"Comprar" tempo quando a estratégia falha

Há dias o site da HBR publicou este artigo, "How to Rescue a Failing Strategy". 

O artigo defende que nestes tempos que vivemos, tempos de incerteza (guerras comerciais, inflação, flutuações cambiais, tecnologia, tarifas) podem deitar por terra planos estratégicos, mas não devem paralisar a gestão. Em vez de procurar a perfeição, as empresas devem rever rapidamente a estratégia e adoptar quatro "no-regrets moves" que aumentam flexibilidade, protegem receitas e criam opções:

• Protect liquidity and increase financial flexibility - "In times of disruption or distress, cash is king. It's a shield against a cash crunch and a sword that can be used to seize opportunities. ... Two quick actions can make a big difference in a company's cash position: better forecasting and aggressive improvements in working capital management." - Faz-me recordar o regresso de Jobs à Apple.
• Improve the fitness of your commercial organization - "“Facing a downturn, companies often retrench rather than attack. In fact, they should do both, with high-impact, high-speed programs to improve customer acquisition and retention."
• Embrace your most profitable customers - Uma pedra de toque deste blogue. “Identify those customers and market segments that are the most profitable—and don’t take your eye off them… these are the customers you must ardently work to win, keep, and expand. ... Smart long-term strategy is best built knowing which channels, customers, and segments are most profitable for you."
• Strengthen risk management and cybersecurity - "It’s urgent to audit your cyber defenses… That should include an initiative to begin, dust off, or level-up third-party risk management (TPRM). ... The last thing you need now is a serious risk that materializes out of nowhere; 

Estas acções não substituem uma estratégia renovada, mas "compram tempo" e mantêm a empresa guiada por uma "bússola" de quatro pontos: caixa, eficácia comercial, clientes e risco.

"These initiatives cannot substitute for strategy. If your strategy has been sideswiped or totaled, you still need to repair or replace it. But these four moves will buy you time, create options, and protect you against the worst."

Não se pode esperar por certezas

"How can companies plan ahead when it feels like tomorrow may look nothing like today? It's the question hanging over boardrooms as business leaders contend with a barrage of challenges - from AI disruption and geopolitical tensions to tariffs and financial market fluctuations driven by how trigger-happy the US president is on social media. The heightened uncertainty is palpable.

...

In this climate, it's no wonder the tools used to stress test corporate strategies are under scrutiny. For decades, scenario planning has helped organisations map out a range of futures based on variables including economic shifts, technological leaps and regulatory changes. Pioneered at Shell - which foresaw the 1973 oil shock - scenario planning has become a corporate staple. But as boxer Mike Tyson famously said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Or as one UK board chair told me: "The one scenario everyone seems to have forgotten to plan for is the one where all the scenarios are wrong."

...

It's a common refrain among business leaders that they're in a wait-and-see mode. But wait too long and companies lose momentum, become less innovative and enter into a state of decision paralysis. Act too soon and businesses might make costly choices that require backtracking. [Moi ici: Esperar pode parecer prudente, mas muitas vezes leva à inércia. As PME precisam de manter ciclos curtos de decisão, Boyd again, experimentação e correcção — mesmo que à escala pequena. É melhor testar uma ideia imperfeita hoje do que lamentar a paralisia amanhã. Recordar o estoicismo para PME]

...

says there is a high degree of "wishful thinking" at most companies at the highest levels. "Everybody is looking for certainty and wants to land on one model for the future," [Moi ici: Não esperar por certezas para agir. As PME que adiam decisões à espera de “certeza” arriscam-se a perder agilidade, inovação e até viabilidade. A incerteza não vai desaparecer — o que muda é a capacidade de navegar dentro dela. Decidir com base em informação imperfeita é hoje uma competência de gestão, não uma falha] 

...

But scenario planning was never about predicting the future — it's about training for it. [Moi ici: Não se trata de adivinhar o futuro, mas de preparar respostas para diferentes hipóteses. Uma PME não precisa de modelos sofisticados. Basta reunir a equipa e perguntar: E se perdermos o nosso maior cliente? E se um novo concorrente oferecer o mesmo serviço por metade do preço? E se o nosso fornecedor principal parar a produção? Simular reacções é mais importante do que tentar prever datas. Planeamento de cenários não é futurologia — é preparação] Asking "what if?" has clear benefits. David Niles, a strategic adviser to chief executives, tells his clients that "it's not about getting the forecast right - it's about having a series of plays ready, so when the unexpected happens, you're not frozen".

It's one thing to imagine alternative futures, but another to know when to shift course. In the short term, leaders need to buy themselves time. [Moi ici: A flexibilidade estratégica não é só pensar em alternativas — é saber quando agir. As PME devem identificar sinais precoces (clientes a pedir algo novo? custos a subir? comportamento de concorrentes?) e preparar decisões de desvio antes de serem forçadas a reagir em pânico]

...

One chief financial officer told me: "In this environment, it's easier to identify risks than it is to see the opportunities." If companies focus only on downside protection, they may miss the upside in moments of disruption. The goal of scenario planning isn't just to survive one crisis after another. It's also to become the kind of organisation that can adapt and grow no matter what's around the corner." [Moi ici: As PME não controlam o contexto, mas podem controlar a sua capacidade de resposta. O investimento em competências de adaptação, em equipas capazes de agir sem esperar ordens, em processos flexíveis — isso sim, é o verdadeiro seguro contra o futuro]

Trechos retirados de “Never-ending uncertainty is a stress test for scenario planning” publicado no Financial Times do passado dia 13 de Maio.

Acerca da incerteza

"What is uncertainty?

Most formal definitions say it is a 'lack of certainty', so we need to look at definitions of 'certainty'. The onsensus is along the lines of

Certainty: firm conviction, with no doubts, that something is the case.

This clearly expresses the idea that certainty is a personal feeling. Therefore so is uncertainty, which occurs when someone does not have firm convictions and does harbour doubts. This is reflected in a more formal definition,? which I personally find appealing:

Uncertainty: the conscious awareness of ignorance. 

The crucial issue reflected in these definitions is that we shall not be thinking of uncertainty as a property of the world but of our relationship with the world. This means that two individuals or groups can, quite reasonably, have different degrees of uncertainty about exactly the same thing, due to them having different knowledge or perspectives

...

• Uncertainty is a relationship - with a subject who observes, an object that they are uncertain about, a source, a mode of expression, and sometimes an emotional response. 
• ...
• Uncertainty is personal, and our own knowledge can mean we have very different uncertainty to someone else."

A expressão "A incerteza é pessoal e contextual" significa que a forma como percebemos e sentimos a incerteza depende da pessoa (ou grupo) e da situação concreta em que se encontra.

A incerteza varia de pessoa para pessoa, mesmo quando o facto ou evento é o mesmo. Porque cada um tem níveis diferentes de conhecimento, experiência, acesso à informação ou até de confiança.

O nível de incerteza também depende das circunstâncias e do momento. Numa fábrica, uma falha no fornecimento pode ser altamente incerta e crítica em plena época de pico de produção, mas irrelevante noutra altura. Ou, numa decisão médica, a incerteza pode ser mais tolerável se houver tempo, mas inaceitável numa situação de emergência.

Formular uma estratégia numa PME é, antes de mais, lidar com a incerteza. Não uma incerteza abstracta ou puramente racional, mas uma incerteza vivida - pessoal e contextual. Cada decisor tem um nível diferente de conhecimento, experiência e acesso à informação, o que faz com que perceba o futuro com graus distintos de convicção ou dúvida. E o contexto — económico, competitivo, tecnológico ou mesmo interno — amplifica ou reduz essa incerteza, dependendo do momento e das circunstâncias. O que para um gestor pode parecer uma oportunidade clara, para outro pode ser um risco intolerável. Esta natureza relacional da incerteza ajuda a explicar porque é que tantas PME hesitam ou adiam decisões estratégicas (vou escrever sobre isto a propósito de um podcast e do final deste postal): não é falta de visão, mas sim a consciência aguda de que estão a escolher caminhos em terreno instável. Entender a incerteza desta forma permite tornar o processo estratégico mais humano, mais dialogado e, paradoxalmente, mais robusto.

Trechos retirados de "The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck" de David Spiegelhalter

Risco versus incerteza

Frank Knight, na sua obra "Risk, Uncertainty and Profit" (1921), distingue risco de incerteza da seguinte forma:

• Risco refere-se a situações em que os resultados futuros são desconhecidos, mas podem ser calculados com base em probabilidades objectivas. Ou seja, é possível quantificar o risco com base em dados históricos ou modelos estatísticos (ex.: seguros, apostas, mercados financeiros).
• Incerteza, por outro lado, ocorre quando os resultados futuros são desconhecidos e não podem ser quantificados com probabilidades objectivas. Não há dados suficientes para calcular probabilidades precisas, tornando a tomada de decisão mais difícil (ex.: inovações disruptivas, mudanças políticas imprevistas).

"Nothing is certain under the sun. Our knowledge of the world - or our future wants - is incomplete and fallible. Nor can we be sure about others' opinions or wants. We can only imagine. Yet resolute action requires confidence in our individual and collective choices. Where does confidence come from, especially when we imagine something new? How do we justify judgments prone to mistake and disagreement?

...

Briefly, Knight's 1921 book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit distinguished uncertainty from risk thus: Risk can be objectively calculated from historical statistics (as in constructing life expectancy tables) or from probability theory (like the chance of successive "heads" in a coin toss). Knight defined uncertainty by exclusion - as situations when we cannot calculate probabilities from statistical distributions or mathematical laws.

...

Knight's definition of uncertainty as the absence of calculable risks has immediate intuitive appeal, but this definition has also become a reason for its neglect. Most real - world situations and problems - which dish to order in a new restaurant, for example - don't naturally map into statistical distributions or mathematical calculations.

...

mainstream economic theories now make no distinction between "probability situations" that are, in Knight's words, "to a high degree unique" and those that are not. Uncertainty is banished to the unexaminable, occult world of unknown unknowns. 

...

Uncertainty is thus a personal ("subjective") mental state that covers future events that no one can observe before they occur. Doubts can also pertain to ignorance of existing or past conditions.

...

Knight's 1921 book distinguished between uncertainty and risk for a reason: to propose that true profit requires bearing (taking "responsibility" for) uncertainty rather than risk. In Knight's theory, providing capital for risks that can be calculated from the laws of probability or statistical tables only earns the going market rate for risk-bearing. (Conceptually, according to Knight, the market rate of return must be excluded from true profit, although no one actually does this.) Moreover, responsibility for uncertainty is an entrepreneurial function, and the return for performing this function is the source of an entrepreneur's profit. Although I find Knight's "no-uncertainty, no-profit" thesis appealing, I see little hope of its acceptance in mainstream economics."

Mais uma razão para a aversão à novidade.

Trechos retirados de "Uncertainty and Enterprise" de Amar Bhidé.

A aversão à novidade

Numa longa e saborosa conversa telefónica recente recomendei a leitura destes dois postais:

• Perceber a necessidade de sair do carreiro
• Again, perceber a necessidade de sair do carreiro

Agora, ao escrever este postal recordo um outro, "Qual é mesmo a missão?", onde escrevi:

"Se os produtores portugueses têm dificuldades em competir no mercado de milho commodity, talvez fosse mais estratégico apostar desde já em produtos diferenciados em vez de tentar sustentar artificialmente um sector que enfrenta tantas dificuldades."

O ponto comum em todos eles é a permanência no carreiro actual e a dificuldade, a aversão à mudança, a aversão ao desconhecido.

Agora ao ler o prefácio do livro "Uncertainty and Enterprise" de Amar Bhidé" encontro "novelty aversion" e "Knightian uncertainty".

A aversão à novidade refere-se a uma tendência na tomada de decisões em que os indivíduos evitam opções novas ou desconhecidas, mesmo quando estas podem ser benéficas. Este enviesamento surge de uma preferência pelo conhecido e previsível em detrimento do incerto e desconhecido. 

A incerteza Knightiana (nome dado em homenagem ao economista Frank Knight) descreve um tipo de incerteza em que a probabilidade dos resultados é desconhecida ou incalculável. Ao contrário dos riscos mensuráveis (onde as probabilidades podem ser atribuídas), a incerteza Knightiana envolve situações em que a falta de informação torna impossível determinar probabilidades.

Ambos os conceitos giram em torno do desconforto com o desconhecido. A aversão à novidade é uma reação comportamental à incerteza Knightiana, pois as pessoas frequentemente evitam novas opções porque não conseguem estimar os riscos envolvidos. Em ambos os casos, os indivíduos podem hesitar ou recusar-se a envolver-se em situações incertas devido à falta de probabilidades claras. Tanto a aversão à novidade como as respostas à incerteza Knightiana levam as pessoas a favorecer escolhas familiares e estabelecidas em detrimento de alternativas desconhecidas.

Na agricultura e em muitas indústrias (por exemplo, finanças, medicina, tecnologia) há uma adopção lenta de inovações devido tanto à aversão à novidade como à incerteza em torno de novos métodos ou produtos. Essencialmente, a aversão à novidade é uma das formas pelas quais as pessoas reagem à incerteza Knightiana.

Calibrar a mudança (parte II)

Era minha intenção escrever a continuação da Parte I avançando para mais uma nota retirada do artigo da HBR deste mês. Contudo, a minha leitura matinal de ontem parece-me perfeitamente adequada para servir de ligação ao tema da calibração da mudança:

"We begin with what happens to humans when the future is uncertain, as, for example, when it's not clear what the impact of the new initiative is going to be, or when it's not clear who's in charge or how long that person will be around for.

...

We really don't like uncertainty.

...

Fear and anxiety are different, in other words, because fear comes with an ending. ... But when our stress is not immediately related to an object, then there is nothing to remove in order to alleviate it. This is what's particularly pernicious about uncertainty, then: It is unbounded.

...

But here's the rub: It's very hard to make safety signals for humans at work, precisely because change at work is so often unbounded.

...

Beyond ulcers, another characteristic of our response to uncertainty is that we become less rational.

...

Unbounded uncertaintywhich we can think of as the possibility of disruptive change coupled with the absence of any credible signal that things will return to normal-produces high levels of stress. At the same time, our need for an end to unpredictability leads us to attempt to latch on to anything that offers the promise of a return to certainty, however irrational those things may be."

Trechos retirados de "The Problem with Change" de Ashley Goodall.

Incerteza e desequilibrio

"Principle 1. Value is created in production and innovation and realized in exchange.

...

Principle 2. Value is appropriated through competitive bargaining and pure bargaining.

...

Principle 3. Firms allow stakeholders to create value by offering a governance form to resolve the pure bargaining over the surplus created by team production and team innovation.

...

The fundamental insight to emerge from juxtaposing these analyses [Moi ici: De Schumpeter and Knight] is that (Ricardian) rent is a cross-sectional/equilibrium concept that explains payments above opportunity costs that derive from heterogeneity of individual resources, while (Schumpeterian) profit is a dynamic/disequilibrium concept that explains payments above opportunity costs that derive from heterogeneity of resource bundles.

...

In Schumpeter's (1934) analysis, profit is possible when the entrepreneur moves the economy away from a prevailing competitive equilibrium by combining resources in a new way. More specifically, entrepreneurship is the act of bringing new combinations to market alternatively referred to as "innovation." If (and only if) the new way of combining resources creates more value than before, this will result in an economic profit: the entrepreneur only needs to pay resource suppliers their opportunity costs and appropriates the residual. 

...

There are three important things to note about entrepreneurial profit. First, as our simple example demonstrates, it does not require heterogeneous resources. The reason for the entrepreneurial profit is not that there is something special about any of the resources that are used, but that there is something special about the bundle of resources. Second, note that Schumpeter's analysis only holds under conditions of uncertainty (Knight, 1921). Without uncertainty, why would the entrepreneur be able to appropriate the value created by the bundle of resources that she assembles? The assumption is that the entrepreneur, in organizing resources in a new way, only needs to pay resource suppliers their opportunity costs. However, why would the residual between these opportunity costs and the prices paid for the new product not be subject to ex-ante bargaining between the entrepreneur and resource suppliers? In Knight's view, if the residual was generally anticipated, this is exactly what would happen: the economy would adjust its relative prices and the profit opportunity would disappear. Knight's fundamental insight was that entrepreneurial profit can only result when it is not generally anticipated. This insight also leads into the third point about entrepreneurial profit, which is that it is likely to be a temporary phenomenon. This is the case because once the entrepreneur's innovation proves successful, the previous uncertainty is eliminated. In that sense, we can understand successful innovation as revealing new productive knowledge. Unless there are "isolating mechanisms" that prevent the dissemination of this new productive knowledge, the economic system will adapt: imitation will eliminate the entrepreneurial profit. I

...

Principle 4. Profit is a disequilibrium phenomenon resulting from heterogeneity of resource bundles.

Principle 5. Rent is an equilibrium phenomenon resulting from heterogeneity of individual resources.

...

Principle 6. Economic profit is the result of resource bundles characterized by (1) novelty, (2) unique complementarities, and/or (3) scale advantages.

...

Principle 7. Stakeholder payments are the sum of (1) opportunity costs, (2) rent payments, and (3) the outcome of pure bargaining over economic profit."

Como se cria o desquilibrio? Com a inovação. O que é preciso para criar inovação?

Como se deslinda a incerteza? Só pondo a pele em jogo. Desconfiar de teóricos que sabem onde os outros devem pôr o seu dinheiro. 

Acerca da incerteza, li há dias uma frase que era mais ou menos: Depressão é olhar para trás. A ansiedade é olhar para a frente. E depois: "Anxiety is the price you pay for your freedom."

Trechos retirados de "Value, rent, and profit: A stakeholder resource-based theory" de J. W. Stoelhorst.  

O que aconteceu? (com as calças na mão)

Auditar uma empresa e perceber que não alteraram a análise do contexto feita em 2022. Segundo a empresa não há mudanças relevantes.

O que podemos pensar disto?

Primeiro, deste artigo de Abril passado, "Building optionality: Balance sheet discipline is both timely and timeless", sublinho:

"The macroeconomic outlook might be even more uncertain now than it was a year ago, which is saying something. Geopolitical risks, strong labor markets, persistent inflation, yo-yoing consumer sentiment, and a host of other confused signals have left business leaders with little certainty about the future. [Moi ici: Mais incerteza significa mais riscos e mais oportunidades] As central banks lift rates, external financing is becoming more difficult for companies across sectors."

Segundo, também de Abril passado, este postal, "Understanding the growth opportunity presented by volatile times", sublinho:

"Today, many companies are experiencing a global economy that feels different to anything they have ever encountered before. It is not just that firms are cutting forecasts, cutting headcount and beset with uncertainty. It is that uncertainty has become the default.

"Businesses are facing all sorts of volatility," says Brad Soper, Partner and Head of Industrials at the commercial growth specialist Simon-Kucher. "There is geopolitical uncertainty, there is banking volatility, there is demand volatility. This is systemically different to what has gone on before, in terms of the frequency and the amplitude of the ups and downs. And there is no doubt that makes it very difficult to sit down and just run a business."

...

"When you have periods of great volatility, that's when a company should be looking at what made them competitive in the first place," says Prof. Kavadias. "Look at what has added value. You can't cut your way out of a downturn, you can only innovate your way out. Cutting without innovating only sets you up for bigger failures in the future.""

Terceiro, também de Abril passado, esta reflexão, "Why uncertainty is your friend if you're looking for big returns", sublinho:

"It's tempting to invest in areas that promise certain returns for a given investment. Unfortunately, by the time an opportunity has become so well understood that anyone could pursue it, it is well on the way to commoditization. To find big payoffs, you must be willing to explore high uncertainty bets.

...

So yes, the transformational space is where the big returns are to be made. But only if you manage them as options on a transformational outcome, not as tweaks to an existing process you understand well.

...

And if you don’t invest in transformation? The commodization monster awaits." 

Os que abraçam a mudança em vez de lhe resistir são os que ganham um lugar no futuro. 

Recuo a 2007 e a "Perceber o futuro" onde escrevi:

"A frase é conhecida "Uns cheiram, percebem o que vem aí e perguntam: "O que vai acontecer?". Outros perguntam: "O que está a acontecer?". Por fim, outros, admirados, confundidos, perguntam: "O que aconteceu?""

Acerca de KPIs

Terça pediram-me uma opinião:

1."Se esse KPI está sempre no verde não interessa para nada, porque não é challenging" Eu fiquei de pé atrás quando ouvi isto. E se por acaso for um KPI relevante? O que opinas? 2. Aliás, o critério último da relevância de um KPI não é o dever estar relacionado com a satisfação do cliente?

Por que seguimos um indicador de desempenho?

• Recordo daqui: "Once again, the reason why a measurement is important to a business or government agency is because of the existence of risk. Without risk, information would literally have no value to decision making.""

Por que é um indicador pode não ser challenging?

• Recordo daqui: "Usar indicadores da treta; Usar metas da treta"
• Um indicador pode ser bom, mas ter um desafio de desempenho tão baixo que acaba por estar sempre no verde. Vem-me logo à cabeça uma empresa que em 2022 teve 8 reclamações, em 2021 teve 9 ou 10 reclamações, e que para 2023 propunha uma meta de não mais de 12 reclamações. O responsável da qualidade queria tudo verde.
• Como saber se um indicador é bom? Se é um indicador estratégico - Está alinhado com a estratégia?  Recordar o mapa da estratégia. Se é um indicador operacional - Serve para medir a eficácia, ou a eficiência, ou a quantidade? 

O critério último da relevância de um KPI não é o dever estar relacionado com a satisfação do cliente? Proponho que se desenhe o mapa da estratégia, depois escolher os indicadores nas quatro perspectivas. Na perspectiva clientes equacionar 3 resultados desejados: clientes ganhos; clientes satisfeitos e clientes leais.

"Unpredictable demand"

"This week, the $350 bn company [Moi ici: Walmart] issued its second profit warning in just over two months, telling investors that surging inflation, particularly in the prices of food and fuel, was affecting its customers' ability to afford other goods.

...

Consumers are not only worrying that they have less money to spend after filling their fridges and cars, retailers say: more of their discretionary spending is going on experiences they missed out on earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, such as travel and eating out, rather than on clothes, furniture or appliances.

Unpredictable demand, particularly among the most cash-strapped consumers, is only part of the challenge, however. Several companies, fearing a repeat of the supply chain delays that burnt them last holiday season, have been stocking up early this year.

Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, reported last week that its inventories were up 43 per cent year on year, for example, while rival Hasbro also had unusually high inventory levels as it stocked up for toymakers' peak season.

'Importers don't trust supply chains anymore," explained Zvi Schreiber, chief executive of logistics booking service Freightos. 'Retailers are not taking any risk. If they can afford the inventory, they're stocking up ready now for the on » shopping season."

...

But the current combination of historically high inflation and historically low unemployment is one that even retailers of Walmart's vintage have no playbook for, said Stephanie Cegielski, vice-president of research for the shopping centre group ICSC.

"The struggle for everybody right now," she said, is that "we've never seen anything like this."

Mais material para pôr em causa as longas cadeias de fornecimento dos últimos 20 anos, são incompatíveis com elevados níveis de incerteza. Mais material para afectar a tal balança de forças.

Trechos retirados de "'We've never seen anything like this': US retailers compete to clear stock"

"sensemaking rather than decision making"

Terminei ontem a 1ª leitura de "Managing the Unexpected - Sustained Performance in a Complex World" de Karl E. Weick e Kathleen M. Sutcliffe. 1ª leitura porque sei que vou ter de voltar a ele mais tarde para uma leitura mais calma, menos ansiosa. Que livro!!!

E a menos de 5 páginas do fim sublinho mais um trecho.

Imaginem uma empresa nestes tempos de incerteza e de mudança acelerada. O que fazer, que decisões tomar? Será sensato ir para aquele mercado? Será sensato lançar aquele produto?

"Gleason, at the time of the following description, was the crew superintendent of the 19-person Zig Zag Hotshot wildland firefighting crew. Gleason said that when fighting fires, [Moi ici: Um exemplo de incerteza] he prefers to view his leadership efforts as sensemaking rather than decision making. In his words, “If I make a decision it is a possession, I take pride in it, I tend to defend it and not listen to those who question it. If I make sense, then this is more dynamic and I listen and I can change it. A decision is something you polish. Sensemaking is a direction for the next period.” When Gleason perceives his work as decision-making, he feels that he postpones action so he can get the decision right. And after he makes the decision, he finds himself defending it rather than revising it to suit changing circumstances. Polishing and defending eat up valuable time, preclude learning, and encourage blind spots. If instead, Gleason treats an unfolding fire as a problem in sensemaking, then he gives his crew a direction, a direction which by definition is dynamic, open to revision at any time, self-correcting, responsive, and with more of its rationale being transparent. Polishing and defending a decision mobilizes justifications that necessarily favor some perceptions over others. Those blind spots were the very things that worried Gleason."

Quando persistir e quando desistir?

Excelente reflexão de Seth Godin acerca da mudança do contexto, a nossa identidade e a nossa estratégia:

"when the world changes, opportunities change as well.

All of us struggle when our identity doesn’t match the reality of the world around us.

In the face of that confusion, it’s tempting to abandon possibility and to walk away from an opportunity simply because it doesn’t resonate with the person we are in this moment. But only when we do something new do we often begin to become someone new."

Faz-me recordar uma frase: não fazemos arte depois de nos tornarmos artistas.

Quando o mundo muda a vida pode ficar mais difícil:

• devo mudar para aproveitar novas oportunidades?
• devo manter o rumo e não abandonar a estratégia anterior?

Quando persistir e quando desistir para desviar recursos para experimentar o novo?

Não esqueço o ditado asiático: As oportunidades multiplicam-se à medida que são aproveitadas.

Trecho retirado de "Confusing identity with strategy"

 

"Stop improvising"

 "Most organizations can cope with straightforward bad news, and so can most people. We absorb the shock, and move on. But what happens when we don’t know how bad the news actually is?

When it comes to crises, the news companies must deliver is often potential bad news. 

...

Communicating about uncertainty — what people call ‘risk communications’ in practice — has become one of the most important challenges faced by anyone who needs to convey or consume information.

...

The inherent challenge for risk communicators is people’s natural desire for certainty and closure.

...

To start to repair the trust deficit will require a significant retrofit of existing communications practices. Here are three places to start.

Stop improvising. Firms will never be able to reduce uncertainty to zero, but they can commit to engaging with customers around uncertainty in systematic, predictable ways.

...

Change the metric for success, and measure results. Avoiding negative press should not be the primary objective for firms that are faced with communicating uncertainty. In the short term, the primary goal should be to equip customers with the information they need to interpret uncertainty and act to manage their risk. In the long term, the goal should be to increase levels of ambient trust and to reduce risks where possible. Communicators need to demonstrate that what they are doing is working, by creating yardsticks that rigorously measure the effectiveness of communications against both these short and long term goals. ... Design for risk communications from the beginning. Consider what it would mean if every product were built from the start with the need to communicate uncertainty about how it will perform when released into the wild — that is, “risk communication by design.” 

...

People are naturally inclined to prefer certainty and closure, but in a world where both are in short supply, trust deficits aren’t an inevitable fact of nature. We’re optimistic that organizations can do better collectively by making disciplined use of the existing science."

Trechos retirados de "The Art of Communicating Risk" 

"The biggest challenge for many business leaders is to see their role as orchestrating, not commanding"

"The business leaders who are best at managing in uncertain worlds also rely on systems thinking that allows them to sort out complex problems, the report concluded. They prioritize diverse inputs, teamwork, and partnerships. These leaders assemble the best team they can, and trust that team to find the information the organization needs to get through a crisis.

.

“These CEOs understand they don’t need to know it all themselves,” 

...

expects the U.S. economy to contract by 11 percent by the end of the year. Significantly, it estimated that 60 percent of that contraction will be the direct consequence of uncertainty: that is, a condition in which important information is unknowable.

.

Because nobody knows what is next, no CEO reasonably can be taken to task for not knowing everything. That provides an opening for leaders who have deployed top-down, command-and-control leadership styles to switch to a mind-set that helps them and their teams better navigate uncertain conditions.

.

Leaders don’t have to like dealing with uncertainty in order to master it. “You can be uncomfortable with uncertainty. We don’t grow if we don’t feel uncomfortable,”

...

The biggest challenge for many business leaders, in Leavitt’s view, is to see their role as orchestrating, not commanding. That means making sure your employees are in touch with their own desires and potential just as much as your business is aligned with its sense of purpose.

.

The point isn’t for CEOs to be the hero, Leavitt said, but for them be able to say, once they are past the crisis: “Look at how the team was built up during this time! Look at what they did! Look how they stepped up!”

.

That behavior makes all the difference between whether employees respond to uncertainty by becoming more creative and proactive, or overstressed and paralyzed. The ability to cope with uncertainty and keep pursuing your mission will be the difference between success and failure."

Trechos retirados de "Why managing uncertainty is a key leadership skill"

Incerteza e riscos

"The Chinese province where the virus originated, with a population greater than South Korea, is under quarantine, while streets are empty and factories sit idle. How this plays out is uncertain, but what is certain is that the virus has the potential to change China in fundamental ways — and even if it does not, it should change the way we think about China.
...
The only thing that is certain is that we cannot assume China’s future will resemble its recent past." (Fonte: "The most lasting impact of coronavirus" publicado no Washington Post de ontem)

"China’s coronavirus outbreak has scrambled the global trade in commodities, hitting the country’s massive appetite and challenging global supply lines set up to feed it. Markets for essentials like natural gas, copper and pork have all swooned amid worry over a broad weakening of demand. Prices for some natural resources are plumbing multiyear lows. Chinese companies are canceling orders for crude oil and other commodities, and the country’s once-heaving ports are quieter. Analysts say the disruption could be long lasting, as stockpiles of commodities grow and ships lay idle." (Fonte "Virus ShakesUp Global Supply Lines" publicado no Wall Street Journal de ontem)

Entretanto, mandaram-me um e-mail com este texto:

"Depois da Kuka, da KraussMaffei, da Putzmeister, de parte da Osram e tantas outras, continua o take-over tecnológico silencioso…

• Link 1
• Link 2

Há dias ao ler um jornal espanhol fiquei a matutar na situação alemã:

• a herdeira de Merkel demite-se
• cerca de 100 mil empregos na indústria automóvel em risco com a disrupção em curso

A Alemanha é a locomotiva económica europeia por excelência.

A China com o primeiro trimestre de 2020 arruinado, pelo menos esse.

Como é que a sua empresa está a preparar-se para o impacte destes fenómenos?

“The core problem is uncertainty”

"It was expected, perhaps, but still startling. In its 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, PwC asked 1,378 top business leaders from around the world which territories (excluding their own) they considered the most important for their company’s growth prospects in the next 12 months. The world’s chief executives were noticeably noncommittal. As many as 15 percent of them answered “don’t know” in 2019, up from 8 percent the previous year.CEOs in the United States were even more dubious: 14 percent of them didn’t consider any other markets suitable for growth, up from only 2 percent in the 2018 survey.
...
This shift in attitude is already reflected in business investment. Of the 31 percent of CEOs who said they were “extremely concerned” about trade wars, 45 percent said they were shifting their supply chain strategy, and 25 percent said they were shifting their growth strategies to other territories.
...
Fundamental aspects of the global economy have been shifting for more than a decade. Elements undergoing change include costs for manufacturing (including labor costs, which are rising), new technological platforms (such as those associated with Industry 4.0), stronger suppliers and other businesses in emerging markets (which are maturing), middle-class consumer populations around the world (which are growing rapidly in emerging markets and shrinking in other places), and political and regulatory uncertainties.
...
A new model of market expansion strategy — we call it “internationalization” — is replacing the globalism of the early 2000s. This model acknowledges that the global business ecosystem now includes many small and medium-sized enterprises and ambitious family businesses, often based in emerging markets, linked together by collaborative supply chains and platforms. At the same time, larger companies with established global supply chains have realized that they need to bring their operations closer to the demand they are targeting. The trade tensions of 2019 have heightened awareness of these dynamics, and accelerated the business response to them.
...
To be sure, global trade will still thrive, but there will be more regional concentration. Rather than shipping goods around the world from cheaplabor hubs, companies manufacture goods for Asian customers in Asia, for European customers in Central Europe, and for North American customers in Latin America. They develop regional footprints, sourcing from more locations."

Interessante:

"The World Trade Organization (WTO) published a report in June 2019 showing that G20 nations had implemented 20 new restrictive trade measures between October 2018 and May 2019, including higher tariffs, import bans, and new customs procedures for exports.
...
All this has had a chilling effect on international commerce. Imports by G20 economies were 1.2 percent lower in the first quarter of 2019 than they were a year earlier, whereas exports were only marginally (0.4 percent) higher, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development figures show. “The core problem is uncertainty,” said Piyush Gupta, chief executive of Singapore’s largest domestic bank, DBS, in an interview with strategy+business. “There’s a general environment of skittishness.”"

Trechos retirados de "Growth strategies for an uncertain world"

"you do not fight complexity with complexity"

"“Modern finance is complex, perhaps too complex. Regulation of modern finance is complex, almost certainly too complex. That configuration spells trouble. As you do not fight fire with fire, you do not fight complexity with complexity. Because complexity generates uncertainty, not risk, it requires a regulatory response grounded in simplicity, not complexity”
...
Heuristic strategies are simple rules of thumb that solve complex uncertain situations precisely because of their simplicity, not despite it. More calculation, time, and information are not always better. Less can be more.
...
A good heuristic can be better than a complex strategy when used in the proper environment. Less can be more. The recognition heuristic is ecologically rational when a correlation exists between recognizing an option and the criteria for judgment.
...
One main point in the business world is that entrepreneurs can generate profit in the markets, à la Knight, precisely because they intelligently deal with immeasurable, irreducible uncertainty.
...
In most business situations knowledge is much less than perfect and uncertainty prevails over risk. Heuristic strategies that are successfully used in business decision-making exploit the structure of information in the environment, rely on simplicity to overcome the complexity of situation, and are indispensable when faced with irreducible uncertainty. One central observation is that less can be more. That is, less information, calculation or time, can be beneficial under particular circumstances to achieving a given task."

Trechos retirados de "Risk, uncertainty, and heuristics" de Shabnam Mousavi e Gerd Gigerenzer, publicado por Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1671–1678

Incerteza

Três notícias relacionadas:

• OPEP enfrenta primeira deserção do acordo
• The 'Tesla of scooters' is about to rapidly expand in Berlin
• Porsche pode dizer adeus aos diesel. Já em 2020

Esta semana numa empresa ouvi a previsão, com alguma certeza, de que o preço do petróleo vai aumentar nos próximos anos por causa da China. No entanto, vejo alguma incerteza nessa previsão.

Stress-test

"Companies often maintain a list of the main risks that managers believe they face, which they report as their “risk register” in annual reports. These include discrete operational events, such as major industrial accidents, cyberattacks, or employee malfeasance. If they take the next step to quantify those risks, many simply turn to that list and model them, often for the first time, onto their financial outlook. That’s a good start, as it gives managers some insight into how sensitive the company’s financial health is to changes around individual risks, which many companies don’t do. But measuring individual risks discretely does little to illuminate a more complex landscape of interrelated risks that often move together in the real world. That requires the further step of coherently clustering risks together into scenarios.
...
Scenarios are more appropriate because they help managers consider the effects of a variety of severe but plausible scenarios without being farfetched. They can also accommodate interaction effects among sensitivities.
...
We frequently encounter companies willing to model broader, everyday market variables, such as GDP or inflation, or more specific variables, such as the rate of formation of new companies. But we seldom find companies willing to model more extreme variables (see sidebar, “Stress testing for an energy utility company”) or one-off events, such as a cyberattack or a natural disaster. The data to measure the effects of the former are fairly easy to come by, some argue, while reliable data on the latter are not. Others believe that their employees would sufficiently rally together to counter such events."

Trechos retirados de "Stress testing for nonfinancial companies"

"The choice for a sure bet"

"people overwhelmingly opt for certainty, regardless of whether that certainty is in the present or the future, or whether it pertains to gains or losses. Interestingly, these findings break with a foundational theory of behavioral economics first outlined in 1979.
.
Prospect theory, as it’s known, asserts that when there is something to be gained, we tend to choose certainty over uncertainty.
...
These contrasting preferences have been replicated hundreds of times by hundreds of researchers across myriad contexts, which is why Hardisty and Pfeffer were puzzled by results at odds with the theory’s predictions. By injecting temporal considerations into the equation, the researchers found that even when people face losses, they favor certainty over uncertainty.
...
“People really don’t like the complexity and cognitive load of making decisions under uncertain circumstances,” says Pfeffer. The choice for a sure bet, he says, may be the mental equivalent of shrugging in resignation."

Trechos retirados de "Why Uncertainty Makes Us Less Likely to Take Risks"