, not for you."
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BTW, para os políticos e todos aqueles que não fizeram o reset mental:
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“This economic crisis doesn’t represent a cycle. It represents a reset. It’s an emotional, raw social, economic reset. People who understand that will prosper. Those who don’t will be left behind.”