“Desculpe lá, desculpe lá, o que é que não funciona?”

"Generating distinct options is even more difficult when our minds settle into certain well-worn grooves. Two of those grooves are common states of mind, studied widely by researchers, that play a role in almost every decision we make. One is triggered when we think about avoiding bad things, and one is triggered when we think about pursuing good things. When we're in one state, we tend to ignore the other.

To illustrate one of these states of mind, imagine a morning that goes as follows. Your teenage son talks to you about his duties as the president of a service-minded student club. You're proud of him, but you also hope he understands the commitments he's made. In your driveway, you bump into your next-door neighbor, who mentions that a home down the street recently sold, after six months, for far less than its asking price. On the way to work, you listen to a radio program about the potential dangers of a newly emerging technology.

Then, an hour after you arrive at the office, your boss pulls you aside and tells you about a new position that has opened up. It involves leading a small team in creating and launching a new product. It's a pretty risky product concept, but your boss thinks there's solid potential. He wonders if you'd be interested—it would involve a lateral move, with fewer direct reports than you currently have but potentially more glory if everything goes well.

What's your gut reaction to the offer? You might feel a little cautious. It doesn't really sound like a promotion, and you have a responsibility to get your team through its current project. And what happens if the new product is a flop? Will you have sabotaged your career prospects? You will definitely want to consider the position carefully. Better safe than sorry.

Now imagine a different morning. Your son tells you about his aspirations for a club he joined at school; you feel parental pride that he's pursuing big goals. Your neighbor tells you about how much he loves his herb garden, which gets you thinking about some landscaping ideas for your own backyard. On the way to work, you listen to a radio program about the opportunities opened up by a newly emerging technology. An hour after you arrive at work—the same as before your boss tells you about a new position ...

Now what's your gut reaction to the position? This time, you might feel a bit more open and enthusiastic. You're being trusted to lead a new product with great potential! Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

How you react to the position, in short, depends a great deal on your mindset at the time it's offered. Psychologists have identified two contrasting mindsets that affect our motivation and our receptiveness to new opportunities: a "prevention focus," which orients us toward avoiding negative outcomes, and a "promotion focus," which orients us toward pursuing positive outcomes. 

In the first scenario above, you arrive at work with a prevention focus, which means that you are in a vigilant mood. You want to ensure that your son lives up to his duties. You're worried about your home losing its value. You really hope policy makers will stave off the dangers of the new technology. So when you think about the new position, your spotlight tends to highlight what could go wrong, what you could lose. Whereas in the second scenario you have a promotion focus, meaning that you are eager rather than vigilant—you're open to new ideas and new experiences."

Os mesmos eventos são percebidos de forma diferente. A principal conclusão é que o nosso estado de espírito no momento da tomada de decisão influencia grandemente a nossa reação às oportunidades e desafios. Como não recordar a comunicação social no tempo da troika e no tempo da geringonça.

Humanos perante os mesmos factos. Não, adultos perante os mesmos factos. Como será o modelo mental:

Como será o modelo mental de alguém que pergunta: “Desculpe lá, desculpe lá, o que é que não funciona?”

"Perception is subjective"

"Perception is subjective. In other words, awareness of a common environment through physical sensations differs from person to person. Therefore, different people have different experiences of reality. Such differences become especially significant when new and unforeseen circumstances unfold before our eyes, such as when events disrupt a business’s normal operating conditions.

...

What we "see" is the result of a successful matchup of patterns in the reality an individual observes and his or her mental programming, which happens throughout our lives and is affected by our education, schooling, cultural habits, customs and traditions, prejudices, interpersonal relationships, work or industry experiences, exposure to different socioeconomic and geopolitical environments, media exposure, travel, and reading.

...

An individual’s perception of reality is thus a matter of creating mental images. We create mental images by matching the object of our observation, or our experience of a situation or condition, with our mental programming. Therefore, reality is judged according to the beliefs we were mentally programmed to accept as right or wrong, valid or invalid, or true or false. And we apply those beliefs to our interpretation of successful value-chain governance and to interpret events as they unfold before our eyes."

Trecho retirado de "The Root Cause: Rethink Your Approach to Solving Stubborn Enterprise-Wide Problems" de Hans Norden

"duas economias, diferentes realidades, diferentes meios de competir ou não competir" (parte II)

Parte I. 

Comecei a parte I com a imagem dos "caretos" da região de Trás-os-Montes como símbolo de um tempo em que cada região tinha a sua roupa, a sua gastronomia, os seus dialectos e sotaques, sem a pressão de uma uniformização centralizadora. 

No final da semana passada, numa caminhada matinal junto à foz do rio Douro 

tive a oportunidade de ler um texto muito, muito interessante, "Competition on Rugged Landscapes: The Dynamics of Product Positioning" de Leon Zucchini.

Antes de mais recordemos esta evolução na economia, do século XX para o século XXI, representada pela alteração da paisagem competitiva de um pico único para múltiplos picos:

"Competition on Smooth Landscapes [Moi ici: O mundo do século XX, o mundo do mercado homogéneo]

First, we consider performance in a smooth consumer landscape. ... in this type of landscape all consumers have similar preferences so there is only one large niche with a single global peak. In Figure 2, Panel (A) shows how average firm performance develops in the smooth landscape over time for different levels of competition. The learning process is clearly visible: firms start from their randomly assigned positions and gradually increase their performance as they explore the landscape and locate the global peak. After approximately 40 periods average performance has stabilized. The influence of competition is also clear: for a rising number of firms (F) the average performance stabilizes at a lower level. Thus, competition is detrimental to performance, which is exactly what we would expect in a real world setting. [Moi ici: A imagem clássica da competição económica. Quanto mais concorrentes, pior o desempenho]

...

firms‟ performance increases over time because they gradually approach the global peak: the distance initially drops sharply and then stabilizes after about 40 periods. This is what we would expect in an NK model with low ruggedness . However, in standard NK models without competition all firms would locate exactly at the global peak, whereas in Panel (B) an increasing number of competitors causes firms to locate at an increasing distance from the global peak. This is due to the difference between competition in horizontal and vertical differentiation ... if a firm has already located at the peak it becomes less attractive for all others. A corollary of this result is that with increasing competition the product designs offered in the market display greater heterogeneity: on average firms produce product designs that are similar but not identical to the modal consumer preference.

...

This means that in competitive markets with homogeneous consumer preferences firms never settle down but instead continue to adjust their product designs. Because firms only move when they can increase their (expected) performance and we know from Panel (A) that average performance has stabilized, that must mean that they are engaged in a constant process of stealing each other‟s customers.

This raises yet another question: which firms are moving? Does one dominant firm settle down on the peak while the others move around collecting the scraps, or does competition continue to threaten all firms? Panel (D) in Figure 2 shows that the latter is the case. It shows the proportion of market leaders, i.e. the firms with the highest market share, which are overtaken („dethroned‟) in each period. With an increasing number of competitors it becomes increasingly likely that the most successful firm will be dethroned: defending a leading market share becomes increasingly difficult the more competitors there are in the market.

Taken together these results suggest that on smooth landscapes, increasing competition causes markets to become increasingly and persistently volatile. Firms do not settle down with stable product designs but rather dance around the peak, continuously jostling for the best positions and being thwarted by their competitors. In terms of products the result is a continuous stream of new but similar product designs which become more and more diverse as competition increases. The cutthroat competition of stealing market shares in these markets is detrimental to firm performance, not only on average, but even for the most successful firms who are in constant danger of losing their leading position."

Agora o outro modelo económico, aquele a que chamo de Mongo, ou o Estranhistão, o modelo em que o século XXI se está a transformar:

"Competition on Rugged Landscapes

We have established that in „smooth‟ markets, competition leads to persistently volatile processes of adaptation. We now investigate how these dynamics are influenced by different distributions of consumer preferences. Figure 3 shows average results for different levels of ruggedness along the horizontal axis (from a single niche to many niches) and competition for the different lines (one, two, four and eight firms). The results are taken from the final period in the simulation ( ). Note that as illustrated by Figure 2 this is more than enough time for the results to settle into a pattern, whether static or volatile.

Panel (A) in Figure 3 shows how average performance changes with changing ruggedness and competition. For landscapes with few peaks (low ) increasing competition is detrimental to performance. This is the same result we saw in Figure 2. Here however, we see that as the landscape becomes increasingly rugged, the detrimental effect of competition on performance decreases: [Moi ici: Aquilo a que há anos designo aqui por "Live and let live"] evidently, if there are several niches it matters less if there are lots of rivals.

...

We already know that on smooth landscapes more competition causes firms to locate further away from the nearest peak. In Panel (B) we see that as the landscape becomes more rugged, firms locate closer to the nearest peak, regardless of the number of competitors in the market. This result suggests that firms may be dispersing to serve different niches. However, this result must be interpreted with caution because in more rugged landscapes there are also simply more peaks around. Note that firms that are alone in the landscape locate slightly further away from the nearest peak as K increases from zero.

...

what is the dynamic driving competition? One possibility is that there is constant movement both on smooth and rugged landscapes alike, with firms jostling each other off the peaks. In that case the differences in results for high levels of ruggedness may be due to the fact that the alternatives are more attractive: displaced firms can find other attractive niches to serve. Another possibility is that there is simply less movement on rugged landscapes because firms disperse and „settle down‟ to stable situations where each serves a local niche.

Panel (C) suggests that the latter explanation is more likely. For markets with few consumer niches competition has a large influence on volatility: the more firms in the market, the more movement we observe. As ruggedness increases, the average number of moves per firm and period decreases, regardless of the number of competitors. In very rugged landscapes (K=9) it makes hardly any difference whether there are two or eight firms in the market: firms have reached an essentially stable distribution.

Panel (D) corroborates this finding. On smooth landscapes the probability that the market leader will be dethroned depends heavily on the number of competitors. Thus, if there is a single large consumer niche then it will be difficult for any one firm to defend a lead in the market. As the number of niches increases, the number of competitors matters less and less: in the extreme case (K=9) the market leader has more than a 95% chance of defending its position even if there are eight competitors in the market. In these cases firms have dispersed to serve individual niches (local peaks in the consumer landscape) and are unlikely to move. That means firms which have located favorable niches with high performance (relative to their competitors) are unlikely to be overtaken.

To summarize, the distribution of consumer preferences matters for the dynamics of competitive positioning: On smooth landscapes we observe firms constantly jostling for competitive advantage around a few peaks. Competition is detrimental to performance and even successful firms are constantly in danger having their customers stolen by rivals. As the landscape becomes increasingly rugged, firms disperse more and more. Instead of clustering at some distance around a single peak they spread out to serve individual consumer niches. This has the additional effect that in very rugged markets movement drops to a minimum, and it is very unlikely that successful firms will be overtaken. Note that this result does not happen suddenly when the number of peaks becomes greater than the number of firms (at approximately ), but occurs gradually as ruggedness increases."

"duas economias, diferentes realidades, diferentes meios de competir ou não competir" (parte I)

Sim, eu sei que houve muitas mistificações acerca dos trajes tradicionais portugueses. No entanto, podemos aceitar que num passado mais distante, cada região tinha os seus trajes, tinha a sua gastronomia, até os seus sotaques (quando conheci a minha mulher ainda cheguei a pensar em escrever um dicionário acerca das muitas palavras que eu nunca tinha ouvido, ou que tinham um significado diferente do habitual, e que eram corriqueiras na aldeia onde ela nasceu a apenas 30 km do Porto, perto de Penafiel).

Nassim Taleb explica a variedade religiosa libanesa à custa do seu relevo montanhoso, assim como o desaparecimento da maioria cristã copta no Egipto à conta da ausência de barreiras geográficas. Quando falamos nos Balcãs, falamos de uma panóplia de etnias que não se chegaram a misturar, apesar de tantas séculos de domínio otomano, por causa das barreiras geográficas.

Antes do século XX as barreiras geográficas proporcionavam a existência de muitos mercados regionais, mais ou menos independentes. Depois, com o comboio, com as estradas, com as linhas de montagem, os mercados nacionais começaram a tomar forma. (BTW, gosto sempre de recordar o curto-prazismo e cegueira dos autarcas do interior. De cada vez que reclamavam melhores estradas, matavam mais umas empresas que se tornavam presas fáceis das empresas do litoral que tinham crescido mais depressa - sim, Karma is a bitch!)

O século XX representa a Grande Normalização, a Grande Uniformização! (Recordar Potato Fields nos Estados Unidos e Magnitogorsk na União Soviética). A economia do século XX pode ser representada por uma paisagem com um único pico e em que todas as empresas procuram escalar esse mesmo e único pico.

A economia do século XX pressupõe um mercado homogéneo e uma competição violenta por um lugar na escalada ao pico único.

O que é que ando a pregar aqui no blogue e na vida profissional ao longo dos anos? O fim do modelo do século XX! 

O crescimento da oferta para lá da capacidade da procura a absorver desencadeou um bailado entre a oferta e a procura que criou e intensificou a Grande Diversificação, aquilo a que chamo de Mongo! Um universo económico com cada vez mais picos. Uma paisagem cada vez mais enrugada.

Duas paisagens competitivas, duas economias, diferentes realidades, diferentes meios de competir ou não competir.

Ainda ontem escrevia sobre os modelos mentais ultrapassados. Depois, durante o final da tarde ouvi:

"Humans think using mental models. These are representations of reality that make the world comprehensible. They allow us to see patterns, predict how things will unfold, and make sense of the circumstances we encounter. Reality would otherwise be a flood of information, a jumble of inchoate experiences and sensations. Mental models bring order. They let us focus on essential things and ignore others—just as, at a cocktail party, we can hear the conversation that we’re in while tuning out the chatter around us. We craft a simulation of reality in our minds to anticipate how situations will play out.

We use mental models all the time, even if we are not aware of them.

...

our decisions are not simply based on the reasoning we apply, but on something more foundational: the particular lens through which we look at the situation—our sense of how the world works. That underlying level of cognition consists of mental models.

The fact that we need to interpret the world in order to exist in it, that how we perceive reality colors how we act within it, is something that people have long known but take for granted.

...

The mental models that we choose and apply are frames: they determine how we understand and act in the world. Frames enable us to generalize and make abstractions that apply to other situations. With them, we can handle new situations, rather than having to relearn everything from scratch. Our frames are always operating in the background. ”

...

We now know that the right frame applied in the right way opens up a wider range of possibilities, which in turn leads to better choices. The frames we employ affect the options we see, the decisions we make, and the results we attain. By being better at framing, we get better outcomes.

...

Sometimes our frames don’t fit the reality to which we apply them. There is no such thing as a “bad” frame per se (save for one exception that we’ll raise later), but there are certainly cases of misframing, where a given frame doesn’t fit very well. In fact, the path of human progress is littered with the carcasses of misused frames."

Trechos retirados de "Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil" 

Continua.

Estratégia e modelos mentais

Há tempos em conversa com um empresário vivi uma sensação estranha. Quando lhe perguntei qual a orientação estratégica da empresa fui surpreendido por um discurso que me pareceu genuíno e que fazia sentido. Recordo tópicos como:

• segmentação;
• diferenciação;
• fazer coisas difíceis;
• nichos;
• pequenas séries;
• gama média-alta;
• timing.

No entanto, este sentimento positivo foi sendo atenuado ao longo do dia porque volta e meia vinham ao de cima as preocupações que o moldaram numa outra iteração, num outro universo económico, a preocupação com o aumento dos custos.

Foi dele que me lembrei esta manhã ao ler "To Change Your Strategy, First Change How You Think":

"It seems that everyone these days is looking for a disruptive business model. But a business model is only one part of the equation. Equally important is the mental model behind the business model, as well as a measurement model for both. It’s the combination of mental, business, and measurement models that allows real transformation to occur.
...
It’s easy to blame a failed business on doing the wrong things, but rarely do leaders realize that the failure lies in their own thinking.
...
This difference in mental models generates very different measurement models.
...
The digital revolution is forcing every company to move from business models focused on products and services to those that leverage networks and platforms. This shift requires dispelling myopia, embracing new organizational models, and unlearning old habits. It’s a fundamental change in how you think and what you measure. But once you align your mental, business, and measurement models, you will be well on your way to a successful digital transformation."

A grande vantagem das PME

"Most companies are not built for agility.

Most businesses today are not designed with agility in mind. Their systems are tightly coupled, because their growth has been driven by a desire for efficiency rather than flexibility.

.

Consider the difference between a car on a road and a train on a train track. The car and the road are loosely coupled, so the car is capable of independent action. It’s more agile. It can do more complex things. ... But the train has fewer options — forward and back. If something is blocking the track, the train can’t just go around it. It’s efficient but not very flexible.

Many business systems are tightly coupled, like trains on a track, in order to maximize control and efficiency. But what the business environment requires today is not efficiency but flexibility. So we have these tightly coupled systems and the rails are not pointing in the right direction. And changing the rails, although we feel it is necessary, is complex and expensive to do. So we sit in these business meetings, setting goals and making our strategic plans, arguing about which way the rails should be pointing, when what we really need is to get off the train altogether and embrace a completely different system and approach.

.

This seems simple when you think about it. But it’s difficult to do. It’s hard to even think about it, especially when you are sitting on a business train that’s going a hundred miles an hour and you feel like it’s headed in the wrong direction."

Esta é a grande vantagem das PME, a flexibilidade, a rapidez com que podem mudar de agulha. Mesmo multinacionais cheias de recursos e de informação... estão tolhidas pela inércia.
.
Infelizmente, a maioria das PME não tem consciência desta realidade e, por isso, não a usam, não fazem a batota que podiam e deviam. Mais, iludidas pelo tempo de antena que os media dão aos grandes, revêem-se nas suas decisões, problemas e modelos mentais em vez de pensarem pela sua cabeça e verem o mundo pela sua perspectiva.

Quando o fazem... o mundo muda para elas e revela-se pleno de oportunidades!!!

Trechos retirados de "Wrangling complexity"

Prisioneiros do muros altos que ergueram.

Ontem comecei a leitura de "Service-Dominat Logic: Premises, Perspectives, Possibilities" de Robert Lusch e Stephen Vargo.
.
No primeiro capítulo li:

"Institutionalization refers to the shared acceptance of concepts, meanings, and normative behaviors - it allows coordination by providing rules of the game. It also allows human actors to "think," communicate, and act without taxing their limited calculative capacity. A dominant logic is a set of related, institutionalized conceptualizations concerning some activity or object - in the case of G-D logic, economic exchange.
.
Performativity relates to acting in accordance with an institutionalized logic and thus implies at least a partial self-fulfillment."

À noite, encontrei este texto "Crowdsourcing fashion".
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O que quero realçar é algo que Niraj Dawar não se cansou de chamar a atenção em "Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers".
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Segundo Vargo e Lusch:

"Importantly, institutions are almost always ignored in traditional approaches to firm strategy. However, it is one of the most crucial determinants of a firm being able to design and reconfigure markets and its future. For customers, the firm needs to know if there are institutions required for a new solution (service) to be successful, and, if there are whether these institutions are in place, and whether any institutions need to be desintitutionalized."

Segundo Niraj Dawar, como referimos em "Para reflexão" quem aposta em alterar as instituições em curso e re-institucionalizar outro modelo, quem re-escreve o mercado, tem uma vantagem tremenda sobre os concorrentes, eles continuam agarrados ao modelo mental anterior, prisioneiros do muros altos que ergueram.

.

Por isso, foi com um sorriso cúmplice que li em "Crowdsourcing fashion":

"Finally there is the issue of how easy it would be to copy this model. To date, existing brands have not.
.
“We benefit a little bit from how old this industry is. A lot of fashion companies are used to working a certain way, and either they’re too wedded to the traditional retail model – they can’t walk away from hundreds and hundreds of stores, that’s too scary – or they just don’t get it. They say, ‘No, we’ve always done business this way, why would we change?’”"

"Heaven will direct it" ?

"Ricardo Salgado: “Portugueses preferem o subsídio de desemprego”" e "Alentejo com a décima maior subida do desemprego jovem na Europa"

Imaginem uma zona do interior rural. Os jovens são integrados na escola e são submetidos entre 9 a 12 anos de uniformização e mentalização.

.

Ao fim desse período estão preparados para trabalhar na cidade grande do litoral. Nada na escola os preparou para a vida laboral numa pequena cidade do interior.

.

Acaso alguma vez os programas escolares falaram sobre as tradições da sua região sem ser em linguagem museológica? Acaso alguma vez os programas escolares falaram sobre as actividades económicas da sua região? Acaso alguma vez os programas escolares falaram sobre o que se pode fazer com as diferenças do interior? Acaso alguma vez os programas escolares apostaram em algo mais do que formatar mentes para serem funcionários e obedecerem?

.

Admito que os jovens não queiram trabalhar na agricultura, não por causa de um eventual magro salário, mas porque não joga com o modelo mental em que a escola os formatou.

.

É como uma empresa que rejeita uma encomenda de um potencial ciente sério, honesto, disposto a pagar o preço do mercado, porque o cliente e a encomenda não estão em sintonia com o que a empresa faz ou quer fazer, ou se quer especializar.

Experimente espreitar os bastidores

"Most companies sabotage their own innovation processes without meaning to.
...

3. You're trying to fit innovation into the structure that you have. Brad Anderson, the very wise recent CEO of Best Buy, made an observation that has stuck with me. "Organizations have habits," he said. "And they will stick to their habits even at the risk of their own survival." Nowhere is this more evident than when organizations try to make innovations fit into the structures that they have, rather than creating new structures that better support them.
-
That's true partly because today's structures exist to solve a problem that presented itself in the past. Many organizations were once structured to ensure that each function operated with maximum efficiency ... then re-organized into strategic business units to be more outwardly focused ... then re-organized to capture core competencies ... then reorganized because this left them vulnerable to disruptive innovation ... then — well, you get the idea. The main lesson here is that an innovation probably won't be well served by the organizational structure that supports the existing business."

.

Nestes tempos de mudança acelerada isto devia fazer reflectir muita gente. Tantas empresas habituadas a trabalhar para o mercado interno e que agora têm de mudar de vida... e que agora têm de mudar de hábitos.

.

E é tão difícil mudar de hábitos... 

.

Alberto da Ponte afirma "Oportunidades não vão estar em Portugal nos próximos tempos" e deixa-me com sentimentos mistos. Sim, eu sei, as vendas no retalho português caem há mais de um ano. Sim, eu sei, defendemos aqui as exportações há muitos anos. Sim, eu sei, já escrevi sobre o by-pass ao país... mas eu sou um contrário (lembro-me de ter 5 anos, em 1968/69 e ouvir os meus pais falarem sobre conhecidos que eram do "contra") e quando o mainstream assume o by-pass ao país eu páro. Levanto-me, deixo de olhar para o palco, para onde todos os olhos estão centrados e, vou espreitar os bastidores, aquilo que está escondido.

O que mudou foi o poder de compra das pessoas, não as suas necessidades, aspirações e desejos... quantos passaram da posição C para a posição A? E quantos passaram para a posição B?

.

O grande hábito é o modelo mental que nos aprisiona... olhem para uma análise SWOT feita recentemente na vossa empresa. Olhem para as oportunidades identificadas... quantas assentam em novidades e quantas assentam na extensão do passado?

.

Trecho retirado de "Five Ways to Ruin Your Innovation Process"

Tanto reset mental a precisar de ser feito

Hoje de manhã ao sair de Estarreja, bem cedo, antes das 7 da manhã, já estava uma camioneta com grua a descarregar postes de electricidade.
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Durante o meu jogging, nos últimos dias, tenho encontrado vários pontos onde estão depositados postes deste tipo à espera de serem levantados e instalados.
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Continuei a viagem e ao volante a minha mente recuou no tempo... lembrei-me de um gráfico que coloquei aqui no blogue em Setembro de 2007. Um gráfico que retrata o poder da inércia... o mundo muda, e os decisores continuam a decidir com o modelo mental que os enformou.
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No município de Estarreja nos últimos meses tem-se cortado na iluminação nocturna em várias estradas em zonas rurais, penso que para poupar dinheiro. Por que renovar postes em zonas onde a luz está desligada?
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Há um modelo mental a renovar, a precisar de um reset... não se perdia nada com a divulgação das 4 regras de Duilio Calciolari.
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Estou a escrever isto aqui e agora na laboriosa cidade de Felgueiras e penso...
.
Também eu tenho de mudar de modelo mental.
.
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Engraçado, desde 1995 que me preparei para esta situação do país. Para mim, anónimo engenheiro da província o que estamos a viver sempre esteve no horizonte temporal.
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Agora, devo começar a preparar o cenário para o depois-disto-que-estamos-a-viver.
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E a sua empresa? Que modelos mentais a enformam?

Modelos mentais - desaprender para voltar a aprender

Ao ler vários artigos sobre a Service-Dominant Logic, que foram sendo publicados desde 2004, há uma referência bibliográfica constante "Reframing Business - When the Map Changes the Landscape" de Richard Normann.
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Trata-se de um livro que aqui fomos comentando ao longo de 2008 e que ficou na categoria de topo. O subtítulo é delicioso ... quando o mapa, a nossa representação da realidade, altera essa mesma realidade. Aliás, nós nunca chegamos a ter consciência da realidade, nós só sensoriamos o mapa.
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Os nossos modelos mentais são os nossos mapas, são um filtro que nos ajuda a seleccionar e enquadrar os estímulos recebidos, para evitar a "parálise por análise".
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Ainda nesta série de postais reflectimos sobre a importância dos modelos mentais para explicar as diferenças de desempenho entre empresas de um mesmo sector de actividade num mesmo país.
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CK Prahalad e Richard Bettis em "The Dominant Logic: Retrospective and Extension", publicado no Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 16, 1995, em vez de modelo mental escrevem lógica dominante, no entanto a mensagem mantém-se:

"We have come to view the dominant logic as an information filter, shown here as a funnel. Organizational attention is focused only on data deemed relevant by the dominant logic. Other data are largely ignored. (Moi ici: Assim, o mainstream apenas reconhece o que encaixa no filtro) "Relevant' data are filtered by the dominant logic and by the analytic procedures managers use to aid strategy development. These 'filtered' data are then incorporated into the strategy, systems, values, expectations, and reinforced behavior of the organization."
...
Em "Mental Models, Decision Rules, and Performance Heterogeneity" de Michael Shayne Gary e Robert E. Wood, publicado no número de Junho de 2011 da revista Strategic Management Journal defende-se que o desempenho das empresas depende dos modelos mentais dos seus líderes. Quando a realidade muda... o mais certo é o desfasamento entre o modelo mental mantido e a nova realidade. Sim, o mapa pode mudar a realidade. Mas há limites para o poder dos mapas...
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Voltando a Prahalad e Bettis sobre o abandono dos modelos mentais que ficaram obsoletos:
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"In the business world. IBM is an excellent example in which the dominant logic for years revolved around a set of unseen assumptions about the centrality of the mainframe business. At IBM this thinking became embedded in the strategy, reward system, promotion preferences, and resource allocation system so strongly that a catastrophic crisis was necessary even to begin to dislodging it.
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There has been a great deal written about organizational learning ... In general it is assumed that the learning curve is drawn on 'a clean sheet of paper' in that learning takes place in a neutral environment. This is seldom if ever the case. There is often previous learning 'drawn' on the paper that may inhibit the new learning process. This leads to the concept of unlearning.
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The dominant logic makes clear that before strategic learning of the kind discussed above can occur, the old logic must in a sense be unlearned by the organization. In this sense there Is an unlearning (or forgetting) curve just as there is a learning curve. ... This need to unlearn may suggest why new competitors often displace experienced incumbents in an industry when major structural change occurs (e.g.. the personal computer revolution). The new entrants in essence are starting with a clean sheet of paper and do not have the problem
of having to run down an unlearning curve in order to be able to run up a learning curve.
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What seems clear is that strategic learning and unlearning of the kind involving the dominant logic are inextricably intertwined."
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O subtítulo de Normann faz sentido quando um agente económico percebe, numa realidade em turbulência, que uma ordem nova, mais complexa, está a emergir e antecipa-se a enquadrá-la num novo mapa, para ajudar a actuar melhor na nova realidade. Como se trata de uma antecipação, ainda a realidade não estabilizou e já o agente tem o mapa no seu arsenal de ferramentas.
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Exemplos de modelos mentais a precisar de desaprender muito:

• "Rui Moreira reeleito presidente da ACP com expansão do metro como prioridade"
• "Metro de Lisboa com novas ideias para extensão das linhas"

Quando não desaprendemos e a realidade mudou... os modelos mentais fazem de nós bobos (à brasileira) e castram-nos. 

Amor à primeira vista (parte III)

Continuado daqui.
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Ainda recentemente neste postal recordamos:
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"A pervasive finding in recent research using longitudinal establishment level data is that idiosyncratic factors dominate the distribution of output, employment, investment, and productivity growth rates across establishments."
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É algo em que acreditamos e que está de acordo com a nossa experiência de contacto e trabalho com as empresas.
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Neste artigo "Mental Models, Decision Rules, and Performance Heterogeneity" de Michael Shayne Gary e Robert E. Wood, publicado no número de Junho de 2011 da revista Strategic Management Journal, encontramos um conjunto de conclusões sintonizados com estas ideias que aqui defendemos há muito tempo.

• A minha tese corroborada
• Diferenças e heterogeneidade não rimam com média

"Our results provide empirical evidence for the links between mental models and performance outcomes and help explain why some managers and not others adopt strategies that are ultimately associated with competitive success. We found substantial variation in the accuracy of decision makers’ mental models and in performance. While it is certainly true that perfect mental models are not necessary to reach high performance outcomes our findings show that decision makers with more accurate mental models of the causal relationships in the business environment achieve higher performance outcomes.
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Our findings also help address an important challenge facing the strategy field about whether more accurate mental models enable managers ex ante to identify and interpret signals from their business environment that lead to superior strategic choices and performance outcomes. In our experimental study, variation in mental model accuracy is a key source of performance heterogeneity.
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Our findings also show that managers do not need accurate mental models of the entire business environment. Accurate mental models about the key principles of the business environment lead to superior decision rules and performance outcomes.
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The benefits of partial knowledge about the key principles far outweigh the benefits of other partial knowledge. Our findings are also consistent with prior research showing that experts with richer cognitive representations of the deep structure of problems outperform novices who typically focus on superficial features of problems. An important implication is that managers do not need to develop perfect and complete mental models of complex business environments, but should instead focus on identifying and understanding the key principles. (Moi ici: Claro que existe um outro lado... quando o mundo muda, se continuarmos a acreditar nos nossos modelos mentais... ficamos presos a fórmulas que deixaram de funcionar)
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Additionally, we find that decision rules stabilize rapidly, which explains why performance plateaus far below the potential achievable level. Rapid stabilization of decision rules is consistent with psychology research on complex problem solving that shows actors learning a new task or solving a novel complex problem quickly automate decision and action rules once they reach functional, satisficing levels of performance. (Moi ici: Daí a importância da liberdade económica para empreender e desalojar incumbentes cristalizados em práticas tornadas obsoletas, ou com um nível de desempenho longe do óptimo) Our results are also consistent with research that finds managers typically interpret information to reinforce their current mental model rather than challenge and update their beliefs.
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We did not find evidence that more accurate mental models were more important in the higher complexity decision environment.
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Perhaps in truly simple competitive environments—with smooth payoff landscapes—mental model accuracy may be less important for achieving high performance outcomes. There may also be a level of complexity that overwhelms managers’ capacity to either accurately infer causal relationships in the business environment or apply their mental models to make effective strategic choices."
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Onde é que já viram bonecos como este retirado do artigo?