"the only choice in the hearts and minds of your market segment"

Neste postal escrevi:

"As regras do jogo económico estão a ser revistas e algo diferente vai emergir da confusão. Entretanto, julgo que esta previsão que se segue não andará longe do que veremos:

"In a digitally transformed economy, CP enterprises are normally better off spending money to save time than to spend time to save money. The shorter the offering’s life cycle, the more this is the case.

...

but as time displaces money as the scarcest ingredient in the economic equation, agile must come to the fore. ... so taking time out of our processes as opposed to taking money out needs to be our first (although not our only) priority."

Quantos empresários vão conseguir mudar de mindset? Deixar de lado algoritmos familiares, mas desactualizados, e abraçar outros que têm de ser construídos durante o decorrer do jogo, não é tarefa para qualquer um."

Mais empresários precisam de perceber que o importante não é o output que sai das suas empresas, mas o resultado, o valor, que os clientes conseguem gerar na sua vida ao processar esses outputs como inputs nos seus processos. Assim, que fazem a ponte para o valor, têm uma base para deixar de ver o preço como o factor mais importante para a escolha do cliente. Em vez de se concentrarem na eficiência interna, podem olhar para argumentos de venda na vida do cliente (rapidez, conveniência, custo do ciclo de vida, desempenho superior, design, ...) e abandonar o medo da competição pelo preço mais baixo. Contudo, isto implica deliberar quem são os clientes-alvo e conhecê-los:

"The price people are willing to pay for a product or service is equal to the perceived use value they anticipate receiving from their purchase or investment. Because not everyone has the same perception of what constitutes use value, not everyone is a prospective buyer of your brand or your kind of product or service—hence the recognition of market segmentation and the identification of different target audiences.

...

The profit margin is thus equal to the utility that a product or service delivers to its intended target audience. Therefore, the challenge of any business, with the exception of monopolies and oligopolies, is to add more utility to its value proposition targeting a specific audience than its immediate competitors. In other words, pursuing this strategy to become that target audience’s “obvious choice” supplier—and thus standing out as the only choice in the hearts and minds of your market segment."[Moi ici: Daí além da concorrência imperfeita, os monopólios informais ou seja "the only choice in the hearts and minds"]

Trechos retirados de "The Root Cause: Rethink Your Approach to Solving Stubborn Enterprise-Wide Problems" de Hans Norden.

"Great success"

A propósito da contínua subida da carga fiscal e da insaciável voracidade fiscal do estado normando estes recortes:

"Because a rising tide lifts all boats or, as I’ve heard many times in presentations, in a hurricane even turkeys will fly, no one questions an executive’s business governance [a government's] acumen when bottom-line [budget] results meet or exceed expectations. Any attempted criticism is countered with the clincher, “Who can argue with success?” Note that this implies equating success with profits [low deficit], not the system’s capability and capacity for becoming the obvious choice supplier to one’s target audience.[the increase in the emigration of young people and others speaks for itself] 

As we saw before, the difference in governing a business system  [a country] under good and bad economic conditions is the margin for error. Consequently, executive  [government] decision-makers are escorted into the twilight state by their dwindling profit margins [the rise in interest rates and the drop in economic activity, in the face of rigid spending].

Instead of investigating the root cause of one’s dwindling profit margins [fiscal voracity] , executive   [government] decision makers rely on their mental programming. Instead of addressing the cause, they jump on addressing the effect—dwindling profit margins [higher deficit]. When there is this kind of confusion about cause and effect, the root cause is thus often mistakenly perceived as a financial problem. Because increasing income (sales volume and profit margins) [tax withdrawal] is more difficult to achieve in an economic downturn, lowering cost  [the increase in tax loot] is the only remaining logical conclusion.”

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

"há anos em que décadas acontecem" (parte II)

Ao escrever a Parte I cheguei a fazer esta figura que acabei por não incluir no postal:

Um esquema que ilustra o impacte do contexto externo sobre o desempenho das empresas exportadoras portuguesas.

Ontem ao fazer a minha caminhada matinal ao longo do rio Tinto em Rio Tinto sublinhei:

“Colonel John R. Boyd said, “He who can handle the quickest rate of change survives,” in which “quick” does not refer to speed but the amount of time that elapses in transitioning the system from one state to another. Hence, when competitors experience similar challenges, fast transients should be conducted asymmetrically, so as to complete a transition from one state to the next in less time than anyone else. Also, Boyd favored abrupt, fast transients that come as a surprise. Consequently, the antidote to uncertainty is adaptability—not certainty.”

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

Uma surpresa boa!

A leitura de "The Root Cause: Rethink Your Approach to Solving Stubborn Enterprise-Wide Problems" de Hans Norden está a ser uma surpresa, por vezes brutal. Toda uma série de hibridações que desenvolvi ao longo dos anos a aparecerem-me, página após página em lingua inglesa.

Já vi muita gente a usar o modelo de cadeia de valor de Porter de muita maneira, mas não assim:

“The value chain is a representation of the process by which input variables are transformed into output variables. Therefore, the value chain’s design, organization or structure, implementation or operation, maintenance, and management are a function of its competitive advantage.

Within the value chain, each business function has its own objective that contributes to and supports the realization of the overall purpose of the value chain.”

O modelo de Porter usado como uso os mapas de processos!

Olhar para as organizações como seres vivos, organismos e não mecanismos:

“Note the difference in perception of a business, and therefore its value chain, as an organism or as a mechanism. The specifications and design of individual component parts that constitute a value chain are less important than their intricately interdependent and synergistic relationships, which determine a business’s character and nature as an organic whole.”

A linguagem que aprendi com Goldratt e Dettmer 

“It makes sense to distinguish between the desired state and the current state when they are misaligned—when the value chain experiences change. The root cause can originate from outperforming the aim or by easing up on the aim, or by changing the benchmark for success.”

A doença do eficientismo, a doença de saltar para soluções sem perceber as causas: 

“Beware of managers with a finance background who are prone to perceive this altered state as a financial problem in need of a financial solution, which usually means increasing operational efficiency. The unfortunate effect of treating symptoms is ignorance about the magnitude of the problem, jumping to conclusions that might even aggravate the problem, and allowing the problem to linger and fester. As a result, problems will persist, recur, or become a latent condition that can wreak havoc when least expected and tend to arrive at a critical moment in the business’s future.”

Tratamento sintomático

Ontem de manhã, no Jornal de Negócios, li:

"O que explica que, sendo o décimo pais que mais fundos recebe face ao PIB, Portugal tenha dos piores desempenhos económicos na UE?

- Portugal está praticamente estagnado desde 2000 porque não tem tido uma boa performance no que toca a crescimento sustentado."

Depois, durante a minha caminhada matinal sublinhei:

"Complexity, in combination with unfolding new and unforeseen circumstances, produces systemic problems that manifest themselves throughout the enterprise.

...

Systemic problems tend to be stubborn because their root cause(s) are not obvious; it takes a deliberate and concerted effort to diagnose them and create authentic solutions. Unfortunately, only a few CEOs deliberately choose to initiate and sustain such an effort. The majority of CEOs tend to favor investing in the same familiar solutions that caused the systemic problems in the first place because they find them prudent, safer, and easily defensible because others have already opted for the same solution. This is precisely why systemic problems are so costly and why they can linger in the system for such a long period of time. Nothing changes until someone intervenes with innovative and effective solutions, or until these problems unleash a destructive chain reaction-whichever comes first.

...

Treatment of symptoms - without knowing their root cause(s)-is malpractice. Root causes can only be solved with solutions which efficacy is grounded in proven cause-and-effect relationships, thus predicting to restore integrity to the system. That is what distinguishes them as authentic solutions.

...

The obstacle standing between a CEO’s experience of confusion and disorder and solving systemic problems is the individual’s own mental programming—in other words, the principles and methods she or he accepts because of a belief that they are valid and true and those she or he rejects because of a belief that they are invalid and untrue."

E recordei-me de "- Drop your tools!!! Ou porque não era o verdadeiro socialismo"

Trechos retirados de "The Root Cause: Rethink Your Approach to Solving Stubborn Enterprise-Wide Problems" de Hans Norden.