"The hardest decision leaders have to make, and frequently in business the common mistake — is picking your battles. And not politically, but tactically. Most managers and executives get so caught up in tactical and operational problem solving and fire fighting that they get looped by circumstances and lose all if any strategic orientation to their work."E quando a testosterona entra em campo?
"A empresa define objectivos que operacionaliza através da metodologia A3 e que são aprovados pela ADM. A empresa evidencia lacunas no controlo do estado de alguns desses projectos. Por exemplo, o projecto “Conquista do mercado Senegal” tinha uma data de conclusão prevista inicialmente para 28.02.2017. Estamos em Novembro de 2017, o projecto ainda está por concluir e a data prevista para a sua conclusão foi revista para 31.07.2017. (cláusula 6.3)"Entretanto, neste artigo, "Executives Fail to Execute Strategy Because They’re Too Internally Focused":
"Diluting the focus of an organization by overcommitting resources institutionalizes mediocrity and cynicism. People feel set up to fail. Saying no is one of the greatest gifts an executive can give their organization. Too many leaders overestimate the capacity of their organizations under the ruse of “stretch goals” or “challenge assignments” to justify their denial of the organization’s true limitations. In one of the largest global retail companies I worked with, executional capacity was unusually constrained for an organization of its size and margins. I asked the CEO to estimate how many global initiatives (multicountry, more than $1 million in scope and budget) he thought were active at the enterprise level. He guessed 20 to 25. We did a comprehensive inventory for him — and stopped counting after we reached 147. Failure to make intentional, hard trade-offs when executing your strategy ensures that all efforts are likely to fall short of expected results."No exame pedia aos futuros auditores internos que ensaiassem uma proposta de acção correctiva. Engraçado que nenhum avançou com esta hipótese de causa: "overcommitting resources"
"“Ikea is so good at so many things. Why is it so bad at delivery?”Como não recordar o clássico "What is strategy?" de Porter:
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ultimately, it comes down to focus:
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Ikea refuses to expose itself to the idiosyncracies of its customers,” [Frances] Frei says. “There is no way they could do their own delivery with that signature Ikea crisp efficiency—there are too many variables. So they make you conform to them.” Ikea makes great stuff cheap—and that is the draw.
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As the authors put it, this is a case study in how a large retailer can succeed by failing. This is the essence of focus. Ikea focuses on cost and the a big part of it is also educating your customers that delivery is not the preferred option to purchase its products and that customer service is not something you should expect. Since this allows the firm to reduce its cost even further (potentially), it is the “definition” of focus: doing something poorly and using it to do something even better."
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do,”
"1. Initiative proliferationRecordar "Too much bread?"
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This can be summed up as trying to do too much.
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Is the list of initiatives you want to accomplish for the year longer than a page? Than you are almost certainly trying to accomplish too much, which will likely mean you’ll accomplish nothing at all.
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That’s not to say there aren’t many areas your organization could improve in. But the reality is your organization can only take on a handful. So it comes down to ruthless prioritization.
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Which are the absolute most important initiatives your organization can take on? While there’s no set amount and it can vary depending on the size of the tasks, five or is a good number. That’ll allow your team to focus in on those five and knock them out of the park, as opposed to doing twenty things half-heartedly."
"e que tal uma “boutique small winery”. Um gestor da "boutique" diz mesmo que é um negócio “high end fashion retailing”, em vez de inundar o mercado com produtos banais, e desesperar numa guerra de preços, atacar nichos específicos. É um prazer ver uma actividade ligada ao sector primário transpirar pensamento estratégico, demonstrar capacidade de distanciamento e de se situar no mercado."Ou seja:
"Volume is vanity, profit is sanity"Ao longo dos anos tenho chamado a atenção para a curva de Stobachoff que tanto atrai os nórdicos a este blogue. Aprendi com Byrne aquela frase:
"in a typical company, 30 to 40% of revenues are actually unprofitable, while another fraction of revenues — often more like 20 to 30% — accounts for most of the organization’s profitability."E ainda a relação 20/80/30 de Kotler:
"80% dos lucros de uma empresa são gerados pelos 20 clientes mais rentáveis.
E os 30? O que querem dizer?
Os 30 clientes menos rentáveis provocam um corte de metade dos lucros de uma empresa."
"Sony doesn’t often get credit for for their strategic vision as they more often than not skate to where the puck is, with a delay, rather than to where the puck is going to be. With smartphones this was no different but with their mobile division in disarray, the company did something many pundits thought to be suicide – they exited the entry market and instead focused on high-end devices like the Xperia Z5, Xperia X, and now Xperia XZ. The results? A division that was once reporting over a billion dollars in losses is now recording profits.
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Now mind you there is a lot Sony could be doing to better the situation for themselves but their initial vision was correct – to put aside the volume driven mentality that drove the PC business and many Android makers into the ground and instead focus on profitability."
"When a company makes big investments in developing relationships with customers, natural incentives arise to find ways to sell more products to existing customers. The marginal cost of selling more products to existing customers is very small—and the profit is oh so alluring. We call this “surface growth.” Companies see products all around them made by other companies and decide to copy or acquire them. But in doing so, companies often end up trying to create many products for many customers—and lose focus on the job that brought them success in the first place. Worse, trying to do many jobs for many customers can confuse customers so they hire the wrong products for the wrong jobs and end up firing them in frustration instead. This makes companies vulnerable to disrupters who focus on a single job—and do it well.[Moi ici: Os salami slicers]"
"A AMF Shoes é uma empresa criada para um nicho de mercado: calçado de segurança para a indústria.Começa-se a ganhar a vida a fazer pão com manteiga. Com a experiência acumulada começam-se a fazer experiências para ganhar algum fiambre para acompanhar a manteiga. Então, alguém olha para os números, recordar Ricardo e que Portugal também era mais competitivo que os ingleses a produzir têxteis, e percebe que faz todo o sentido é produzir pão com fiambre.
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“começamos por fazer calçado de moda em regime de outsourcing e foi essa a nossa principal competência até 2002″. Nessa altura, “percebi que o mercado de segurança era interessante e entre 2002 e 2005 fizemos as duas áreas”.
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Em 2005 e, sentindo necessidade de organizar a empresa financeiramente, Albano Miguel Fernandes convida um amigo para vir trabalhar com ele. O economista tinha mais sensibilidade para os números. As coisas corriam bem mas era evidente que, financeiramente, o mais interessante era o calçado de segurança. Alocados todos os recursos para a nova área, a empresa sentiu necessidade de tornar o projeto mais robusto: é assim que abre o capital a Domingos Almeida, o amigo e economista contratado meses antes."
"the reality is that strategy succeeds or fails based on how well leaders at every level of an organization integrate strategic thinking into day-to-day operations. This is less about complexity and more about practical focus.A ilusão da comunicação é terrível. E a força da focalização na execução de uma estratégia é tremenda.
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Being a strategic leader is about asking the right questions and driving the right dialog with your team. In doing so, you raise the team’s collective ability to be strategic. The more competent you become in asking these questions, the better positioned you are to drive progress for your team and your organization."
"United Airlines announced last week a new cheap fare that does not allow ticket holders to carry on any luggage. Their reasoning is they want to attract customers who are now attracted to the ultra low fare airlines like Spirit.
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Let me call United’s decision what I believe it is… STUPID!
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United is trying to attract a segment of the flying public they feel they aren’t attracting now. On the surface it sounds logical, but what they’ve done now is take their basic product and segment it enough to attract everyone.
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The idea is stupid, because for the increased revenue they might get, they are willing to put all of their other revenue at risk. We maximize our opportunities when we do what we do best and that means not trying to do it all.
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We maximize product when we know who our customer is and stick to taking care of them in the best possible manner.
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How this concept is lost on somebody like United Airlines blows me away. Yes they can do whatever they want, but I’ll say they are risking their core business. They are thinking they can add a couple of pennies to the bottom line, but fail to realize they risk the dollars they already have."
"Pick a LaneWith enough money, you can be better and faster. Without the investment, you can only be cheaper. If you choose to be better, you have to charge more so that you have the ability to create greater value.Uma PME quando vai para o divã e toma consciência dos seus pontos fortes e formula uma estratégia deliberada e a traduz num mapa da estratégia, fácil de ler e de interpretar, fica com uma poderosa ferramenta de comunicação e alinhamento, útil para os operários na linha de produção, útil para os comerciais no mercado, útil para os criadores de novos produtos e serviços.
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Most sales organizations don’t spend enough time explaining to their sales force the competitive strategy they have chosen and why they have chosen it. This leaves many salespeople with the belief that they should have the best product, service, or solution while also having the lowest price. This mythical and unobtainable competitive strategy exists in only two places on earth: in the minds of some clients and some salespeople."
"Make choices in the negative. For everything you decide you want (a particular market positioning, an investment in a new product, a new capability or function), articulate what that means you can’t do. This forces you to think through the consequences of choosing these options by thinking about what the trade-offs are for each choice you are making.[Moi ici: Cada vez me convenço mais de que estratégia mais do que escolher é renunciar]
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Pretend you have no money. When organizations are strapped for cash, they have to make hard choices about what to spend money on because they don’t have enough. It’s often during such times that leaders describe themselves as at their most strategic.
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Having too many priorities means you don’t really have any, which puts your organization’s implementation capability under strain. It also compromises your own leadership bandwidth, reducing your ability to macromanage. So pretend you’re cash-strapped — it will act as the ultimate constraint on your desire to choose everything.[Moi ici: Foco e alinhamento são fundamentais]
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Talk to the unusual suspects. These could be inside or outside your organization, but whoever they are, choose them because they are likely to disagree with you, challenge you, or tell you something you don’t know."[Moi ici: Quando todos pensam o mesmo... alguém está a mais]
"Finding your niche, clarifying any market confusion and being transparent in your weakness will allow you to focus, create and get back to what you truly love doing. And when you get back to doing something you love, word spreads like wildfire."E quantas PME são capazes de arriscar seguir esta disciplina? Quantas continuam dominadas pelo efeito de escala em vez de apostarem no efeito de profundidade?
"Big ideas loom every bit as large in successful B2B strategies. Take Crown Cork Seal, once the most profitable and innovative company in an industry — metal containers — dominated by much larger companies. In the early 1960s, Crown’s CEO, John F. Connelly, had the big idea of retooling the company to focus on filling special orders for smaller customers. Instead of going head to head with larger competitors for national customers — such as Miller Brewing Company — with huge orders enabling long, low-cost production runs, Crown became a “short run” specialist.
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Connelly crafted a coherent strategy to bring his idea to economic life that included rapid-response rush orders, high levels of technical assistance, holding inventory for customers, and carrying excess production capacity — all of which went against the grain of accepted wisdom in an industry where success depended on minimizing costs. He bet on being able to charge higher prices by serving smaller customers with far less bargaining power, [Moi ici: Para mim é mais do que uma questão de bargaining power, é uma questão valor criado percepcionado por esse tipo de clientes] and, as Richard Rumelt describes in , it worked. Within a decade, Crown was generating more profit than any other company in its industry, even without having the most revenue. But the big idea lasted only as long as the CEO’s tenure, which ended in 1990. Connelly’s successor shifted to a “strategy” of growth through acquisition. Seven years later, after completing 20 acquisitions, Crown was the world’s largest container manufacturer. But it had lost its distinctive approach and had not found a new one. By 2006, it was one of the industry’s least-profitable players."
"When you start looking at the world through this lens — that when small meets large, small almost always wins — you see it everywhere, across all tech sectors. It's so prevalent, in fact, that I consider it an industry law, in this case, “Leslie’s Law.” More examples to follow, but first, let’s take a closer look at how this plays out..When a sleek, small player enters the market, it does so by creating a low-friction, high-fit product that is sold at a low price to a large market. These new products are sold to a portion of the market that cannot access the larger products due to the cost of entry (in dollars and complexity) and the cost of ownership. The larger company may not even notice that the new company has entered the market because there are no mano-a-mano customer confrontations..This leaves the smaller company free to expand upward into the market. Its leading-edge customers whose needs are expanding, and its own interest in expanding its market upward, spurs it on to increase the features and functionality of its products. From the perspective of the large incumbent companies, this upward migration is imperceptible. They aren't worried, so they don't pay attention to it. But it’s happening..Inevitably, by the time the threat becomes compelling, it’s too late. The small company has taken root, developing the advantages of a lower-cost structure with a simpler, lower-friction product. A new ecosystem has already sprung up around its core offerings. It’s here to stay, and its inroads into the incumbent’s territory can’t be stopped."Enquanto a empresa da parte I "ataca" o mercado entrando por cima, aytavés da inovação, apelando ao gosto pelo risco dos underserved visionários de Geoffrey Moore, o texto desta parte II refere-se aos que entram por baixo, servindo os overserved, o exemplo clássico de disrupção de Christensen.
"Competing on more than price is getting increasingly difficult. There is excess supply in many markets. Many customers face financial pressures and want a bargain. They find them as they have more buying power than ever, be they a consumer with access to the Internet, or a business offering large contracts that you do not want to lose. The only way past competing on price is to offer your target market benefits that are relevant, unique, and hard for competitors to copy.Put simply, you need to be FABULOUS at something that matters to your customers.
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To become FABULOUS, you must choose not just where you will excel, but where you will not try to excel."
"Most individuals and organizations complain of not having enough butter. We need more resources, we say, to cover this much territory. We need more (time/money/staff) to get the job done.E recuo a Junho de 2003 ou seria 2004? No Mónaco ou seria em Barcelona? E assistir a uma apresentação do número 1 da BMW em Espanha acerca do seu Balanced Scorecard.
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What happens if instead of always seeking more butter, we find the discipline to cover less bread?
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Spreading our butter too thin is a form of hiding. It helps us be busy, but makes it unlikely we will make an impact."
"Our life's journey is about making choices and focusing on what is important.Trechos retirados de "A 3-Minute Reminder About The Little Things We Take For Granted"
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When you do take the time to focus, he adds, something profound happens."
"THE STRATEGIC PURPOSE OF SACRIFICEHmm, Sacrifice. Isn’t this just clear prioritization by any other name? The difference between Sacrifice and prioritization is that the latter allows secondary and tertiary targets. Sacrifice means not doing these secondary and tertiary things at all.Trechos retirados de "Eating the Big Fish" de Adam Morgan.
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Sacrifice’s value, therefore, is not simply one of concentration of marketing forces externally; it also has an internal value similar to hardpruning a plant: all the energy, all the dynamism in the company becomes devoted to the primary goal.
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1. Sacrifice concentrates the internal and external expressions ofidentity by eliminating activities that might dilute it.
2. Sacrifice allows the creation of strong points of difference by changing the organization’s mind-set from pursuing weak universal appeal to a more intense, narrower appeal (and thereby avoiding becoming the ‘‘mush in the middle’’).
3. Sacrifice generates critical mass for the communication of that identity and those differences by stripping away other secondary marketing activity. This is central to maximizing the Challenger’s consumer presence, given its more limited marketing resources.
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While the Brand Leader perceives its currency to be mass appeal and can afford the dilution of preference that creates because it is compensated for by the convenience of its ubiquity and distribution, Challengers need more extreme actions and gestures - they need to create a greater proportion of ‘‘committed’’ and ‘‘enthusiastic’’ users through real differentiation.
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Challenger currency is therefore not means but extremes: top-box preference scores or nothing.
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For any brand, positioning is Sacrifice; for a Challenger, it is the path to growth. What it chooses not to do defines who and what it really is."
"In the world of clutter and information saturation that consumers are faced with, the greatest danger facing a brand is not rejection, but indifference.Assim, concentração não só por causa do encaixe do mosaico estratégico (recordar Terry Hill) mas também para reforçar a mensagem de marketing, mas também para criar uma identidade forte.
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the solution to indifference for a Challenger lies in both a strong identity and, through this, a strong relationship with its consumer base. Inevitably, this means that success for the Challenger brand comes from considering very carefully what it is going to Sacrifice in order to create this relationship and identity. Indeed, the ability to sacrifice and concentrate one’s focus, voice, and actions more narrowly is one of the few advantages a Challenger has. Having to fight a war on two fronts weakens the ability to do either really well and Brand Leaders have to fight on many fronts at once.
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Challengers recognize, ... that in order to break through, their only currency with the consumer is going to be strong preference. If they achieve simply weak preference or parity preference, all the other attributes the market leader has on its side will swing the vote in its favor: ubiquity, social acceptability, salience, convenience. And to create that strong preference, we as Challengers accept that we will need to do things that reach out and bind certain groups of people very strongly to us. And we will also accept that, in order to create those stronger relationships, these same actions or behaviors may (and probably will) leave other groups cold.
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The Sacrifices a Challenger makes do not lie in incidentals to the business, such as minor line extensions, a research budget, or the assistant public relations manager. They are instead fundamentals: distribution, messages, audiences, even issues like promotional pricing, or our deliberate lack of it (T-box, unlike the rest of the ready-to-wear category, never offers seasonal discounts). The overriding objective is to have significant impact of the right kind on your core audience, to achieve critical mass for your voice.
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Although ubiquity in distribution is good for establishment brands like Coca-Cola and AT&T, it is dangerous for Challenger brands looking to create a stronger affinity with a more focused target, be they self-styled fashion rebels, surfing wannabes, or weekend mountain bikers.
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there is no escape: Strong brands are necessarily simple and single-minded in their communication, even if it means sacrificing what might seem to be important secondary messages.
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As a Challenger, we have to use our more limited resources (people, time, passion, energy, money) against the few things that will really make a difference, and this means being very clear on both who we are and what we are going to Sacrifice to promote that identity. Focus on the products, experiences, and marketing that will genuinely break through."
