De ranhura a canyon.

"what should organizations do when a promising innovative process fails to live up to expectations or a once-fresh innovation languishes over the years and eventually loses its effectiveness?

A solution is reimplementation: rethinking an innovative process within an organization’s context, making the necessary changes, and then reintroducing it. 

...

Reimplementation is an inherently vulnerable process. Leaders must be willing to expose problems and confront failures. Staff may resist reimplementation, not wanting to change something with which they are familiar and consider good enough."

...

The success of process innovations can fade over time. Consequently, it is crucial for organizations to periodically check them so they can identify declines in performance early. Once leaders uncover such a deterioration, they should determine the cause instead of immediately trying to force people to “get with the program.” With this knowledge, they can then redesign and reimplement the process and enable it to once again to deliver on its promise."

Há um tempo em que um processo e a realidade estão razoavelmente alinhados. No entanto, como o contexto está sempre em evolução, a entropia a crescer, as pessoas a entrar e a sair, novas tecnologias surgem, novas exigências de clientes e tudo se conjuga numa amálgama que começa a desalinhar processo e realidade em termos de execução e/ou eficácia. Em algumas empresas só se olha para os resultados financeiros e não se consegue, ou não se faz o drill down para chegar às causas raiz. Por isso, o desalinhamento vai aumentando e aquilo que era uma ranhura transforma-se num desfiladeiro, num canyon.

Quanto mais tempo se demora a actuar, maior terá de ser a dimensão da acção.

Trechos retirados de "How to Salvage a Useful Process That Isn't Working Anymore" 

Fugir da esquizofrenia

Há muitos anos que aqui no blogue escrevo sobre a esquizofrenia analítica, independentemente do governo de turno ser de direita ou de esquerda. Recordo, por exemplo:

• Falta de profissionalismo, venezuelização, falta de liderança (Abril de 2019)
• Mortalidade infantil e esquizofrenia (Janeiro de 2019)
• Comportamentos, padrões... não, "happenings"; não, eventos; não, meteoros (Novembro de 2016)
• Desta vez, sem esquizofrenia (Maio de 2015)
• Para lá da esquizofrenia (Março de 2010)
• Esquizofrenia analítica... por causa de 0,6% (Março de 2010)
• Não praticarás a esquizofrenia analítica!!! (Junho de 2009)
• Não cairás na tentação da esquizofrenia analítica (Maio de 2008)

Mão amiga fez-me chegar este tweet:

esta cena de se dizer ‘a taxa de mortalidade infantil aumentou’ ou ‘diminuiu’ tendo como referência a variação de um ano para o outro é um bocadito tola, ñ é, pordata? https://t.co/iWKC1bDBwf

— fcancio (@fcancio) May 13, 2023

Não por acaso, no final de Abril último tirei uma foto ao título de uma coluna do JN:

Agora, analisei os dados do Pordata e resolvi fazer as cartas de controlo para os valores individuais e para a amplitude móvel:

E o que as cartas revelam é que a mortalidade infantil subiu de um ano para o outro por mera flutuação estatística. Nem o Pordata nem a ordem dos Médicos conseguem fugir da esquizofrenia na análise dos resultados (nem Câncio, se o governo fosse de direita). Só os deuses fogem da Conversa de humano.

Objectivos ambiciosos

Ontem escrevemos sobre a frequência de monitorização  dos objectivos. Hoje, um tema que, quando o li, logo me fez recordar algumas pessoas que fui conhecendo ao longo dos anos e, que tinham pavor de não cumprir todos os objectivos:

"A core tenet of the SMART framework is that goals should be achievable and realistic. Several recent articles have argued against stretch goals and recommended incremental targets instead. The widespread practice of requiring employees to achieve 100% of their goals to earn a bonus or a positive performance review reinforces employees' tendency to set conservative goals that they are sure to achieve.

The temptation to play it safe when setting goals is understandable but often misguided.

...

Ambitious goals minimize the risk that employees will sandbag by committing to overly conservative goals they are sure to achieve. The typical image of sandbagging is a sales representative setting a goal of $1 million when he is confident he could sell twice that amount. Sandbagging, however, manifests itself in more insidious ways that undermine experimentation and learning. When bonuses are tied to hitting targets, employees may opt for cost-reduction initiatives that are fully under their control, as opposed to growing sales, which depends on the actions of customers, partners, and competitors. Or they might attempt to wring incremental improvements out of existing products or business models rather than pursue a novel technology that offers a higher payoff in the long run. When the gap between the goals being set and current reality is wide, organizations need to search for creative or innovative ways to achieve their ambitious, overall objectives. Insisting that employees achieve 100% of their goals, in contrast, can also deter employees from the trial-and-error experimentation required to innovate.

When it comes to setting goals, more ambition is not always better at some point, the objectives enter the realm of delusion. Striking the balance between ambition and achievability is a difficult but essential task for leaders at every level in an organization.

...

How can leaders inspire people to set more ambitious goals? In Silicon Valley many companies encourage employees to set goals that they are unlikely to achieve in full. Google, for example, expects employees to achieve an average of 60% to 70% of their key results. In the eyes of Google executives, asking for more would prevent employees from thinking big enough when setting their objectives."

Trechos retirados de "With Goals, FAST Beats SMART", publicado no MIT Sloan Management Review.

Frequência de monitorização

Trecho retirado de "Reviewing the Annual Review" publicado no WSJ do passado dia 30 de Abril: 

"For millions, the annual performance review is akin to going to a bad dentist: Before you go, you dread it; while you're there, it's painful; after it's done, nothing's fixed. Gartner data shows that 81% of companies are considering redesigning their performance-management systems with the addition of more frequent "touchpoints." 

...

The failings of the annual performance review fall into three broad buckets:

They are too infrequent. They are dehumanizing. They are irrelevant to real-world performance."

Como auditor vejo muitos sistemas de gestão com indicadores irrelevantes e medidos de forma demasiado infrequente.

Em linha com o que li num outro artigo, "With Goals, FAST Beats SMART", publicado no MIT Sloan Management Review:

"To execute strategy, leaders must set ambitious targets, translate them into specific metrics and milestones, make them transparent throughout the organization, and discuss progress frequently.

...

When it comes to setting goals, most managers follow a well-established set of practices. They hold one-on-one meetings with their subordinates to set goals, and then they review performance against those objectives at year end and link their appraisal to promotion and bonus decisions. These same managers aspire to make their goals SMART, by ensuring they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.

...

We found that four core principles underpin effective goal systems, and we summarize these elements with the acronym FAST. (See "Make Goals FAST, Not SMART.") Goals should be embedded in frequent discussions; ambitious in scope; measured by specific metrics and milestones; and transparent for everyone in the organization to see.

"When we ask managers how often they look at their goals, most say twice per year once when they set their objectives and again when they write up their performance selfappraisal.

...

Even the most finely crafted objectives will have little impact if they are filed away for 363 days of the year. To drive strategy execution, goals should serve as a framework that guides key decisions and activities throughout the year. One way to make goals more relevant is to set them quarterly rather than annually quadrupling the number of times teams evaluate progress, discuss unexpected challenges, and make real-time adjustments."

Mudar o jogo, liderar a mudança

O primeiro livro de Kaplan e Norton sobre o balanced scorecard (BSC), "The balanced scorecard", foi publicado em 1996. 

O segundo, "The strategy-focused organization", foi publicado em 2001. Depois de ler "The strategy-focused organization" despertei para a função do BSC não como instrumento de monitorização, mas como promotor da transformação estratégica das organizações. Quando na BSC Euro Summit de 2004 o terceiro livro foi distribuído, "Strategy Maps", já a ideia em mim estava bem enraizada.

Volto a recordar isto depois de ler "How the Wrong KPIs Doom Digital Transformation", onde sublinhei:

"Most legacy companies treat KPIs as reporting and accounting mechanisms rather than strategic decision drivers; they're used more to keep score than change the game. Clinging to these legacy KPI perspectives gets in the way of successful digital transformation strategies; these KPIs are literally counterproductive.

We argue that KPIs should lead, not track, digital initiatives. Top management must define and communicate both the key performance that is required to execute its strategic plan and the digital capabilities that will enable that performance."

Duas posturas completamente diferentes, como o puxar versus empurrar. Puxar significa estar mentalmente no futuro, a puxar para que a organização faça a transição que transforma esse local imaginário num local real. 

A armadilha

"many businesses use standardized metrics not realizing that these metrics lead to the market averaging syndrome: the offering of one company becomes the reflection of the offering of any of its competitors. [Moi ici: Recordar Youngme Moon em "Now, something completely different... para nos deixar a pensar"] It is a result of the fact that the standardized targets become the entrained pattern of behaviours based on the unchanging set of expectations. In other words, people at the organization stop questioning things and keep on doing the same over and over again.

Sure, standardized metrics gives the managers the perception of control of what happens at the company. It gives them the tools to provide extrinsic award and punishment system. It leads to finding the shortest and easiest way to improve the bottom-line. It provokes the thinking: — what can I do to get me the best result? — rather that thinking — what can we do to built the best value?" [Moi ici: Exactamente! Por isso, na biologia temos a mistura de genes para variar sempre alguma coisa entre gerações]

...

[Moi ici: O que se segue é muito bom!] Let me be very clear here: measurement of itself is not a wrong thing. My rant is not about having a measurement in the first place but about making it a goal or a target. It is about discarding the Goodhart’s Law:

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

It might be even appropriate to paraphrase that law and, following Marylin Strathern, say that: — “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a measure at all.” [Moi ici: Como não pensar logo em jogadas ao estilo das cativações...]

The metrics should be set up not to command and control people but to inspire and focus them."

Trechos retirados de "The traps of standardized measures"

Velocidade de aprendizagem (parte III)

Parte II.

"But all of us are vulnerable to forgetting the crucial practice of asking questions as we move up the ladder. High-achieving people in particular frequently fail to wonder what others are seeing. Worse, when we do recognize that we don’t know something, we may avoid asking a question out of (misguided) fear that it will make us look incompetent or weak. “Not asking questions is a big mistake many professionals make,” Norma Kraay, the managing partner of talent for Deloitte Canada, told us. “Expert advisers want to offer a solution. That’s what they’re trained to do.”
.
Leaders can encourage inquiry in two important ways— and in the process help create an organization where it’s psychologically safe to ask questions.
...
When leaders show interest in what others are seeing and thinking by asking questions, it has a stunning effect: It prompts people in their organizations to do the same.
Asking questions also conveys the humility that more and more business leaders and researchers are pointing to as vital to success.
...
one way a leader can make employees feel comfortable asking questions is by openly acknowledging when he or she doesn’t know the answer. Another, she says, is by having days in which employees are explicitly encouraged to ask “Why?” “What if…?” and “How might we…?”...
Get People to See the World Through Others’ Eyes
.
LEADERS SHOULDN’T JUST encourage employees to be curious about different groups and ask questions about their thinking and practices; they should also urge their people to actively consider others’ points of view. People from different organizational groups don’t see things the same way.
...
Creating a culture that fosters this kind of behavior is a senior leadership responsibility. Psychological research suggests that while most people are capable of taking others’ perspectives, they are rarely motivated to do so."

Trechos retirados de "Cross-Silo Leadership"

Velocidade de aprendizagem (parte II)

Quando penso nos problemas de medição, análise e decisão nas organizações (recordar, por exemplo, "Velocidade de aprendizagem") não consigo deixar de pensar no sentimento de insegurança de quem ocupa as posições de chefia, e receia expor-se ao escrutínio dos outros.

Ontem, na minha leitura matinal apanhei este artigo "5 Behaviors of Leaders Who Embrace Change" onde sublinhei:

"The old adage says that bad news doesn’t travel up. During the integration of an acquisition or even in the internal merger of business units, there will be bad news that the organization needs to learn from. But for real learning to occur, people need to feel psychologically safe to share the good, the bad, and the ugly."

Ao ler isto, não pude deixar de fazer a ponte para uma outra leitura recente, "The Infinite Game" de Simon Sinek:

“Human beings are hardwired to protect ourselves. We avoid danger and seek out places in which we feel safe. The best place to be is among others around whom we feel safe and who we know will help protect us. The most anxiety-inducing place to be is alone—where we feel we have to protect ourselves from the people on our own team. Real or perceived, when there is danger, we act from a place of fear rather than confidence. So just imagine how people act when they work in constant fear of missing out on a promotion, fear of getting in trouble, fear of being mocked, fear of not fitting in, fear of their boss thinking they’re an idiot, fear of finding themselves on a short list for the next round of layoffs.
Fear is such a powerful motivator that it can force us to act in ways that are completely counter to our own or our organization’s best interests. Fear can push us to choose the best finite option at the risk of doing infinite damage. And in the face of fear, we hide the truth. Which is pretty bad in any circumstance, but when an organization is doing badly, it’s even worse.
...
The new chief had to build a “Circle of Safety” first. Without it, nothing else he needed to do would work.
...
A Circle of Safety is a necessary condition for trust to exist. It describes an environment in which people feel psychologically safe to be vulnerable around their colleagues. Safe to admit mistakes, point out gaps in their training, share their fears and anxieties and, of course, ask for help with the confidence that others will support them instead of using that information against them.
...
In an organization, it is the leader’s responsibility to take the first risk, to build a Circle of Safety. But then it is up to the employee to take a chance and step into the Circle of Safety. A leader cannot force anyone into the circle.”

Seja no público, seja no privado, quantas organizações criam este circulo de segurança, onde se pode ser franco e frágil?

Velocidade de aprendizagem

À dias escrevi em "Implementar o desassossego (parte II)":

O postal foi sobre as empresas que calculam indicadores de longe a longe e, por isso, têm uma aprendizagem muito mais lenta.

Entretanto, tenho lido e ouvido sobre o aumento de mortes maternas, “Uma brutalidade”. Mortes maternas duplicam e regressam a níveis dos anos 80". E fico a pensar que só no final de Novembro de 2019, porque um jornal pôs a boca no trombone, é que isto passou a ser assunto.

Quanto tempo demoram a compilar os dados e a fazer a sua análise? E quem os analisa? Há alguém com a responsabilidade de analisar? Ou será que é um burocrata que tem a responsabilidade de os meter em tabelas e já está terminada a tarefa?

Será que precisam de um ano para olhar para os resultados?

E os dados de 2019, quando serão analisados? E são analisados ao longo de cada mês?

Recomendo a leitura do trecho sublinhado na figura acima.

implementar o desassossego (parte II)

Parte I.

Imaginem uma empresa que regista tudo e mais alguma coisa do que se passa na produção. Registam coisas como:

• Dia e turno
• Máquina
• Referência em produção
• Operário
• Quantidade produzida
• Quantidade e tipo de defeitos
• Quantidade de desperdícios de arranque e paragem de referência
• Paragens - tempo e motivos de paragem

Por exemplo, quantidade de defeitos por turno numa máquina. Agora imaginem pegar em 22 dias por mês e 2 turnos por dia, ou seja 44 pontos. 

Agoram imaginem juntar os dados de 3 meses, ou seja 132 pontos e calcular um valor médio que vai representar esse trimestre. 

Qual foi uma das primeiras das minhas lições aprendidas na vida profissional? (2006 e 2011)

"Desconfiar sempre de relatórios que só trabalham com a média"

A média é um poderoso eliminador de variação, é um poderoso branqueador da realidade.

O gráfico abaixo mostra a azul uma sucessão de valores diários numa empresa, a roxo a média de dois valores sucessivos e a verde a média de três valores sucessivos. Reparem no alisamento:

Informação alisada mascara os sinais, dificulta a aprendizagem.

Entretanto, apanho:

"In the words of Arie de Geus, a business theorist, “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

A crença de que tudo está bem, como ponto de partida e a adopção de frequências longas de cálculo e análise de indicadores são inimigos da aprendizagem nas organizações.

Recordo Boyd e o OODA loop em 2009:

"As oportunidades não esperam, há que saltar para o meio do mar revolto, para o meio da confusão gerada pela quebra das anteriores fronteiras e Observar, Orientar, Decidir e Agir (um ciclo OODA à la Boyd). Agir sobre as oportunidades, agir rapidamente, ou seja, realizar mais ciclos OODA (mais rápidos) no mesmo espaço de tempo que os outros potenciais aproveitadores das oportunidades."

Ou em 2007:

 "Boyd argued that the party that consistently completes the cycle faster gains an advantage that increases with each cycle. His enemy’s reactions become increasingly slower by comparison and therefore less effective until, finally, he is overcome by events."

E na revista Harvard Business Review OnPoint - Winter 2019 encontro no artigo "Learning to Learn -
Mental tools to help you master new skills" de Erika Andersen:

"I’m talking about resisting the bias against doing new things, scanning the horizon for growth opportunities, and pushing yourself to acquire radically different capabilities—while still performing your job. That requires a willingness to experiment and become a novice again and again: an extremely discomforting notion for most of us."

Continua.

implementar o desassossego (parte I)

Há empresas que visitamos e que fazem tudo para se convencerem que está tudo bem, que não têm problemas, que não precisam de melhorar nada. No entanto, basta colocar algumas questões para ver a camada superficial de maquilhagem estalar.

- Alguém vos bate, sofrem represálias físicas, se algures assumirem que têm algumas áreas que precisam de melhorar?

E escrevia eu em Agosto passado acerca do desassossego, da importância de, mesmo quando tudo parece correr menos mal, ter o radar alerta para agarrar oportunidades de melhoria.

Entretanto, encontro este trecho em “Sur/petition” de Edward De Bono:

“It is easy to pick out the most dangerous saying in American business, a saying that almost by itself has been responsible for the decline in United States basic industry. Recovery has only come about by escaping from the saying, ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.’
It’s surprising that such a simple, and apparently sensible, saying could cause so much damage. It was meant to indicate that business should focus its thinking on problems and not worry about other matters – and that was precisely its danger.
Businesses were busy attacking and fixing their problems, and when they had fixed them, they were back to where they were before. Meanwhile their competitors were making changes at points that were not problems. They were busy changing the process itself, not just fixing problems in the existing process.”

As empresas implementam sistemas de gestão da qualidade, são certificadas, começam a medir indicadores, e parecem tudo fazer para não mudar o status-quo. Por exemplo, quando uma empresa industrial selecciona indicadores para a sua produção. Indicadores que podem ser calculados diariamente, semanalmente, mensalmente, mas a empresa decide calcular os indicadores a cada três meses.

Que sentido faz calcular um indicador de actividade diária a cada 3 meses? Qual é o timing para reacção? Gerir olhando para o espelho retrovisor:

Já é tarde para agir, demasiado tarde.

Calcular um número a cada 3 meses significa que ao fim de ano só têm 3 pontos. Quando começarão a olhar para tendências? Além do que, quanto mais dias contribuem para um número, mais a média alisa tudo, menos sinais são apanhados.

Enquanto escrevo este texto vou partindo e comendo umas nozes que a minha mulher comprou numa das lojas tradicionais da Baixa do Porto, são as melhores que comi nos últimos anos. E penso na frase: Deus dá nozes a quem não tem dentes!

FAST vs SMART

Muitas vezes, demasiadas vezes, as empresas que se comprometem com objectivos, como as que têm um sistema de gestão da qualidade, estabelecem frequências de monitorização semestrais e até mesmo anuais.

Torço sempre o nariz a estas frequências, sinónimo da pouca importância dos objectivos ou da crença na gestão através de objectivos.

Por isso, é interessante sublinhar o "Frequently discussed":

"According to conventional wisdom, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. But SMART goals undervalue ambition, focus narrowly on individual performance, and ignore the importance of discussing goals throughout the year. To drive strategy execution, leaders should instead set goals that are FAST — frequently discussed, ambitious, specific, and transparent.
...
Discuss Goals FrequentlyWhen we ask managers how often they look at their goals, most say twice per year — once when they set their objectives and again when they write up their performance self-appraisal. For many organizations, goal setting is an annual ritual that begins with a one-on-one meeting between an employee and his or her boss to agree on objectives for the year. Employees dutifully enter their goals into a spreadsheet or performance management tool, and largely forget about them until year end. Come December, they revisit their objectives and are often surprised by the tenuous relationship between their stated goals and what they actually did in the meantime.
.
Even the most finely crafted objectives will have little impact if they are filed away for 363 days of the year. To drive strategy execution, goals should serve as a framework that guides key decisions and activities throughout the year. One way to make goals more relevant is to set them quarterly rather than annually — quadrupling the number of times teams evaluate progress, discuss unexpected challenges, and make real-time adjustments. We have found that companies in dynamic sectors (for example, media and information technology) often use quarterly goals, while companies in more stable industries tend to set annual goals."

Trechos retirados de "With Goals, FAST Beats SMART"

O que medir?

"Replacing an accounting mindset with a decision-oriented mindset is a great starting point for defining relevant measures. [Moi ici: Recordar "Medimos, para que a informação obtida nos ajude a tomar decisões, ou a tomar melhores decisões."]"

Trecho retirado de "Are we measuring what matters?"

Indicadores

Para alguém como eu, que aprecia o papel e a utilidade dos indicadores na vida das organizações, eis um artigo interessante, "5 Questions You Must Answer to Measure Your Business Well":

"Regardless of the measurement you need to answer five things about it:
.
1. What’s the measurement’s purpose? Know the significance of the metric and what you’ll change in your business based on the numbers you measure.
.
2. What data source will you use? Different sources of data can yield different results.
.
3. How will you calculate the metric? Define a formula, especially for complex measures.
.
4. How frequently will you measure? Measuring takes effort. Be efficient and only measure as frequently as you need to.
.
5. Who will review the measure? Define the stakeholders who are going to receive the reports."

Planear a monitorização e avaliação

"Planning, monitoring and evaluation are at the heart of a learning-based approach to management. Achieving collaborative, business/environmental or personal goals requires effective planning and follow-through. The plan is effectively a “route-map” from the present to the future. To plan a suitable route you must know where you are (situation analysis) [Moi ici: Desempenho hoje] and where you want to go [Moi ici: Desempenho futuro desejado, as metas] (establish goals and identify outcomes). Only then can appropriate action plans be developed to help achieve the desired future.

Planning and monitoring as a roadmap
However, because the future is uncertain, our action plans must be adaptive and allow continually for “learning by doing”.
...
there are two sets of monitoring plans needed. Results monitoring focusses on whether you are getting where you want to go, [Moi ici: Indicadores de resultados, indicadores de consequências no balanced scorecard. Perspectivas financeiras e de clientes] while process monitoring focusses on how efficiently you are geting there.[Moi ici: Indicadores da perspectiva interna e da de recursos e infraestruturas e plano de actividades das iniciativas estratégicas] Indicators in this regard may be either qualitative or quantitative, and a combination of the two is often best. An evaluation is like a good story, it needs some (qualitative) anecdotal evidence to put the lesson in context, and some (quantitative) facts and figures that reinforce the message.

.
Motivation for change = understanding + ability + imperative ()
...
Worldwide there is a trend towards an increased use of indicators to monitor development and track progress. Indicators quantify and simplify phenomena, and help us understand and make sense of complex realities. To be most meaningful, a monitoring and evaluation program should provide insights into cause-and-effect relationships between environmental or socio-economic stressors and the anticipated ecosystem responses and subsequent social and economic outcomes."

Trechos retirados de "Planning monitoring & evaluation – closing the loop"

Mudar de indicadores

E recordo as surpresas que às vezes apanho em empresas maiores de encontrar chefias intermédias que não querem indicadores, que acham que se mede muito, que se mede demais...

"Companies in industries facing change have to change their key metrics, often before the new reality is clear.
...
Know your metrics and the behaviors they drive. Everyone at your company should understand which metrics drive the business, and what behaviors they encourage. ... “Everyone needs to know how each metric fits into the big picture…why and how we’re measuring something, and how it’s relevant to performance.”[Moi ici: Esse é o grande poder do mapa da estratégia com as suas relações de causa-efeito]
...
Prioritize metrics that reflect value to customers, rather than simple volume or efficiency.
...
Many traditional commodity or product-focused industries, such as mining, oil and gas, or chemicals, tend to focus on the volume of product purchased and shipped: tons, barrels, liters, etc. This is an obvious metric, but it biases a company toward decisions that reinforce the commoditization of its own offerings. Focusing on them means that new business concepts — ones that might decrease the volume sold but replace it with value-added services or services that better align customer and supplier incentives — can be easily missed.[Moi ici: Quando uma PME interioriza que tem de subir na escala de valor, que tem de formular uma estratégia não assente no custo/desconto, às vezes é difícil conseguir a energia e o empenho das chefias para mergulhar bem fundo em busca dos novos indicadores relevantes. A tentação é saltar logo para a acção.]
...
Conquering the tyranny of metrics requires ongoing experimentation and iteration.
...
Changing the ways we measure success means changing how we define success. Waiting until the market has already changed means playing catch-up. Given how companies construct themselves around optimizing against their metrics, waiting until market shifts are obvious often means waiting until it’s too late."

E a sua empresa, há quantos anos não muda de indicadores? E a estratégia mudou?

Trechos retirados de "Don’t Be Tyrannized by Old Metrics"

Cuidado com as fantasias do Excel

Há os políticos que escrevem cenários para uma década mas que não duram 6 meses.
.
Há os comentadores que sonham com políticos cheios de certezas e cheios de conhecimento privilegiado que indicam o caminho único para o futuro
.
Depois, há os que como este anónimo engenheiro da província têm medo dos Grandes Planeadores, os Grandes Geometras, e preferem a humildade do fuçar, a alternativa do concreto, o reconhecimento do anything goes, o MacGyver versus Sandy. Economia não rima com ciência newtoniana, é tudo transitório

Por tudo isto, gostei muito de "When Strategy Becomes Fantasy":

"Ironically, when managers think they have all the answers, strategy can turn into fantasy.
.
Many organisations have an obsession with certainty, a must-know attitude to strategic initiatives.
...
Companies, therefore, often end up dedicating more energy towards maintaining the illusion of pursuing a strategic aspiration than actually trying to make a strategic aspiration real.
...
As a strategic aspiration moves from an idea to the active pursuit of that idea, a feedback loop starts to form. This feedback loop generates data about the feasibility and worthiness of the aspiration. Feedback is also produced about the organisation’s delivery capabilities. People in leadership roles can be receptive to this data or they can manipulate, normalise and post-rationalise the data.
...
Inevitably, the inherent uncertainty in a strategic initiative means that true understanding of the underlying business problem is going to emerge as the project progresses.
.
But from my observations, the unearthing of this uncertainty threatens fragile ego-identities. The more fragile the egos in positions of power, the more fertile the soil for a shared fantasy to take hold, i.e the more defended and narcissistically oriented the people in leadership roles, the more vulnerable the company is to fantasy usurping a reality based pursuit of a strategic aspiration.[Moi ici: Acabo de me lembrar de Weick e da genial estória do oficial húngaro nos Alpes que salvou os seus colegas porque tinha um mapa ... dos Pirinéus. Outro exemplo do fuçar, do começar pela acção.]

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A shared fantasy’s best ally is the belief that no one has time to think. [Moi ici: Estão a ver onde isto nos leva? Indicadores para quê? Reunir para quê?] It is almost a dead giveaway that a group is entrapped in a shared fantasy if they are running from meeting to meeting, fire fighting, exhausted and mentally unavailable.
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Reflection brings awareness to one’s situation, which for some companies can be very painful. As Ronald Heiftz says, “There is no such thing as a broken system. The system is working for someone.” Bringing greater awareness into an organisation participating in a shared fantasy means going against the system that is “working for someone.”
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Without maintaining time for reflection, I believe the strategy realisation process will likely succumb to the grips of fantasy and ultimately fail. Worse, the path to failure will likely be one of significant suffering."

O artigo é muito mais rico e extenso e merece uma ou duas leituras integrais, para começar.

Acerca de medir o que interessa

O @pauloperes chamou-me a atenção para "Should You Use Market Share as a Metric?"

É claro que me lembrei do primeiro livro que li de Hermann Simon, "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets"
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Voltando ao artigo:

"Managers commonly argue that market share is a useful intermediate measure — in effect, a leading indicator of future success. In some markets, market share probably does help increase future profits, but this is not always the case: General Motors Co. was the world’s biggest carmaker before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection in June 2009. Therefore, it is critical to understand the expected relationship between market share and profitability in your specific market.
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In some markets, bigger can be better; the most obvious examples are markets with economies of scale. Companies in such markets can reduce their cost per unit by selling more — thus increasing overall profits. If you think you are in such a market, you should confirm that the economies of scale you think exist actually do. Economies of scale do not automatically apply to all markets."

O tema deste artigo joga bem com este texto de Seth Godin "Numbers (and the magic of measuring the right thing)":

"When you measure the wrong thing, you get the wrong thing. Perhaps you can be precise in your measurement, but precision is not significance.
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On the other hand, when you are able to expose your work and your process to the right thing, to the metric that actually matters, good things happen.
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We need to spend more time figuring out what to keep track of, and less time actually obsessing over the numbers that we are already measuring."

E na sua empresa, o que é que se mede? Qual o racional por trás dessas escolhas? Que sinais internos são enviados por essas escolhas?

Os que fazem a diferença

E a sua empresa, que indicadores usa? Que metas usa? Que monitorização faz? Que seriedade e exigência põe nisto?

"In a survey, they asked businesses whether they employed management essentials such as targets, incentives, and monitoring. Firms that did do these things, they found, were more productive and more likely to endure.
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Overall, we learned three things. First, according to our criteria, many organizations throughout the world are very badly managed. Well-run companies set stretch targets on productivity and other parameters, base the compensation and promotions they offer on meeting those targets, and constantly measure results — but many firms do none of those things. Second, our indicators of better management and superior performance are strongly correlated with measures such as productivity, return on capital employed, and firm survival. Indeed, a one-point increment in a five-point management score that we created — the equivalent of going from the bottom third to the top third of the group — was associated with 23% greater productivity. Third, management makes a difference in shaping national performance. Our analysis shows, for example, that variation in management accounts for nearly a quarter of the roughly 30% productivity gap between the U.S. and Europe.
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Taken together, better workers and better managers explain between a quarter and half of the link between good management and productivity that the researchers established in earlier work.
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The paper can’t prove that good managers cause good management, but it seems likely that they do. “I think it probably runs in both directions,” Van Reenen said of the causal relationship, noting that wellmanaged firms are better positioned to attract good managers and that “better managers are more likely to get their firms to adopt best practices.”"

Locus de controlo no interior!!!

Trechos retirados de "Proof That Good Managers Really Do Make a Difference"

Workshop "Indicadores de Monitorização dos Processos" (parte II) - Porto 10 de Fevereiro

Parte I.

Os primeiros quatro slides do Workshop são estes:

Prefácio from Carlos Pereira Da Cruz

O título e o prefácio.
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O que é que tenho escrito nas notas dos slides?
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Slide 2:

"Nos meus primeiros anos de actividade profissional, trabalhei numa empresa de capital japonês que praticava a directiva de “qualquer engº que entrasse tinha de ir trabalhar como operário”.
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Como operário, trabalhava e não fazia ideia do resultado do meu trabalho… quando preparava uma "sopa de reagentes" num "panelão" enorme que depois seria alimentaria um reactor de 129 m3 pensava, e se eu fizesse xixi para dentro da mistura… o que aconteceria? Fazíamos coisas diferentes de um dia para o outro e não tínhamos qualquer pista sobre as suas consequências. A temperatura da água variava, a balança pesava mal, os reagentes absorviam humidade, a qualidade dos reagentes variava de lote para lote, o misturador não tinha uma rotação constante, ...
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Como é que isso influenciava o produto? Valor K, densidade, absorção de plastificante, estabilidade térmica, ...
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Não sabíamos estávamos cegos"

Slide 3:

"Quando 2 anos depois ocupei a função de responsável da Qualidade a minha primeira decisão foi: fazer chegar aos operários informação diária sobre os resultados do que faziam, as características do produto produzida na véspera, para criarem relações de causa-efeito na sua mente?"

Slide 4:

"Somos máquinas associativas sempre em busca de padrões, mesmo sem esforço." 

Sem indicadores, sem monitorização, como é que se aprende?
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Relacionar com "Instigating innovation by enhancing experimentation":

"Most manufacturers do not like the idea of experimentation, despite it being widespread in most companies. If management does not see it (or hear about it) does not mean it is not happening. This is the main problem. Lots of companies (or rather employees) experiment, but the feedback systems into the various levels of management and cross functional coordination are not working. Learning by doing is hard to do in these workplaces. Furthermore, management systems that rewards success or compliance makes learning by doing almost impossible.
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Experiments in manufacturers happens at different levels.
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It happens spontaneously on the work floor, where somebody needs to keep a process going. Ironically often experiments in the work space is the result of resource constraints (like trying to substitute one component/artifact/material/tool for another. A lot of potential innovations are missed by management because feedback doesn’t work, or experimentation is not encouraged or allowed."

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Inscrições através de metanoia@metanoia.pt com a referência IMP01

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Programa aqui.