Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta lucro. Mostrar todas as mensagens
Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta lucro. Mostrar todas as mensagens

quarta-feira, julho 19, 2023

Volume is Vanity Profit is Sanity

""Why is a strong brand important?" one might say that it creates customer preference, lifts sales, or even makes the sales force's job easier. But the most important answer to this question is that a brand commands a higher price. And the stronger the brand, the higher the price.
...
Now consider the seemingly naive question, "What's the value of a higher price?" The answer is higher profits for the company that markets the brand.
Profit is the reason companies are in business - not sales, not revenues, not growth, but profit. And one thing trumps all others in the business mix when it comes to profitability: the pricing integrity of the brand.
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Nothing can improve a company's bottom line better than protecting and enhancing its ability to command a higher price. This means that revenues are not the key metric of your firm's success; profits are. Profit is driven mostly by price. Price is driven mostly by brand perception. This makes brand building an activity central to the success of every professional firm.
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Sadly, growth for the sake of growth has become enshrined as the goal of business. Wall Street wants its growth projections, and any company that is not consistently increasing market share is seen as an investment risk."

Isto não é unânime, alguns empresários torcem o nariz a esta argumentação. 

Trechos retirados de "Positioning for Professionals - How Professional Knowledge Firms Can Differentiate Their Way to Success" de Tim Williams.


terça-feira, junho 27, 2023

Incerteza e desequilibrio

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

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

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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

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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.

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

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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.  

quarta-feira, agosto 18, 2021

“Revenue makes you proud, but profit makes you rich” (parte I)

"In my research I am surprised time and again by the sheer number of companies that generate losses. For some, that situation persists for years. Why do the banks remain quiet? One reason is that they are effectively held hostage by their own loans. If they call in a loan, the company could go bankrupt and in the worst case the loan would be a total loss for the bank.

The reasons behind these ongoing losses are numerous, but rarely are they due to a lack of effort on the part of the entrepreneur. Some struggle their entire lives and never earn a satisfactory margin. Profit not only has a financial side for entrepreneurs. It also provides personal validation, proof of their abilities, and fun at work. Those aspects contribute to profit as an important motivator.

In this context, how the entrepreneurs think and how they motivate themselves play an important role. Do they understand that profit is more important than revenue? Do they want to appear “big” to the outside world and become the center of attention, or keep to themselves and enjoy their profit? A favorite saying of a friend of mine gets straight to the point: “Revenue makes you proud, but profit makes you rich.

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an analysis of the world’s current profit situation revealed that a considerable portion of companies earn only modest profits. Many do not generate an economic profit, which means that they do not recover their costs of capital.

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Why does one company go under while an apparently similar firm not only survives, but prospers? 

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Wrong Goals

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revenue, volume, and market share goals serve as proxies for long-term profit orientation, but are not sufficient as stand-alone goals. So practically speaking, how do companies deal with goal setting? In my experience, only a few entrepreneurs and managers truly put the highest priority on profit. That certainly applies to their real behavior, though not necessarily to their official declarations during investor conferences or shareholder meetings. Key metrics such as margin, returns, or the absolute level of profit often get short shrift."

Trechos retirados de “No Company Ever Went Broke Turning a Profit” de Hermann Simon.

sábado, março 06, 2021

Lucro? E para quê e para quem?

O amigo João mandou-me este vídeo por Messenger.


Comentar vídeos destes numa rede social é meio caminho andado para equívocos e extremar de posições. Meia dúzia de caracteres de cada vez não chegam. Assim, aqui vai via blog uma tentativa de expressar a minha opinião.

1º O lucro é vital para as empresas. As empresas têm de ter lucro, ponto!!!
Não é só no Portugal socialista que esta ideia tem de ser defendida e proclamada. Até na Alemanha é preciso fazê-lo. Daí que está agora a fazer um ano que um dos meus heróis, Hermann Simon, publicou um livro com o título "Am Gewinn ist noch keine Firma kaputtgegangen". Já li algures Hermann Simon, numa entrevista, referir que o título tem a ver com um ditado alemão. Algo como, nunca ninguém ficou pobre por ganhar dinheiro.

Quantas vezes, desde 30 de Julho de 2006,  já escrevi aqui no blogue aquela expressão?

"Volume is Vanity
Profit is Sanity"

Por exemplo, em Portugal os economistas estão sempre a falar na necessidade imperiosa das empresas crescerem, para serem mais rentáveis, para serem mais produtivas. Hermann Simon diz-nos:
"In Germany people believe that the net profit margin, after all costs and all taxes, is 23%. The real margin over many years is 3.4%. Similar in the US. The believe is 32% net profit margin, the reality is 4.9%. The record holders are the Italians. They think that the margin is 38%, the reality is 5%. There are two messages: Real net margins are 5% or less, typically. Furthermore, people overestimate profit margins by 600%. That’s unbelievable."
E:
"large corporations are not more profitable. The median of the net margin of the Fortune Global 500 is 4.49%. This tells us that half of these giants earn less than 4.5%. Most likely they don’t make an economic profit, meaning that they don’t recover their cost of capital. That’s the case for half of the Fortune Global 500. The public perception is misguided by a few profit stars.
...
profit always depends on the combination of three profit drivers and there are only those three: price, volume and cost." 

Sem lucro as empresas são como Portugal, um país sem autonomia, sempre a passear-se pelos areópagos internacionais como pedinte profissional.

2º Para que servem os lucros?

A maior parte das pessoas pensa que o lucro é importante para remunerar os accionistas. Sim, o lucro serve para remunerar o risco de quem empreende. No entanto, as empresas que se ficam por isso não têm futuro.

Final dos anos 80(?) estava eu em Valongo, numa sala à espera de uma entrevista de emprego na UTA e lia um dos livros de Peter Drucker. Não recordo o título, tenho e li tudo o que encontrei dele, mas nesse livro Drucker apresentou-me a mim, engenheiro com formação básica de gestão, mais um austríaco que eu não conhecia: Joseph Schumpeter.

Com Schumpeter aprendi que o lucro é fundamental para pagar os custos do futuro! Ainda esta semana sorri e recordei esta ideia. A trabalhar numa empresa, estivemos a sistematizar a metodologia de qualificação inicial de subcontratados. A empresa referia-se a eles como fábricas, contudo também recorrem a outros subcontratados que não podem ser apelidados de "fábricas". Então, apostarm no termo "unidade de produção". Gente mais nova não tem essa memória, mas eu tinha mais de 10 anos quando foi o 25 de Abril de 1974, na minha cabeça apareceu logo a expressão "unidade colectiva de produção". Tinham um pecado original, focavam-se na gratificação imediata e nunca acumulavam capital para pagar os custos do futuro. Recordar que este Schumpeter é o mesmo que nos apresentou a destruição criativa. Quem não quer ser destruído tem de investir no seu futuro.

3º Como se obtém o lucro?

Associada a esta pergunta está uma outra: A parte do lucro que se distribui, por quem sem se distribui? Pelos accionistas ou pelos stakeholders (partes interessadas)?

E aqui, no vídeo, refere-se a ideia do Milton Friedman sobre a importância do lucro e da sua maximização. Esta ideia de Milton Friedman expressa em “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” está ultrapassada. Ao longo dos anos que escrevo sobre isso, mas sem criticar Friedman. Há muitos anos que uso esta imagem aqui no blogue:

A economia é muito diferente da física ou da química. Acho que Friedman escrevia para um tempo que já passou. Recordo que a Economia não é como a Física newtoniana ou galilaica.

Começo o meu livro:
Com uma explicação sobre a grande revolução ocorrida no mundo ocidental algures na década de 70 do século passado. Por essa altura, a oferta passou a ser maior que a procura. E quando isso aconteceu... foi mesmo uma revolução.

Quando a procura é maior do que a oferta quem manda é quem produz. Quem produz pode concentrar-se em ser eficiente porque tudo o que "vomitar" tem saída garantida.

Quando a procura é menor do que a oferta quem manda é quem compra. Então, não basta produzir! Há que orquestrar um ecossistema de parcerias, de partes interessadas, para que todos ganhem:
"Quanto mais crescer o interesse e vantagem em trabalhar a nível de ecossistema, em que os ecossistemas que ganham são os que maximizam o valor a ser criado pelo conjunto dos actores, e não por um em particular."

Acredito que Friedman hoje pensaria de forma diferente. Hoje, o lucro tem de ser visto como um objectivo obliquo. É tão absurdo, aos meus olhos, eleger o lucro como um objectivo directo como ouvir um político eleger como objectivo directo a redução do desemprego. Dá sempre asneira.

Como objectivos oblíquos, o lucro ou a redução do desemprego são consequências de outras coisas. O lucro é uma consequência de clientes que se ganham, clientes satisfeitos e de clientes que continuam a trabalhar connosco. 

Ganhar, satisfazer e desenvolver a relação com os clientes é fruto de se trabalhar bem a montante: E quem trabalha?

"Cada vez mais, o sucesso de uma empresa exige que se tenha em consideração as necessidades e expectativas de outras partes interessadas que podem contribuir para a sustentabilidade do desempenho. É claro que os clientes são uma parte interessada, afinal são eles que nos dão o dinheiro com que pagamos as contas, preparamos o futuro e suportamos a impostagem. No entanto, podemos identificar outras partes interessadas:" 


O conceito de ecossistema é-me muito caro, uso-o na consultoria desde 2004, não porque li, mas porque emergiu no meu trabalho.
Primeiro postal sobre o tema em Março de 2007

Afinal sou um arquitecto de paisagens competitivas.

Portanto, concluo que o vídeo acaba por ter uma mensagem demasiado simplificada, talvez mesmo simplista.




sexta-feira, fevereiro 28, 2020

Volume is vanity profit is sanity

Ontem à noite li "Prejuízos da Farfetch mais do que duplicam em 2019 para 373 milhões de dólares". Entretanto, de tarde tinha lido "Is Silicon Valley’s Love Affair With Direct-to-Consumer Brands Over?":
"When investors of the direct-to-consumer shoe brand Birdies pressured the start-up to burn through the $10 million it raised by buying more online ads and doubling the employee headcount, founders Bianca Gates and Marisa Sharkey resisted.
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“Our investors [were] like, ‘Spend the money!’ and intuitively, we were like, ‘This is silly,’” Gates told BoF. “Why grow faster if it costs us more to acquire customers than to sell the product?
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But the sentiment among investors seems to be shifting, Gates said. “It was like a one-eighty. Now more than ever, there’s pressure to show profitability and product-market fit.”
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Few startups in the product category have been able to secure lucrative exits for their investors. Many are stuck on a cycle of aggressive forced growth, followed by fundraising higher and higher rounds to facilitate that growth — all without regard to profit.
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“You have this double whammy of increased customer acquisition costs and more competition, and this combination can be deadly,”
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As a result, venture capitalists — especially those investing in later stages — are shifting their strategy to invest more cautiously, favouring profit over revenue and organic marketing over Instagram ads, industry sources say.
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As valuations drop, the metrics that determine these figures are also shifting. Revenue used to be the prime indication of valuation for brands, said Frederic Court, founder of Felix Capital. “But eventually, these businesses will have valuations driven by profitability… it’s about generating a healthy profit margin.
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Eventually, these businesses will have valuations driven by profitability.
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Investors today are less focused on growth metrics and topline numbers and more focused on the bottom line"

sábado, outubro 19, 2019

Aguentar 15 minutos sem comer o marshmallow

Quanto menos vigorar o paradigma do século XX, que pressupunha que o poder estava nas mãos dos produtores.

Quanto mais crescer o interesse e vantagem em trabalhar a nível de ecossistema, em que os ecossistemas que ganham são os que maximizam o valor a ser criado pelo conjunto dos actores, e não por um em particular.

Mais sentido faz esta abordagem "The limits of the pursuit of profit":
"In February 2016, Emmanuel Faber, chief executive of Danone, put a radical proposal to the French food multinational’s senior US executives at a meeting in White Plains, New York.
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Against the grain of agricultural production in the US, where the vast majority is genetically modified, Mr Faber proposed shifting about half Danone’s products — representing some $1bn of yoghurt sales — to non-GMO ingredients. He argued that this was an important change that would improve soil health and biodiversity.
...
The pledge triggered vocal protests from some US farm and dairy groups. It did not harm sales. Despite a price rise, the children’s yoghurt brand Danimals, now certified as containing only non-GMO ingredients, has increased its US market share from 30 to 40 per cent."
O artigo refere o clássico artigo de Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” e a recente alteração de posição do grupo Business Toundtable:
"“While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” — customers, employees, suppliers, communities and — last in the list — shareholders."
Acho que Friedman escrevia para um tempo que já passou. Recordo que a Economia não é como a Física newtoniana ou galilaica.
No ano em que Milton Friedman publicou o artigo, os produtores ainda detinham um poder tremendo. Os produtores podiam, então, comportar-se como o governo português, ainda hoje, a gerir o serviço nacional de saúde ou a educação, com utentes-reféns.

Hoje, com a concorrência, com o poder nas mãos de quem compra, e com a explosão de grupos "intolerantes" ou com paixões assimétricas, impõe-se o uso da obliquidade.

Hoje, é mais claro aquilo que sempre foi verdade. mas então não era tão relevante: o lucro é como o emprego, é uma consequência, não um objectivo. Pois: "they’ll create more and better jobs by not focusing on creating jobs"


sexta-feira, setembro 02, 2016

Acerca do propósito de uma empresa

"The article begins by fatally limiting the possible choices into “two camps”:
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“The first believes the company’s goal is to maximize shareholder value. Countries that operate under common law, including the United States and the United Kingdom, lean in this direction.
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“The second advocates that the company balance the interests of all stakeholders. Countries that operate under civil law, including France, Germany, and Japan, tend to be in this camp.”
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The professors miss the third option enunciated by Peter Drucker as long ago as 1954: that the purpose of a firm is to create a customer by continuously delivering value to customers, as shown by the experience of firms like Apple, Google and Amazon.
...
Bezos could hardly be clearer. At Amazon, shareholder value is the result, not the operational goal. [Moi ici: Recordar a obliquity e o nossa velha diferença entre objectivos e consequências] Amazon’s operational goal is market leadership."

Recuar até Dezembro de 2013 "Qual é o propósito da sua empresa?"
Trechos retirados de "HBR Defends 'The World's Dumbest Idea'"

sexta-feira, junho 05, 2015

Demasiado lucro?

Para quem como este blogue, promove a máxima:
Volume is vanity, profit is sanity
Comecei de pé atrás com a leitura de "Too Much Profit Can Doom Your Company" ainda para mais fazendo de herói a Amazon.
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Contudo, depois percebi a mensagem:
"an excessive focus on profits can compete away investments that could lead to creating the next big thing."
Algo em linha com a lição dos nabateus ou "Acerca do lucro".

sábado, março 28, 2015

Empresas, objectivos, clientes, satisfação e lucro

Em Dezembro de 2013 no Twitter, meti-me numa conversa e escrevi:
"O objectivo das empresas é satisfazer clientes, como consequência podem, ter lucro"
Outro colega meteu-se na conversa e respondeu-me:
"O objectivo das empresas é ter lucro, como estratégia devem satisfazer os clientes." 
No que foi apoiado pelos intervenientes na conversa inicial.
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Volta e meia recordo estes diferentes posicionamentos.
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Julgo que a segunda frase podia ter sido proferida pelo Kevin O'Leary:
Por que recordei aquela conversa de 2013?
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Por causa da leitura de "The Best Management Article Of 2014".
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BTW, em Mongo, com quem é que os clientes preferirão trabalhar, com os da primeira frase, ou com os da segunda frase?

terça-feira, abril 01, 2014

O impacte da estratégia no lucro

Isto é muito bom!!!
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Dedicado à tríade e ao seu dedo no gatilho do baixar-preço:
"Some managers tend to think that managing for profit consists of tight control of expenditure, and maximizing sales and profit margins. These measures are the weaponry available to improve current, short-term results. They are of little relevance, however, to strategy.
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The impact of competitive strategy on profitability is widely underestimated. There is only limited scope for improving this year’s results for an offering that has a poor competitive position. A poor competitive position inevitably means low operating margins. We can and should tighten our cost controls, redouble our sales effort, and generally strive to produce the best possible short-term results. Yet all this fire-fighting, necessary as it is, can at best bring about marginal improvements. It cannot make an uncompetitive offering competitive. We could and should have attended to its competitive position some years ago, when we made either bad strategic decisions or none.
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Much more can be done for the profitability of our offering at the time of its design, in the framing of the competitive strategy. A competitive strategy positions an offering in a unique triangular relationship with customers and competitors. The measure of its attraction is its financial value. In this sense, the job of a competitive strategy is to target profitable customers. This positioning of the offering will affect profits much more powerfully than any short-term measures that can be taken after the triangular relationship has become a commitment."
Trecho retirado de "Creating Value Successful business strategies" de Shiv S. Mathur e Alfred Kenyon.

terça-feira, dezembro 10, 2013

Qual é o propósito da sua empresa?

Há dias no Twiiter alguém escreveu:
"Objectivo das empresas é maximizar lucro, não é maximizar quantidade de produtos vendidos por mão de obra"
Comentei:
"O objectivo das empresas é satisfazer clientes, como consequência podem, ter lucro"
Responderam-me:
"Em última instância, a satisfação dos clientes é para garantir lucros no longo prazo" 
Respondi:
"todas as organizações, excepto tribos e famílias, existem para servir outros no seu exterior, sem esse fito... nada feito" 
Depois, mais alguém se juntou à conversa com:
"O objectivo das empresas é ter lucro, como estratégia devem satisfazer os clientes." 
Ao que respondi:
"para mim é ao contrário, é como o emprego. O emprega resulta da criação de riqueza não o contrário" 
Fui recuperar esta conversa de há 5 dias, por causa deste texto, "'Culture of Purpose' Is Key To Success According To New Research From Deloitte", que o @pauloperes me referiu:
"There is a link between organizations that instill a sense of purpose and their long-term success, says a new survey just released by Deloitte. Yet, businesses are still not doing enough to create this sense of purpose and make a positive impact on all stakeholders.
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Companies that are singularly focused on exceeding customer expectations tend to fall into this category. “So there is an empirical financial benefit to organizations that instill a purpose-driven culture,”
...
 businesses have a bigger issue than just the standard challenges of profit and loss. Most suffer from a lack of a clear purpose in the minds of customers. Punit began devoting himself and his firm to understanding the issue as a driver of financial outcomes
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Building a purpose focused culture is also not just about supporting social responsibility activities. “It first comes from treating customers well. It’s not about transactions, but about building a relationship that exceeds expectation,”"
Qual é o propósito da sua empresa?
.
Peter Drucker já respondeu a essa pergunta:
"There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer."
Que cliente?
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Os clientes-alvo!!!
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BTW, recordar "The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value"

sábado, julho 06, 2013

O lucro, tal como o emprego, não é um objectivo, é uma consequência!

Max Planck dizia que a ciência avança funeral atrás de funeral, ou seja, à medida que os defensores das velhas ideias morrem e deixam as suas cátedras e outros locais de influência.
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Nassim Taleb em "Antifragile" chama a atenção para onde estão as fronteiras do conhecimento:
"The error of naive rationalism leads to overestimating the role and necessity of the second type, academic knowledge, in human affairs—and degrading the uncodifiable, more complex, intuitive, or experience-based type.
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the Baconian linear model, after the philosopher of science Francis Bacon; I am adapting its representation by the scientist Terence Kealey (who, crucially, as a biochemist, is a practicing scientist, not a historian of science) as follows:
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Academia → Applied Science and Technology → Practice
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While this model may be valid in some very narrow (but highly advertised instances), such as building the atomic bomb, the exact reverse seems to be true in most of the domains I’ve examined.
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So we are blind to the possibility of the alternative process, or the role of such a process, a loop:
Random Tinkering (antifragile) → Heuristics (technology) → Practice and Apprenticeship → Random Tinkering (antifragile) → Heuristics (technology) → Practice and Apprenticeship …
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In parallel to the above loop,
Practice → Academic Theories → Academic Theories → Academic Theories → Academic Theories …
(with of course some exceptions, some accidental leaks, though these are indeed rare and overhyped and grossly generalized)."
Primeiro vêm a prática, só depois as teorias académicas.
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Por isso, tantas vezes me interroguei aqui sobre o porquê da cegueira da tríade (não confundir com a troika)
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O mundo muda, quem está no terreno, os pragmáticos, os práticos, têm de arranjar novas formas de lidar com a nova realidade com que deparam. Muitas tentativas iniciais falham até que uma ou mais novas abordagens resultam e começam a generalizar-se entre a comunidade de práticos. Entretanto, os teóricos continuam a pensar e a enformar novas gerações a pensarem sobre como lidar com o mundo antigo que já desapareceu.
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Assim, não é de admirar esta previsão:
"So here’s my wager on how long it will take for what even Jack Welch sees as ‘the world’s dumbest idea’, i.e. maximizing shareholder value, to become the minority view:
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“Major thought leaders: end 2014.
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All major businesses and business schools: 2020.”"
Depois, esta sequência é muito rica:
"In fact, shareholder value is part of a web of obsolete management ideas that no longer fit the 21st Century. As I noted in an article last week, other once-sacred and self-evident truths are also falling by the wayside:
  • The search for the holy grail of strategy—sustainable competitive advantage—is recognized by Professor Rita McGrath of Columbia Business School as futile: competitive advantage is at best temporary. (Moi ici: Claro que muitos dirão que isto é perigosa propaganda neoliberal)
  • The “essence of strategy” seen as “coping with competition”, as argued by legendary guru Professor Michael Porter, is now obsolete: the essence of strategy is about adding value to customers.
  • It transpires that the raison d’être of a firm is not only, as Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase argued, because it can reduce transaction costs, but also because it can add value for customers.
  • The uni-directional value chain—the very core of 20th Century management thinking (Moi ici: Aqui a tríade está tão atrasada... ainda pensa na produção sem pensar na relação com os clientes, sem pensar no ecossistema da procura) developed by Professor Porter—is being replaced by the concept of multi-directional networks, in which interactions with customers play a key role.
  • The extraordinarily generous compensation afforded to senior executives is recognized in an HBR article by Professor Mihir Desai, the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School to be a giant “financial incentives bubble”, accompanied by an unjustified sense of entitlement.
  • The short-term gains of large-scale off-shoring of manufacturing are recognized to have caused massive loss of competitive capacity: new heuristics for outsourcing have emerged.
  • Supposed distinctions between leaders and managers, as argued by leadership guru Professor John Kotter, are dissolving: managers are leaders and leaders must be able and willing to get their hands dirty and manage.
  • As a result of a failure of many firms to recognize and respond to these changes, a study by Harvard Business School has concluded that the US has lost much of its capacity to compete.
  • Whereas the traditional management pursued an ethos of efficiency and control, a new paradigm is being pursued by many firms that thrives on the ethos of imagination, exploration, experiment, discovery, collaboration and self-organization. (Moi ici: Mongo, Mongo, Mongo!!! Benvindos ao Estranhistão!!! Benvindos à terra da diversidade e das tribos!!! Outra falha clamorosa da tríade)
  • Whereas traditional management often treated both employees and customers as inanimate “things” to be manipulated, the new management paradigm respects employees and customers as independent, thinking, feeling human beings. (Moi ici: O poder da interacção, da co-produção, do co-design. da co-criação, ...)
  • The new management embraces the increased complexity inherent in the shift as an opportunity to be exploited, rather than a problem to be avoided." (Moi ici: Abraçar a mudança)
Trechos de "When Will 'The World's Dumbest Idea' Die?"
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O lucro, tal como o emprego, não é um objectivo, é uma consequência!

quinta-feira, junho 27, 2013

Qual é o propósito da sua empresa?

"The problem with industrial capitalism today is not the profit motive; the problem is how the profit motive is usually framed. There is a persistent myth in the contemporary business world that the ultimate purpose of a business is to maximize profit for the company’s investors. However, the maximization of profit is not a purpose; instead, it is an outcome. We argue that the best way to maximize profits over the long term is to not make them the primary goal.
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Profits are like happiness in that they are a byproduct of other things. (Moi ici: Regressar a Janeiro de 2009 com "o lucro é uma consequência, nunca se trabalha directamente para o lucro")
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Purpose is not about corporate strategy or tactics; these are both means to ends. Purpose is also not about social responsibility, which is simply a tool for managing reputation. Purpose is not even about corporate mission, which might be nothing more than an aspiration to dominate a particular marketplace. Rather, purpose is a spiritual and moral call to action; it is what a person or company stands for."

Trechos retirados de "Why Making Money Is Not Enough"

sexta-feira, março 05, 2010

Lucro: O custo do futuro

Depois de ler o editorial do Jornal de Negócios de hoje "Preso por ter lucros, preso por não ter", de onde destaco os seguintes trechos:
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"Portugal sempre teve um problema de consciência com os lucros: como se fosse mal tê-los. Quando, há dias, a Caixa Geral de Depósitos apresentou os piores lucros dos últimos anos, revelou-os quase mostrando alívio. Como a Galp, que os viu cair para metade. A EDP, a campeã dos resultados líquidos (mais de mil milhões), repetiu ontem à exaustão que em Portugal os lucros não cresceram, só no estrangeiro."
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"Mas o definhamento do lucro em Portugal não é um acto de justiça social, é uma condenação do futuro. A saída para outros países está a ser a oportunidade, a aventura, mas também o escape. Haja lucro, concorrência, investimento, e haverá economia e emprego. Daqui toda a gente sai viva. O pior é quem fica."
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Veio-me à memória o pensador que melhor me explicou o conceito e a importância do lucro: Joseph Scumpeter.
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O lucro e o custo do futuro. Se não há lucro como ter dinheiro para o custo do futuro? Se não há lucro onde arranjar dinheiro para investir num futuro melhor?
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Nas palavras do homem que mudou a minha vida e me deu a conhecer Schumpeter:
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"As soon, however, as one shifts from the axiom of an unchanging, self-contained, closed economy to Schumpeter's dynamic, growing, moving, changing economy, what is called profit is on longer immoral. It becomes a moral imperative. Indeed, the question then is no longer the question that agitated the classicists and still agitated Keynes: How can the economy be structured to minimize the bribe of the functionless surplus called profit that has to be handed over to the capitalist to keep the economy going?
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The question in Schumpeter's economics is always, Is there sufficient profit? Is there adequate capital formation to provide for the costs of the future, the costs of staying in business, the costs of "creative destruction"?
This alone makes Schumpeter's economic model the only one that can serve as the starting point for the economic policies we need. Clearly the Keynesian - or classicist - treatment of innovation as being "outside," and in fact peripheral to, the economy and with minimum impact on it, can no longer be maintained (if it ever could have been). The basic question of economic theory and economic policy, especially in highly developed countries, is clearly: How can capital formation and productivity be maintained so that rapid technological change as well as employment can be sustained? What is the minimum profit needed to defray the costs of the future? What is the minimum profit needed, above all, to maintain jobs and to create new ones?"
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BTW, "And it is a total fallacy that, as Keynes implies, optimising the short term creates the right long-term future."