Perceber o sistema onde se opera

"The first step in building a successful and elegant strategy is to see the systems that are part of our lives. [Moi ici: Viver uma experiência fora de corpo. "The secret is to do the opposite, which is where the metaphor of going to the balcony comes in. It means pausing and taking a step back from the situation. I counsel people to imagine themselves standing on a balcony overlooking a stage on which the conflict [Moi ici: system] in question is taking place. The balcony is a place of calm, control and perspective. It's a place where you can see the bigger picture."]

...

Like most systems, it’s largely invisible. The people in it don’t mean to do harm, they’re simply making choices that feel like their best option. [Mo ici: Interessante a relação com o livro de "The Unaccountability Machine" de Dan Davies] And most of all, the system works to defend itself, to create culture that defends the status quo.

...

It's easier, sometimes, to just go with the system.

We're not stuck in traffic, we are traffic. If we see a system, we can work to change it. Our strategy can use elements of the system to alter it."

Interessante o que Seth Godin conta acerca do sistema por trás do chocolate barato em "The cheap chocolate system".

O texto sobre o sistema do chocolate barato aplica-se às PME's. Frequentemente imersas em sistemas invisíveis e enraizados, onde as escolhas parecem limitadas, e seguir o caminho habitual pode parecer a única opção. Para criar uma estratégia diferenciadora, as PME's precisam de compreender o sistema em que estão envolvidas, identificar as armadilhas que perpetuam práticas ineficazes ou prejudiciais, e encontrar formas de fugir dessas limitações. Assim, podem criar valor de forma sustentável, diferenciando-se pela qualidade e ética, como no caso das marcas de chocolate citadas por Godin.

E isto faz-me recordar a artesã de Bragança ou o burel de Manteigas perceber que o mundo pode ter mudado de tal forma que manter o modelo de negócio já não resulta.

BTW, na última etapa de leitura de "The Unaccountability Machine" de Dan Davies sublinhei:

“Often, when you’re trying to diagnose why a system is failing, you need to consider both the larger system in which it’s embedded and the organisation within its operations.” 

A conspiração do algoritmo

Quando um leão mata uma gazela não classificamos o evento como bom ou mau, desejável ou evitável. Já quando olho para o desempenho de uma organização costumo usar uma imagem: o sistema conspira.

Por exemplo, aqui:

"Temos então de mergulhar e perceber o que na realidade actual conspira para que tenhamos o desempenho actual e não o desempenho futuro desejado."

Ou aqui:

"o sistema de relações de causa-efeito que conspira para termos os resultados actuais e não os resultados futuros desejados" 

Terminada a leitura de livro "Unreasonable hospitality: the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect" de Will Guidara (ainda tenho mais comentários a fazer acerca do que li), iniciei a leitura de "The Unaccountability Machine" de Dan Davies. Hoje, no capítulo 3 sublinhei:

"An organisation does things, and it systematically does some things rather than others. But that’s as far as it goes. Systems don’t make mistakes – if they do something, that’s their purpose. But it also works the other way round. Systems don’t have inner desires, so they don’t do things intentionally either. There’s just a network of cause and effect. We might think they’re conspiring, but they’re working within structures that made the outcome inevitable. Or we might see everything as a terrible cock-up, but we don’t understand that the outcome was the inevitable result of the way the system works."

E recordo daqui:

"Olhar para a evolução do desempenho ao longo de um período, olhar para o somatório de ocorrências. Será que faz sentido olhar para os eventos como azares que ocorrem, ou como produtos naturais, expectáveis, previsíveis, decorrentes da forma como uma empresa planeia e desenvolve a produção, compra, trata os seus trabalhadores e cuida dos seus equipamentos.

É nestas circunstâncias que falo da conspiração da realidade"

Para nós humanos que fazemos julgamentos sobre os resultados da empresa parece uma conspiração, mas é um produto perfeitamente normal, daí a referência a Artur Jorge como treinador do Benfica.

E recuo a 2006 aqui:

"Porque não ver estes desperdícios como manifestações visíveis, de um sistema de causas interrelacionadas que conspiram para gerar o desempenho actual."

Por isso, chamar a esta realidade de "conspiração do algoritmo" não é apenas uma metáfora. É uma forma de dizer que o sistema, como um algoritmo bem treinado, gera os resultados que foram programados pelas nossas decisões anteriores. Tal como Artur Jorge justificava os empates e derrotas do Benfica como "perfeitamente normais", nós também devemos entender que muitos dos resultados da organização são consequências lógicas do que se colocou em marcha. A questão não é se o sistema conspirou contra nós; é percebermos que ele apenas cumpriu o seu papel, seguindo o que nele foi inscrito, sem intenções nem desejos próprios. E se não gostamos dos resultados, temos de mudar de sistema.

O mundo não é mesmo linear

No WSJ do passado dia 14 encontrei uma estória interessante, "Sesame Allergy Sufferers Wanted Warning Labels. They Got More Sesame.":

"Congress passed legislation intended to make life better for people allergic to sesame seeds. Instead, it made things worse. The bill, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Biden in 2021, requires manufacturers to label sesame on their products starting this year.

In response, some companies began adding sesame to products that hadn't included it in the past-saying it was safer to add sesame and label it, rather than certify they had eliminated all traces of it.

People with sesame allergies say the result is fewer sesame-free food options, as well as new and unexpected risks in foods they used to eat without worry."

O mundo não é linear.

O inferno está cheio de boas-intenções.

Unintended consequences. 

E novidades?

 

Ontem, 29 de Março de 2022 o Público publicou "Investimento na: auto-estradas ajudou à litoralização e suburbanização do país".

Recordo 26 de Novembro de 2009, este blogue publicou "Folhas na corrente (parte VII)". Mais completo este outro postal de 2018, "Really, karma is a bitch!".

Por que será que isto acontece?

Uma das ferramentas que uso há muitos anos no meu trabalho com as empresas é a dinâmica de sistemas. Quando em 1999, em San Francisco, numa daquelas lojas de aeroporto, comprei o livro "The Fifth Discipline" de Peter Senge, nunca pensei que viria a ser tão importante.

Há dias, por causa de um artigo no Jornal de Notícias publiquei este tweet:

que isto é uma treta!
Qualquer estudioso de dinâmica de sistemas sabe que quanto mais melhorarem as vias mais carros aparecerão e mais o sistema se comprometerá

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) January 4, 2020

É um desafio há muito documentado e representado nos textos sobre dinâmica de sistemas:

Entretanto, ontem no Público, foi bublicado este artigo "Por uma nova travessia do Tejo".

Isto faz-me lembrar aquela revista do grupo Impresa que, número sim número não, traz artigos sobre viagens e férias em paraísos tropicais, e número não número sim, traz artigos sobre o aquecimento global e o apocalipse climático.

Estes jornais alternam entre a emergência climática e a expansão da pressão do automóvel. 

Por que será que isto acontece?

IV - Nonconformities, corrective actions and even preventive actions

The fourth video on our series about doing more than just complying with ISO 9001:2015.

Organizations should separate nonconformities treatment, and improvement actions. They are two different things with different time pressure, and different purposes.

Improvement does not come just because we have nonconformities, improvement also comes from trend analysis, even when there is no nonconformities behind.



If you have any question about nonconformities, and improvement actions you can send me an e-mail.

A conspiração da realidade

A amarelo as mudanças de produto na linha de produção. Uns produtos com mais produtividade física do que outros. Cada mudança de produto implica paragens para setup.

A verde a ocorrência de avarias que implicaram paragens de produção.

A azul a ocorrência de faltas de pessoal que implicaram impacte na produção: falta de pessoal para produção ou para fazer setup.

A laranja a ocorrência de faltas de matéria-prima.

Olhar para a evolução do desempenho ao longo de um período, olhar para o somatório de ocorrências. Será que faz sentido olhar para os eventos como azares que ocorrem, ou como produtos naturais, expectáveis, previsíveis, decorrentes da forma como uma empresa planeia e desenvolve a produção, compra, trata os seus trabalhadores e cuida dos seus equipamentos.

É nestas circunstâncias que falo da conspiração da realidade e me recordo de Artur Jorge:

• É nestes momentos de mudança ... (parte X) (Fevereiro de 2019)
• Transformar uma empresa de forma alinhada com a estratégia (parte VII) (Agosto de 2018)
• 5. Identificar as estruturas sistémicas conspirativas (parte I) (Maio de 2017)
• A conspiração (Maio de 2017)

Practicing the noble art of cheating (part V)

Part I, Part II, Part III e Part IV.

Let us go back to the last picture of Part IV ...

... and let us select the elements of the cause-effect relationship that are in red.

These elements are coded because they were written by someone individually, ideally even anonymously, so that the elements are more freely evaluated by all.
And now, with the group in front of the relationship we can ask:
- Why does A2 happen? What may be behind A2?
- Why does B2 happen? What may be behind B2?

Speculation will start to arise and we may agree on a first cause

Whe have safety accidents because staff do not know the risks.
Why staff do not know about security risks?
Staff do not know about security risks because we do not train staff.
E also have staff accidents because we have no safety protection systems in place.

Good practice is to ask "why" at least 5 times. In this way we move towards root causes, something that influences the end result and can be manipulated by us.

Successively asking why sometimes leads us back to a point already described, namely:

Do you see that? Do you see a loop there?

This technique leads us to identify a cycle that conspires in a normally dangerous way. Especially when they have the power to accelerate autocatalytically. The more accidents occur, the more potential is created for new accidents to occur in the future. Who taught me the ABC of systemic thinking, Peter Senge, places at the center of these cycles the icon of an avalanche descending through a mountainous ridge. The farther down, the more voluminous and destructive the avalanche.

We do not train staff because we have no time available for training.
Why do we have no time available for training staff? Because we lack human resources!!! So, we went back to the starting point.

The exercise should also be done by looking ahead for the future. Can any of the post-its on the board be the cause of something still to describe?

Now instead of "why" I use the expression: "And" as a way of appealing to a criterion of importance.
For example: we lack human resources. And? Why should we worry about this? What may be the consequences of this situation?

If staff is lacking, then existing staff must systematically extend their working hours.
The SME owner could comment:
- And? or "So what?" This is not a problem. I do not pay them overtime.
- OK! And what can happen because of the systematic use of overtime, paid or unpaid?

- People saturate, get tired, want to live their extra work life.
- And?

- Some say goodbye and leave the company. Others begin to fall ill and often fail to come to work. Others come to work, but without the necessary attention.
- And?

WOW! See what just happened?

We identified three more cycles that conspire to maintain and worsen the status quo. How can a company aspire to enter a virtuous cycle if, in this restricted scope alone, we find four vicious cycles. And as long as these cycles are not broken we are wearing bandages, we are making corrections, we are feeding imbalances that we will sooner or later be unable to contain, to hide, to control.

For simplification let us only use three cycles:

Now we have to identify all sticky notes that have no upstream arrows, no upstream causes, they represent root causes, they are root causes. In our example we have (see the yellow sticky notes):

Let us also identify sticky notes that include "no(t)", things we don't have or don't do:

Strategic initiatives will be projects, action plans, dedicated to surgically eliminating root causes and the various "no(t)".
Remember the figure of the monstrous earthmoving machine in part III?

I use it to get here and to highlight the specificity of what is going to be proposed, the degree of detail, as well as the authorship of these proposals, people who suffer from these problems and who are involved, challenged to give their opinion. People with tremendous motivation to perform, because it is their everyday work and they were the creators of the action plan.

Going back to the sticky notes, now of another color, we can place over each root cause or no(t), one or more elementary actions to eliminate these causes.

"Streamline staffing" (we often don't need to hire more people, we just need to transfer people from some sectors to others) to eliminate "The staff number is very restricted"
First "Update job descriptions and competence requirements", then "Train staff" to eliminate "We do not train staff"
"Allow time for training" (be creative, you don't need to do training seated in a room, on-job-training? games? films?) to eliminate "No time available for training"
"Design and implement safety protection systems" to eliminate "We have no safety accident protection systems"

If we impleent those actions what will, most likely,  happen? See the green sticky notes

But ...
If we no longer have lack of human resources... staff no longer needs to systematically extend working hours... Do you know what that means?


The chain of effects downstream no longer happens!!!

So, what do we need to do?

How to turn this into an action plan, a strategic initiative?
We have to answer the questions:

Who? When? Sequence? Time? Cost?

Et voilá!
We come to a detailed action plan arising from the strategy described in the strategy map.

Normally a team of 6 or 7 can generate 3 to 5 pages like this one:

Using the technique of sticky notes with different colors (gray is action; green is something you cannot change)

Then we list all gray sticky notes ...

... and start to make groups of gray sticky notes around a common theme. For example:

• marketing and brand
• production and efficiency
• innovation and interested parties
• marketing and influencers.

What do you think about this technique?
Would you like to try it?

Practicing the noble art of cheating (part IV)

Parte I, Parte II and Parte III.

We have a strategy map and we assigned indicators to each strategic objective. For each indicator we can measure current performance, the today's results, and we settle targets for future performance.

As we wrote before in Part III, today's organization generates today's results in a perfectly normal way. More demanding future desired results have to be generated by a different organization, the desired future's organization. So, to get that performance improvement we need to tramsform the current organization.

There is no chance. Sustainable performance improvements don't happen by accident.

Normally, we set a time frame between today's result and meeting the target. For example, we say that in the next 12 months the organization will increase its productive capacity utilization rate from 55,9 to 85%.

And I question you: Why 12 months? Why not tomorrow or next month?
And you answer: Because we are not yet the organization of the desired future, the one able to generate the desired performance.
Then I add: the strategy map is a theory, a hypothesis about how the organization will improve its performance, but the present organization is still not there.

So I ask: where are the weak spots that prevent us today from having the desired future performance? Concentrate on them, they are what restricts us, what constrains us from achieving our goals.

Let us look into the gap between today's results and desired future results as a perfectly normal and legitimate product of our current set of processes (that's how we work, how we manage, how we train, how we learn, ...)
Those current processes include within, a set of systemic structures that conspire (I use this word here because it seems perfect for what I want to communicate) so that today's results differ from desired future's results. Those systemic structures generate behavior patterns that quite naturally are behind today's results.

To eliminate the gap between today and the desired future we need to identify and eliminate the root causes behind those systemic structures through a set of action plans, strategic initiatives, which will transform today's organization into the desired future's organization and that way generate the set of processes of the future.

We will use a trick to identify the systemic structures: compare current performance with desired future performance. So, plunge into that gap and identify a negative fact. A fact is a fact. A fact cannot be denied. A fact is no theory. Everyone can see that fact. Be as specific as possible.

Gather a diverse group of people who together know the organization at several levels and from different perspectives. Ideally most of them were present when the strategy map was drawn. Remember to all the strategy map, the importance of the cause effect relationships and highlight the fact that the organization is still not the organization of the desired future, highlight the gaps in performance and give everyone a generous amount of sticky notes. Then ask them to individually and anonymously write a negative fact per sticky note and record as many negative facts as anyone can.

An example of a negative fact can be:

1. The machines have been down for a long time (x hours or y%)

When everybody finishes with the negative facts ask them to keep their facts secret and ask them to speculate. Ask them to give their opinion. Ask them to write down the causes that they think are behind each of the negative facts.
One cause per sticky note
For example:

A1. We do not perform preventive maintenance

B1. We have no critical spare parts

When everybody finishes with the causes ask them to give a final step and ask them to write down their opinion about why each negative fact is important for our strategy execution. One reason for importance per sticky note.
Example:

a1. Lost production capacity

This is what we are doing:

In this way we draw a cause-effect relationship anchored in reality, in a negative fact, something that no one can deny.

Negative facts are real but they can have no impact in the organization's strategy. 

I always use the example:

The company's last Christmas party was a failure.

Truth? Yes!

Relevant to the strategy? Most likely not!

So, we must test the importance criteria and check if they have any connection with strategy. Check if the importance criteria violates any promise from the strategy map:

In this example: Lost production capacity clearly goes against complying with prodution plans and maximizing usage capacity.

This way of working with facts, causes and importance criteria make us look into the organization at different levels of abstraction:

The following table can represent the contribution of one person:

Imagine that your team has 7 persons. 

Imagine that each person records 5 negative facts. So, you will have 35 cause effect relationships.

Imagine that 5 are similar to others. So, you will have 30 cause effect relationships.

Test all those negative facts to check if they are really relevant for strategy:

Now, look into the set of 30 cause-effect relationships and see if you can find new relationships among two of them. For example:

The effect "a1.Lost production capacity" acts as the cause that generates the effect "A3.We have stock shortages". And then A3 becomes the cause that generates "3.We carry unmatured product"

Go back to the remaining 28 cause-effect relationships and see if you can find one that relates very well with this two. Normally, people find more and more relationships. After some they will start to write new sticky notes because seeing all these at a wall make them find new relationships (that is why I use a codification for each individual negative fact, the new ones have no code, they are a product of team interaction)

After some iterations we can get a picture like this:

That is why I like to use the word "conspiracy".

Can you see how many feedback loops we have acting on the system?

If we want to improve we have to break this self-reinforcing cycles.

This post is already too long, in Part V I will present my technique to go from the conspiracy cycles into a set of very focused action plans, the strategic initiatives.

Other examples of conspiracy cycles (in Portuguese) here, here and here.

Practicing the noble art of cheating (part III)

Parte I and Parte II.

So, instead of starting to draw a strategy map based on abstract concepts such as mission and vision, we showed in Part II how we do the other way around and start with an example of organization-customer fit and do the exercise of going from the concrete to the abstract.

In this post "Opportunities are not just out there, ready to be plucked" one can read about the "Shaping Ability":

"Opportunities are not just out there, ready to be plucked. Courses of action that can be superior often require proactive efforts to shape selection criteria for their potential to be expressed."

Yesterday, during a morning walk I read "Crossing the chasm: Leadership nudges to help transition from strategy formulation to strategy implementation", from Alex Tawse, Vanessa M. Patrick, and Dusya Vera, and published by ScienceDirect. I think this article can be used as an introduction to the challenge of developing an approach to implement a strategy.

"The issue of crossing the chasm from planning to implementation is particularly germane to top managers and other business leaders who bear primary responsibility for strategy formulation and must engage in the implementation process for it to be successful.
...
In this article, we argue that successful strategy implementation should stem from within the organization and needs to garner total organizational effort, including the leadership and active participation of top-level and mid-level managers."

This reminds me why I use so many times this picture to joke about implementing a strategy:

 Normally, organizations ask outsiders to prepare a paper about what needs to be done to execute the strategy: Easy! Raze everything and build from scratch!

Let me go back to high school and to Descartes.

With Kaplan and Norton I started with BSC 1.0 and BSC 2.0, but when I got there I felt some dissatisfaction.
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When I tell this story I always use this analogy: When I studied Philosophy in high school, I loved Descartes's statement "I think, therefore I am" was so powerful ... everything else could be a lie, but I existed because I am a thinking being, because I was aware of myself ...
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After this brilliant corner stone for his building we learned Descartes's justification for the existence of God ... God is a perfect idea. Man is an imperfect being. An imperfect being cannot generate a perfect idea. Therefore, God must exist a priori, cannot be a human creation.
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I didn't like this justification ... a man who had laid such a powerful foundation for his worldview ... stood for this ...
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When I was working with BSC at the beginning and coming up with BSC 2.0, a strategy map and indicators and looking at the goals:

The question soon arose:
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What should we do to meet these targets (metas in Portuguese)?
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Kaplan and Norton's advice was ...
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No, it can't be
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A brainstorming ...
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What?! After all the intellectual rigor to build the strategy map and indicators, build a set of strategic initiatives based on well-intentioned brainstorming? !!!!!!!
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I never liked this solution until I discovered William Dettmer's book, "Strategic Navigation", that operationalized the ideas of a guy called Goldratt and his Theory of Constraints, and it was based on what I learned from them that I started using these cause-effect  relationships:

as the basis for formulating strategic initiatives.

Let us start with this picture:

Thus, if the current system performance is a natural consequence of the current system functioning (today), and if the organization aspires to a different future performance then the current system must be transformed into the future (desired future) system, the only one capable of generating the desired future performance in a natural, systematic manner.

When we compare today's business with the desired future business, we find that there is a gap (the today's performance versus the targets). That gap does not happen by chance but it is the product of a system that conspires to produce today's results rather than the desired future results.

Well this introduction took me more space than I thought. In Part IV we will show how to describe the conspiring system and from there how to develop strategic initiatives capable of executing a strategy.