E se o COVID- 19 matasse o que resta do século XX?

Quando escrevo sobre o século XX penso:

• no século da produção em massa;
• no século do eficientismo;
• no século da competição baseada na escala;
• no século da competição baseada na redução dos custos unitários;
• no século da uniformização e da padronização.

"Decades of consolidation have made food systems more vulnerable, say experts. Beginning in the 1980s, the federal government allowed more agribusinesses to merge and grow largely without restraint in the name of efficiency—before, antitrust and other policies helped keep these industries decentralized and competitive. Consequently, a small number of giant, often vertically integrated, firms, produce and distribute the bulk of food in the U.S.
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Dairy Farmers of America, for example, now controls 30 percent of all raw milk in the United States.
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In the meat industry, roughly 50 factories process 98 percent of the nation’s beef. The same holds for pork: Following industry consolidation in the late 1980s and 1990s, the portion of U.S. hogs slaughtered in massive, million-head capacity plants rose from 38 percent to 88 percent in just two decades.
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Larger plants also concentrate more workers in close quarters, causing some of the largest clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks among workers in the country. At least 15 massive meat-processing plants shut down this month, reducing production capacity by 20 percent for both pork and beef. Experts now predict meat consumer shortages within a month and farmers are euthanizing livestock to deal with a sudden backlog of animals.
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“If you pull out one little thing in that specialized, centralized, consolidated chain, then everything crashes,” said Mary Hendrickson, a rural sociology professor at University of Missouri. “Now we have an animal welfare catastrophe, an environmental catastrophe, a farmer catastrophe, and a worker catastrophe altogether, and we can trace a lot of this back to the pursuit of efficiency.”

Como não recordar o esquema de 2008:

Mais eficiência é mais pureza estratégica.
Mais pureza estratégica é mais risco e menos flexibilidade.
Menos flexibilidade é mais mortalidade quando o mundo muda.

"the smallest and most local food providers, such as local farms providing community supported agriculture (CSA) shares, have reacted quickly to the crisis and benefited from a spike in demand for direct food sales. These businesses are not tied to complicated purchasing contracts and often work with multiple buyers and distribution channels, including direct access to consumers.
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“If you look at what the small farmers are doing, they’re changing on a dime to online ordering systems and delivery,” said Hendrickson. “Those organizations that have the most flexibility and latitude to change are going to be really important in the future.”
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Finally, public food infrastructure could play a critical role in supporting mid-sized producers, responding to shocks, and serving communities cut out of consolidated supply chains."

E se o COVID- 19 matasse o que resta do século XX? E se o COVID- 19 acelerasse a chegada de Mongo?

Afinal, não tenho repetido por aqui esta frase?

"El coronavirus actúa como acelerador de cambios que ya estaban en marcha...”

Trechos retirados de "Why Are Farmers Destroying Food While Grocery Stores Are Empty?"

Eficiência versus adaptabilidade

O meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras mandou-me este artigo, "6 Critical Lessons in Organisational Agility from the COVID-19 crisis". A introdução está em sintonia com as mensagens do blogue:

"Most businesses are designed for efficiency, not adaptability. [Moi ici: Recordar os marcadores do eficientismo, da eficiência, do numerador versus denominador] The underlying philosophy is to obtain the maximum yield for an acceptable effort and to scale this as effectively as possible. Last century’s Scientific Management is the key influence.  [Moi ici: Recordar o marcador sobre magnitograd, recordar Levitown, recordar o século XX]  Such businesses, by design, are not built to suddenly change course. They are designed to do key activities efficiently."

Há tempos aqui no blogue citei:

"for at least the next couple months every organisation in the world is a startup" 

E:

"El coronavirus actúa como acelerador de cambios que ya estaban en marcha..." 

Nos próximos tempos ainda faz mais sentido pensar em adaptabilidade:

"In contrast, a start-up is designed to be incredibly adaptable. It’s structure is fluid as it continually pivots to find the right product-market fit in order to survive. It is fast and nimble and can easy out-manoeuvre larger organisations, but it isn’t efficient and it can’t scale.

...
In a traditional firm (the freighter), intelligence and decision making is centralised. Decisions are made at the “top” of the firm and supporting directives cascade to the people doing the tasks. When decisions need to be made, they must flow back up to the centralised control and then back down again. The delay directly prevents agility.
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In an adaptive firm, authority is pushed to the people with the information. In other words, the people at the coalface are empowered to make appropriate decisions as required. If the decision requires others, they find the people required and attempt to make the decision as quickly as possible." 

Um mundo diferente

Um mundo diferente do Normalistão e de Magnitogrado/Levittown.

"According to the sixth annual “Freelancing in America” survey, released on October 3 by the Freelancers Union (which has 450,000 members) and Upwork, a digital platform for freelancers and their employers, for every freelancer who sees their work situation as temporary, there’s another who sees it as a long-term career path.
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As more people opt for full-time freelance—28% did this year, as opposed to the 17% who did in 2014—it’s worth looking at their share of the U.S. economy. Freelance income currently makes up almost 5% of the country’s GDP, or close to $1 trillion. That’s a greater share than those of industries like construction and transportation.
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In the U.S. this year, 57 million people worked as freelancers, up from around 53 million in 2014, the first year this study was conducted. That’s about 35% of the U.S workforce.
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This year, 60% of freelancers started working that way by choice as opposed to by necessity (say, due to an unexpected layoff). The number of people who see freelancing as a long-term career option jumped from 18.5 million to 28.5 million between 2014 and 2019."

Trechos retirados de "35% of the U.S. workforce is now freelancing—10 million more than 5 years ago"

Mais qualidade para lucrar mais

Os meus amigos da Cascata de Números desafiaram-me para a falar sobre Qualidade.

O meu ângulo de abordagem será o da: mais qualidade para lucrar mais.

Todos vão perder

O século XX foi o século de Metropolis, o século de Magnitograd, o século de Levittown, o século das linhas de montagem, o século da escala e do volume, o século do Normalistão. O século do crescimento canceroso.

Razão tinha Popper em defender a ideia de que temos de estar sempre alerta, só porque hoje se vive melhor do que ontem, não quer dizer que amanhã se viverá melhor do que hoje.

Em Dezembro de 2014 escrevi "Ter razão antes do mainstream é tramado". Nesse texto sublinhava a ironia da ministra da Agricultura de então, actual dirigente do CDS, chegar ao mesmo modelo para a agricultura portuguesa que o saudoso ministro socialista Jaime Silva preconizava. Ou se calhar, não chegou, apenas leu o que alguém lhe "botou" no discurso. Na altura ela disse: "Cristas quer colar a Portugal o rótulo de país da "joalharia da agricultura". Algo que jogava bem com a marca Portugal, recordo este outro texto de Junho de 2014, "A marca Portugal".

Mas uma coisa são os agricultores que espalham bosta nos campos e que daqui a 10 ou 20 anos vão continuar por lá, eles ou os seus filhos. Outra são os que mandam semear ou plantar hoje aqui e quando não der, deitam abaixo o pau do circo e mudam-se para outro lado.

E o que está a acontecer no Alentejo é a cópia de tudo o que nos afasta da joalharia agrícola, é a cópia do Mar del Plástico.

Meter um país pequeno, com terras pobres, a mergulhar na produção intensiva ... só vai dar asneira... "A outra face do sucesso do Alqueva é um Alentejo envenenado por químicos"

Mongo, aka Estranhistão, será o mundo da variedade, o mundo da diversidade, o mundo em que não queremos ser tratados como plancton. Outros, sabem fugir do crescimento canceroso e da tragédia dos comuns apostando na joalharia:

• Danish farm sells potatoes for 1,500 kroner per kilo
• Olhar para o problema sob uma perspectiva diferente (Maio de 2014)

BTW, os fabricantes low-cost de cortinas em PVC para a casa de banho deram cabo do produto. Hoje, já ninguém usa esse material, mesmo que seja produzido por fabricantes com cuidado. No redemoinho turbulento da tragédia dos comuns ninguém se safa... o Rei Lear: Uma estória amoral, todos perdem os bons e os maus.

Todos acabam por perder, mesmo o que não seguem a via cancerosa, porque a marca Portugal vai ficar queimada.

Levittown

Quando quero usar uma metáfora sobre o modelo económico do século XX uso os termos Metrópolis, por causa do filme de Fritz Lang, e Magnitogorsk ou Magnitograd por causa do bairro operário dessa cidade do tempo de Estaline. Centenas ou milhares de casas todas iguais, todas com o mesmo mobiliário. A única diferença é que algumas casas tinham candeeiros brancos e outras tinham candeeiros laranja.

Não se pense que as Magnitogorsk eram um apanágio do mundo comunista. Não, eram uma consequência de um modelo industrialista baseado na produção em massa e com pouco ou nenhum cuidado com o que os utilizadores pretendiam ou valorizavam.

Ontem, ao folhear uma publicação do Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reencontrei uma imagem que procurava à muito:

"In July 1947, on potato fields 20 miles from Manhattan, William Levitt pioneered the mass production of affordable homes. Variations in the 17,477 houses were minor; each had two bedrooms, a bath, living room and kitchen on a 750-square-foot concrete slab. By standardizing the units, Levitt eventually was able to put up more than two dozen a day, helping fill the enormous postwar demand. Over the years, innumerable changes to the homes have transformed the community. But even now, Levittown remains a kind of shorthand for the sameness of mass production that’s starting to give way to mass customization."

O senhor eurodeputado precisa de conhecer Mongo e ...

O mundo muda, mas muitas pessoas não se apercebem e, por isso, continuam apegadas aos mitos do paradigma onde nasceram e foram enformados.

Recordo aqui no blogue muitas vezes uma frase de Napoleão:

Nesse mundo o crescimento era possível ao estilo canceroso, por isso uso a  metáfora de Metropolis ou de Magnitograd, ou Magnitogorsk. 

Para quem está prisioneiro do paradigma do século XX a falta de pessoal para trabalhar é medonha. Porque ainda não chegaram ao fim deste postal, "Coisa de loucos", porque nunca leram esta série "Como aumentar a facturação quando não se pode aumentar a produção por falta de pessoas?", continuam focados na última guerra, que já acabou, e fazem figuras tristes: "José Manuel Fernandes diz que é necessário "aumentar a natalidade"" 

A juntar a "10 profissões tradicionais onde há falta de gente" e a:

"Por outro lado, grande parte dos profissionais que dominam este ofício trabalha por conta própria, mostrando pouca disponibilidade para aceitar desafios por conta de outrem que embora estejam hoje mais valorizados monetariamente, continuam a não ser suficientemente aliciantes."

Encontro agora "As profissões sem 'canudo' que oferecem salários acima da média".

Tudo sintomas previstos aqui no blogue há muito, muito tempo.

O senhor eurodeputado precisa de conhecer Mongo e mergulhar no Estranhistão, precisa desta epifania:


BTW, comparem a primeira frase do vídeo com o discurso do feike niús.

"Uber", Mongo e a educação

O objectivo da escola, criada para abastecer as fábricas do século XX, com trabalhadores obedientes e nivelados, é o de produzir gente que cumpre um conjunto de especificações, iguais para todos:

O ideal de Metropolis, o ideal de Magnitograd!

No entanto, este ideal em Mongo é uma autêntica aberração!

"With robots increasingly blurring the lines between human intelligence and its artificial equivalent, the essential human qualities of ingenuity, agility and curiosity are more important than ever. Despite leaving the industrial age for an era of innovation, our compulsory mass schooling model reflects old-fashioned factories. If we want to distinguish ourselves from robots, we need an education model that cultivates creativity rather than crushes it.
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In 19th-century America, the rise of compulsory mass schooling dovetailed with the Industrial Revolution. Emerging factories valued large-scale efficiency and standardization, and these principles seeped into the early “common school” movement, shaping education over the next 150 years. Schools, in turn, began to resemble factories.
...
Disillusioned by a factory-style system of schooling that has persisted for over a century, many parents and educators are rejecting schooling in favor of “unschooling.”
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In a dynamic global economy, a fixed curriculum and a classroom inspired by the past can hardly meet the needs of the present, let alone the future.
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Entrepreneurial educators are leading the way in rethinking education through unschooling.
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In the age of robots, human creativity is our key differentiator. Yet compulsory mass schooling continues to operate on an assembly line model better suited to producing widgets than wit. To successfully move into the innovation era, we need a new model of education that supports a child’s natural creativity, exuberance and ingenuity. If schooling was for the past, then unschooling is the future."

Tanta blasfémia junta para os fofinhos que querem criar um Homem Novo e uma Sociedade Nova, formatada por eles. Esta tendência será ferozmente combatida pelos florêncios de muitas antrais incumbentes.

Interessante como isto se relaciona com o tema de fazer reset a um sistema, quando o jogo muda de nível, ou com o do aparecimento da Buurtzorg como reacção ao eficientismo.

E quem vão ser os principais inimigos desta transição? Os que perdem poder, os que perdem mordomias, os que são protegidos pelo sistema actual ainda que assassinem o potencial dos estudantes.

Trecho retirado de "Is Unschooling the Uber of Education?"

Cuidado com o poder que damos aos da nossa cor

No último postal, "A abominação da eficiência - o anti-Mongo (parte I)", no texto que cito, o autor fala das organizações "Orange":

"This is the worldview of the scientific and industrial revolutions. At this stage, the world is no longer seen as a fixed universe governed by immutable rules of right and wrong. Instead, it is seen as a complex clockwork, whose inner workings and natural laws can be investigated and understood.
...
This worldview dominates management thinking today; it is the (often unconscious) perspective that permeates what is taught in business schools across the world.
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Achievement-Orange thinks of organizations as machines. The engineering jargon we use to talk about organizations reveals how deeply (albeit often unconsciously) we hold this metaphor. We talk about units and layers, inputs and outputs, efficiency and effectiveness, pulling the lever and moving the needle, information flows and bottlenecks, re-engineering and downsizing. Leaders and consultants design organizations; humans are resources that must be carefully aligned on the chart, rather like cogs in a machine; changes must be planned and mapped out in blueprints, then carefully implemented according to plan. If some of the machinery functions below the expected rhythm, it’s probably time to inject some oil to grease the wheel with a “soft” intervention, like a team-building exercise. The metaphor of the machine reveals how much Orange organizations can brim with energy and motion, but also how lifeless and soulless they can come to feel."

Claro que a visão "Orange" representou um salto face às visões anteriores e trouxe-nos coisas muito importantes e úteis. No entanto, trouxe-nos Magnitogorsk, trouxe-nos Metropolis, trouxe-nos a paranoia pela eficiência e crença absoluta na razão. Pessoalmente, posso dizer que o momento em que a semente que minou a minha devoção cega pelo mundo "Orange" foi posta na minha cabeça foi aquando do choque de ver num filme de entretenimento (Indiana Jones), que um coração humano retirado de um corpo e segurado por um sacerdote de Khali, continuava a pulsar.

Ao longo destes anos tenho chamado muitos nomes a esta gente que se governa exclusivamente pela razão, quase sempre macro-economistas que querem explicar o mundo com fórmulas matemáticas, tríade, encalhados, jogadores amadores de bilhar, muggles ... Um desses encalhados, José Reis mereceu este postal em Janeiro de 2011, "Retrato de um encalhado". Os encalhados, como vêem o mundo como uma máquina, planeiam tudo e estão impreparados para as consequências, para as respostas do mundo, porque o mundo não é uma máquina, porque o mundo não é explicável pela física newtoniana. O mundo é um ser vivo, e o que funciona hoje, falha amanhã ponto.

Os políticos socialistas, chamem-se eles Paulo Portas, ou Jerónimo & Martins, acham que o mundo é uma máquina sobre a qual se podem lançar leis e regras impunemente. O que me mete mais medo em qualquer político é a falta de medo pelas consequências, é a ideia de que se sabe tudo e se estudou tudo. Lembram-se dos tipos do leite? O exemplo do leite devia ser bombardeado a toda gente neste país, "Karma is a bitch!!! Ou os jogadores de bilhar amador no poder!" Organizações de produtores de leite, muito preocupadas com as importações de leite, defenderam e pressionaram para que fossem criadas leis que deram cabo da capacidade exportadora do sector. Estavam tão preocupados com as importações de leite que quiseram que os portugueses tivesse a origem do leite na embalagem, para saber que estavam a comprar leite francês ou alemão. Trouxas, esqueceram-se que Portugal exportava muito mais leite do que aquele que importava. Os espanhóis, grandes consumidores de leite português sem o saberem, começaram a preferir leite espanhol, ainda que mais caro (suponho), porque agora podem ver a origem na embalagem. Imaginem, façam o paralelismo para o à vontade com que se legisla sobre tudo e um par de botas sem pensar nas consequências, sem pensar nas "unintended consequences".

Conseguem recuar no tempo e recordar o espírito do tempo acerca da competitividade portuguesa? Lembram-se do que diziam os os membros da tríade (académicos, paineleiros, jornalistas) sobre a competitividade portuguesa? Lembram-se dos apelos à saída do euro, dos apelos ao proteccionismo? Não se lembram? Recordem estes 25 cromos! E lembram-se sobre o que aqui escrevíamos no tempo de Sócrates a 2 de Janeiro de 2011 sobre as PME e a competitividade da economia portuguesa? Acham-me um socratista?

Todos devíamos ter mais cuidado com a quantidade de poder que deixamos os políticos terem sobre a nossa vida pessoal e comunitária. Mesmos os mais bem intencionados atiram-nos barras de dinamite com a mecha acesa.

Os da nossa cor estão no poder e, por isso, concordamos que mais poder lhes seja atribuído. Quando os da cor dos outros chegam ao poder ficamos com medo do poder que eles agora têm, e vice versa.

Trechos retirados de Laloux, Frederic. "Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations"

A abominação da eficiência - o anti-Mongo (parte I)

Há anos que escrevo aqui sobre a abominação da eficiência na esfera do estado: escolas-cidade e hospitais-cidade, por exemplo:

• (Novembro de 2012) - Amor versus arame
• (Fevereiro de 2015) - "When is a company too big to manage?"
• (Fevereiro de 2015) - "quebrar os dentes ao SNS"
• (Julho de 2017) - Um clássico
• (Junho de 2018) - Mongo na saúde

Na última conversa oxigenadora o meu parceiro convenceu-me a comprar "Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations". Ontem, enquanto descia a A4 numa viagem de camioneta tive oportunidade de ler uma estória de que ele me tinha falado:

"Here is the story of neighborhood nursing in the Netherlands and of a pioneering organization called Buurtzorg. Since at least the eighteenth century, every neighborhood in the Netherlands has had one or more nurses that worked outside of hospitals, visiting the sick and the elderly in their homes. During the twentieth century, the social security system increasingly took over the costs of the system.
...
In the 1980s, the Dutch government had an idea that made a lot of sense, seen from an “Orange” [Moi ici: O termo "Orange" é usado pelo autor para designar as empresas do século XX, muito racionais e com uma crença ilimitada na inteligência e análise] scientific/industrial perspective: if all the nurses could be grouped into large organizations, economies of scale would kick in, generating savings for the taxpayer. Nurses were pushed to affiliate with large organizations that started implementing modern (Orange) management practices step by step. Quickly, these organizations decided it was inefficient that the client would always be seen by the same nurse. A different nurse was now dispatched to clients every day, based on availability. Higher flexibility meant less potential downtime for nurses between two clients. Call centers were set up in headquarters, now that clients could no longer call “their” nurse directly. Then, it was decided to have the nurses specialize. More experienced nurses must be paid more, so they were sent to do only the more difficult, technical interventions. All the rest—simpler things like shots and bandages—was now pushed to less expensive nurses, resulting in further cost savings.
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Managers noticed that some nurses worked much faster than others, so time norms were established. Two and-a-half minutes to change a compression stocking, ten minutes for a shot. Everything was specified down to the minute. With time norms defined, planning departments were set up in headquarters. Every evening, each nurse now receives a sheet of paper with a detailed plan for the next day, prepared by someone in the planning department she most likely will never meet.
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The care providers started merging in pursuit of further economies of scale. To “manage” the nurses in these big companies, layers of hierarchy were added. A district manager overseeing a few dozen nurses reports to a regional manager, who reports to a national manager. The managers today often have no nursing experience. Their role is simply to monitor and improve the nurses’ performance. They have lots of data they can slice and dice because nurses are asked to peg a small barcode sticker to the front door of all clients, scan that code when they go in to provide care, and scan it again when they leave. With all this data, managers can make continuous improvement; they can tell nurses for which kind of interventions they are slower than their peers. Every one of these changes—specialization, flexibility, economies of scale, continuous improvement—has resulted in efficiency gains, arguably a good thing for the Dutch health care system. [Moi ici: Como não pensar nos agrupamentos que geraram as escolas-cidade e os mega-hospitais-cidade]
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But there is a dark side to the system Patients hate it For older, sometimes confused clients, having an unknown face come into the intimacy of their home every day is difficult. They have to share their story and their medical condition with a total—and hurried—stranger.
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Nurses hate it The way they are asked to operate hurts their vocation and integrity. They realize that they often give bad or insufficient care. But the system prevents them from doing what they know is called for."

A suckiness dos gigantes nada pode contra isto

"Along with the ceaseless churn of collections — averaging at least four a year — designers leading major brands must invent It bags, launch mass-market fragrances and cosmetic lines, and produce ever more extravagant shows and events to feed social media. Despite this, what consumers long for are experiences, authenticity and community — concepts that, when touted for marketing purposes, quickly lose meaning.
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While running a small independent fashion label is more difficult in some ways than being part of a big conglomerate, it does allow the freedom to be true to one’s instincts and beliefs, which in turn leads to real brand community.
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who are transforming how business is done in their industry with practices that are ethical and equitable to their manufacturers, employees and the environment. They do this not because it is good business (it usually isn’t), but because it seems the obvious moral choice. And because they do this while creating fashion that articulates and, most importantly, anticipates what women want to express and how they want to feel, they have earned the devotion and loyalty of their customers, who tend to be talented, self-realized women: architects and actors, writers and gallery owners.
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Indeed, the quest to be true to one’s self is something all these designers share. Several years ago, Rachel Comey, 45, realized the usual fashion show setup — people crammed on hard benches to watch a few minutes of clothes on parade — didn’t do justice to the kinds of clothes she was making. Instead, Comey began hosting intimate dinner parties, where guests could converse while seeing pieces worn by models of various ages and races. Comey’s designs, which early on suited the creative Brooklyn woman who wanted to look equal parts sexy, comfortable and dorky, are sometimes deeply personal, riffing on her own girlhood memories." (1)

Um filme com um título que diz tudo "Hand-Crafted Is So In Right Now--And This Company Is Capitalizing On It"

Os gigantes vão ser úteis, como a Uber para limpar a legislação, para financiar o investimento em tecnologia que depois, com a sua democratização, poderão ser usados pelos independentes, "If the Shoe Fits: 3D Printing and the Future of Manufacturing Footwear", porque a suckiness vai dar cabo deles.




Trechos 1 retirados de "The Independent Women’s Designers Having a Big Moment"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII, parte VIII, parte IX, parte X e parte XI.

Revolta contra a suckiness.

Em especial a parte X, acerca dos gigantes terem sido talhados para o Normalistão e falhem cada vez mais com o avanço de Mongo, eis o tema abordado por Seth Godin ontem em "Bigger to feel safer":

"Creative institutions get bigger so that they can avoid doing things that feel risky.
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They may rationalize this as leverage, as creating more impact. But it's a coin with two sides, and the other side is that they do proportionally more things that are reliable and fewer things that feel like they might fail.
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In other words, hiring more people makes their useful creative productivity go down.
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This is not the way it works in a factory. When Henry Ford hired more people for the assembly line, productivity went up. Things got more efficient. More lines, more plants, more hands led to more productivity. The natural scale of the enterprise was large indeed.
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But a creative studio, a marketing team, architects, strategists, programmers, writers, editors, city planners, teachers--the natural scale of the enterprise is smaller than you think. [Moi ici: O que dizemos acerca de Mongo? O triunfo da arte! Organizações que praticam a arte não podem ter sucesso com os pressupostos que resultavam no Normalistão]
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This is a new law of organizations, and it's not well understood."

A maré do século XXI

Há dias Steve Blank usava a história para fazer um paralelismo entre Elon Musk e o fundador da GM, "Why the Future of Tesla May Depend on Knowing What Happened to Billy Durant".

O artigo é muito interessante e deu para aprender factos importantes. No entanto, há uma ressalva que  quero fazer: atenção à grande corrente de fundo que estava em marcha na primeira metade do século XX.

A primeira metade do século XX foi a ascensão de Metrópolis, a ascensão de Magnitograd, a ascensão da produção em massa, a ascensão da padronização, o triunfo do Normalistão.

Agora, a embrenharmos-nos no século XXI, estamos perante uma outra corrente, uma corrente numa direcção oposta: a ascensão de um mundo económico a que metaforicamente chamo de Mongo; o Estranhistão, a ascensão da variedade, a ascensão da diversidade, a ascensão dos artesãos e das tribos.

Ontem descobri um artigo que ilustra bem esta corrente que nos está a levar a Mongo, "How to Start Designing Your Own Products in 4 Easy Steps":

"With print-on-demand, the sky's the limit with what you can create. And the best part is, for aspiring business owners, it's extremely easy to get started.
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Over the last two years, I've gone from zero to over 600 products that I sell online using print-on-demand technology. The technology has not only allowed me to create a passive income, but also explore my creative side. The best part -- there are literally hundreds of products that I can create so I can focus my time and creative efforts on coming up with incredible designs."

Aquilo a que se chama aqui de democratização da produção (desde 2012), o que vai derrotar os gigantes concentrados na massa, as cooperativas de artesãos. Recordar que na cidade americana de Baltimore, só nessa cidade, em 1920 existiam 19 marcas fabricantes de automóveis.

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"Not only did print on demand provide an easy way to offer my customers more options, but it was also a simple way to spread brand awareness without having to fill my apartment with inventory.
The world of print-on-demand fashion has revolutionized the side hustle and merchandising game for many entrepreneurs. There is no risk in launching a new T-shirt design in your store because there is no preprinting and inventory required.
...
“E-commerce is all about finding ways to do things faster, cheaper, and easier,” ... “The fact that I can run a profitable business out of my home, with no office space, employees, or startup costs is pretty phenomenal.”
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Some store owners have taken advantage of these same tools to make hyper-personalized items.
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Despite these advantages, one of the largest downsides to print on demand remains the price. When no quantities are guaranteed up front, the prices for printing are not cheap, leaving a low profit margin for the seller.
...
Print-on-demand platforms make it easy for artists to list their work on a multitude of shirts, posters, mugs, and so on without testing them in advance. Companies make this variety tempting to give customers a greater selection and increase the chances they’ll make a purchase.
...
In our fast-paced era of online content creation, social media stars with big fan bases are becoming much more common. For smaller stars with dedicated followings, these on-demand opportunities can also be fantastic for creating branded merchandise. YouTubers and podcasters can let their fans be brand ambassadors, spreading the word and growing the hype.
...
But on-demand printing is not limited to fashion. It’s also a wonderful way for writers to self-publish.
...
Overall, on-demand printing and its integration with various platforms is empowering designers and creators alike to take charge over their creative ventures and not be limited by traditional business or industry barriers. It makes small fashion businesses more accessible and brings buyers a more custom experience."

Recordar todos aqueles que têm sempre na boca a inovação, a Indústria 4.0, a IA e, continuam a acreditar que a escala é tudo:

"Hoje em dia, na grande parte das actividades, a escala é muito importante."

E não percebem a dispersão crescente da procura, de como a autenticidade é cada vez mais importante e de como há cada vez menos barreiras à entrada: a democratização da produção.




Trechos retirados de "Technology Shaping the Fashion Industry"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte II)

Parte I.

Quem ao longo dos anos segue este blogue, conhece a minha metáfora de Mongo sobre o mundo económico para onde caminhámos, e sobre como esse mundo representa um distanciamento face ao paradigma que formatou as universidades e os cursos de economia e gestão, moldados nos modelos da produção em massa, da escala, daquilo a que chamo de Metropolis ou Magnitogorsk, crentes na racionalidade das decisões.

Quem conhece a metáfora de Mongo, olhe bem para o tweet que se segue:

The explosion of craft brewing could be an early signal of a big shift away from standardized mass market products to tailored creative products, leading to a significant fragmentation of product businesses https://t.co/rF3q7MT48A

— John Hagel (@jhagel) January 27, 2018

Reparem:

"a big shift away from standardized mass market products to tailored creative products, leading to a significant fragmentation of product businesses"

Como isto é nem mais nem menos o que aqui dizemos desde Novembro de 2007:

"Se Chris Anderson tiver razão, e espero bem que sim, trata-se de uma esperança, para as sociedades dos países pequenos. Quanto mais aumentar o poder da cauda longa, mais oportunidades de negócio existirão, para as pequenas empresas, rápidas e flexíveis que apostarem na diferenciação, na diversidade, na variedade. A cabeça pode ficar para os asiáticos, mas a nata das margens, essa ficará para quem, como dizia Jesus Cristo, tiver olhos para ver, e ouvidos para ouvir, a corrente, a tendência de fundo."

Na parte III vamos mergulhar nas implicações das produções "on demand" para na parte IV analisarmos o artigo sobre as cervejas artesanais e o seu simbolismo.

Tríade, Taylor, Mongo e a Al Qaeda

Em "Team of Teams: The Power of Small Groups in a Fragmented World" de Stanley McChrystal e Chris Fussell encontro um paralelismo que faço há muitos anos e que traduzo em linguagem colorida como em "os encalhados da tríade".

O mundo que formatou a tríade (políticos, académicos e comentadores) foi o mundo de Metropolis, o mundo de Magnitogorsk, o mundo da eficiência, um mundo criado pelo taylorismo:

"Taylor created a clockwork factory, systematically eliminating variation, studying all labor until he understood it inside and out, honing it to peak efficiency, and ensuring that those precise procedures were followed at scale. Because he could study and predict, he could control. He dubbed his doctrine "scientific management."
.
Taylor became the world's first management guru. At a paper mill in Wisconsin, he was told that the art of pulping and drying could not be reduced to a science. He instituted his system and material costs dropped from $75 to $35 per ton, while labor costs dropped from $30 a ton to $8. At a ball bearing factory, he experimented with everything from lighting levels to rest break durations, and oversaw an increase in quantity and quality of production while reducing the number of employees from 120 to 35; at a pig iron plant, he raised worker output from 12.5 to 47 tons of steel per day, and decreased the number of workers from 600 to 140.
...
Taylor’s ideas spread from company to company, from industry to industry, and from blue collars to white (there was one best way to insert paper into a typewriter, to sit at a desk, to clip pages together). They seeped into the halls of government. His philosophy of replacing the intuition of the person doing the job with reductionist efficiencies designed by a separate group of people marked a new means of organizing human endeavors. It was the behavioral soul mate for the technical advances of industrial engineering.
.
Taylor’s success represented the legitimization of “management” as a discipline. Previously, managerial roles were rewards for years of service in the form of higher pay and less strenuous labor. The manager’s main function was to keep things in working order and maintain morale. Under Taylor’s formulation, managers were both research scientists and architects of efficiency.
.
This drew a hard-and-fast line between thought and action: managers did the thinking and planning, while workers executed. No longer were laborers expected to understand how or why things worked—in fact, managers saw teaching them that or paying a premium for their expertise as a form of waste.
...
Military planners had relied on many of Taylor’s strategies—the segregation of planning and execution, standardization, and an emphasis on efficiency— for centuries before Taylor was born. But Taylor’s ideas inspired many military leaders to find fresh ways to create a more efficient fighting force.
...
“by the late 1920s, it could seem that all of modern society had come under the sway of a single commanding idea: that waste was wrong and efficiency the highest good, and that eliminating one and achieving the other was best left to the experts.”"

Este é o molde que ao chocar com Mongo deixa de funcionar. Assim como o percebi algures entre 2006 - 2008, McChrystal começou a intui-lo em 2004 ao chocar com a Al Qaeda do Iraque. (Ao longe intuí o mesmo ao aconselhar às PMEs que seguissem o exemplo da Al Qaeda: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 e 2006)

"This new world required a fundamental rewriting of the rules of the game. In order to win, we would have to set aside many of the lessons that millennia of military procedure and a century of optimized efficiencies had taught us.
...
In 2004, as we planned clockwork raids designed to make the most of every drop of fuel, we were manning a managerial Maginot Line: our extraordinarily efficient procedures and plans were well crafted and necessary, but not sufficient.
...
Over the past century, the kind of organizational measures that ensure the success
of combat parachute assaults have proliferated throughout the military, industry, and business. In today’s environment, however, these solutions are the equivalent of the provincial apprenticeship models that Taylor stumbled upon in 1874. In Iraq, the inexplicable, networked success of our underresourced enemy indicated that they had cracked this nut before we had. Managerially, AQI was flanking us."

Precário, flexível and proud of it

Nos media em Portugal, quando se fala de recibos verdes é sempre com uma conotação negativa. Também por isso, cada vez mais leis atrapalham e dificultam a vida a quem assume levar uma vida profissional que passa por esse meio de formalização do pagamento de serviços.

Julgo que este gráfico devia fazer com que muita gente reflectisse no que ele representa e, no impacte que dele decorre na forma como o trabalho é visto e concebido numa sociedade a caminho de Mongo e a afastar-se do século XX e do seu modelo de Magnitograd.

Vale a pena ler "4 predictions for the future of work":

"Our education system is broken. The way we educate future generations no longer prepares them adequately for the skills and jobs of today. The idea that you study math and science and art in your youth as separate disciplines, and then work to solve real world problems in today’s economy, does not add up. Preparing students for tomorrow’s jobs requires breaking down the silos within education."

Recordar "Em todo o lado a mesma doença"

Prisioneiros da era industrial

Aqui uso as metáforas de Magnitogrado ou Metrópolis para ilustrar o paradigma de produção no século XX.

Já aqui escrevi que o século XX começou em Outubro de 1913, quando arrancou a linha de montagem da Ford. Foi com um sorriso irónico, a pensar nos encalhados da tríade que continuam prisioneiros do modelo mental do século XX, que li em "Strategy for a Networked World" de Ramirez & Mannervik:

"The so-called "end user" in this industrial era representation of how value is created and destroyed thus equalled that which in value chain terms was called the "final" customer. For producers, value was "realised" in the transaction, which simultaneously joined and separated them from customers. In this context, value was equated to the price that the customer paid
...
Consistent with this understanding of value, Hirschhorn (1984) specified that in industrial manufacturing, value creation was characterised by:

1. economics of scale;
2. large, physically and temporally concentrated production facilities;
3. long production runs;
4. mass markets;
5. task specialisation; and
6. standardisation."

Mete impressão como tanta gente na academia continua prisioneira deste modelo.

"Although much of manufacturing is still of this pattern, large parts of the economy and even important parts of industry have been increasingly moving away from it." 

Recordar os exemplos do calçado, do têxtil e do mobiliário portugueses, que ilustram como à revelia dos seis pontos acima as empresas deram a volta ao rolo compressor chinês.

Mongo é gigante-unfriendly

Cuidado com as escolas-cidade, com os hospitais-cidade, com as mega-estruturas num mundo complexo. Cuidado com as Torre de Babel.

O século XX continua por cá

Hoje, numa acção de formação vou usar esta imagem:

Tem tudo a ver com a mentalidade e os modelos de desenvolvimento que existiam no século XX e que explicam este racional: "Porque somos pouco produtivos? Ter empresas pequenas não ajuda".

A mesma treta da Junqueira. Gente bem intencionada mas formatada em Magnitograd:

• Para reflexão: proteja-se contra a treta (Maio de 2017)