Mongo e a mudança de paradigma

"As long ago as 1934, Joseph Schumpeter, the Harvard economist, observed that organisations move in a natural cycle between exploring new opportunities and exploiting old certainties. Businesses in the explorative phase are designed to seek out opportunities, experiment, and learn fast. Exploitative businesses on the other hand tend to value efficiency and optimisation, placing a heavy hand on standardisation and a light one on experimentation. (Moi ici: O advento de Mongo obriga a mudar de paradigma. Há meses que ando a namorar com o inevitável... o nome Redsigma está esgotado!!! Redsigma foi uma marca que criei em 1991 ou 92. Reduzir o sigma, reduzir a variabilidade, apostar na standardização. Lentamente, comecei a mudar e hoje, sou quase um inimigo declarado da normalização... prefiro apoiar empresas a estarem à frente da onda, tão à frente que ainda não existem normas. Prefiro apostar na variedade do que estar preocupado com a variabilidade.)
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Businesses today have to be both exploitative and explorative, at once.
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But, it's not easy. The two phases demand hugely different approaches across all aspects of a business. Businesses in the exploitative phase find it incredibly difficult to value exploration; their people, processes and structure are often designed to eliminate all variance and unpredictability.
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Disruptors centre themselves around consumer needs, they are optimised for exploration and have an incredible knack of turning the incumbents' perceived advantages into their Achilles' heals. (Moi ici: Recordar "O mundo de Golias a esboroar-se") Disruptors frequently reveal the direction in which industries are headed.
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We are all trained to analyse a market's incumbents—after all, their demise attracts more attention than the rise of the disruptor and they're easier to find and benchmark. But in order to build a business's muscles to explore and simultaneously exploit, watching disruptors in action, regardless of their size or industry, is key to any business's long-term success."

Trechos retirados de "How to turn a competitor's advantage into a weakness"

"Processos e experiência dos clientes" (parte III)

Parte I e II.
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Trechos retirados do Capítulo 3, "Everything is a service", do livro "The Connected Company" de Dave Gray:

"Most companies today are designed to produce high volumes of consistent, standard outputs, with great efficiency and at low cost. Even many of today’s services industries still operate in an industrial fashion.
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But most of these services are not really services at all. They are factory-style processes that treat people as if they were products moving through a production line. Just think of the last time you called a company’s “customer service line” and ask yourself if you felt well served. Sure, many services require some level of efficiency, but services are not production processes. They are experiences. Unlike products, services are often designed or modified as they are delivered; they are co-created with customers. Services are contextual—where, when, and how they are delivered can make a big difference. They may require specialized knowledge or skills. The value of a service lies in the interactions: it’s not the end product that matters, so much as the experience. Service providers often must respond in real time to customer desires and preferences. To this end, a company with a service orientation cannot be designed and organized around efficiency processes. It must be designed and organized around customers and experiences. This is a complete inversion of the mass-production, mass-marketing paradigm, which will be difficult for many companies to adopt.
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The first step to a service orientation is to change the way we think about products. Instead of thinking about products as ends in themselves, we need to think of them as just one component in an overall service, the point of which is to deliver a stellar customer experience. (Moi ici: Mas mais do que só "delivery", a experiência continua após a entrega e prolonga-se para o uso, e para lá do uso, prolonga-se nos sentimentos que ao longo do tempo vão emergir com a experiência vivida e, com a reflexão ao longo do tempo sobre essa experiência)
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We have developed a tendency to think of flows in terms of process, but services and processes are not the same. Processes are linked, linear chains of cause and effect that, when managed carefully, drive predictable, reliable results. A service is different. While processes are designed to be consistent and uniform, services are co-created with customers each and every time a service is rendered. This difference is not superficial but fundamental." (Moi ici: Recordar "Cuidado com a cristalização")

Babel e a Heterogeneidade

A Torre de Babel, para mim, é um símbolo, uma metáfora, dos homens loucos que ao abrigo de um "ismo" salvador querem uniformizar o mundo.
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A Torre de Babel, para mim, é também um símbolo da superioridade de Mongo, um mundo de diversidade, sobre Magnitograd, um mundo de normalização obsessiva e castradora.
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Em 2008, em "O perigo da cristalização" expliquei porque achava que o mundo da Qualidade estava a perder a relevância conseguida nos anos 80 e 90 do século passado, ficou preso ao bezerro dourado da normalização. Porquê? Por que a normalização aumenta a eficiência.
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"A minha evolução" abriu-me os olhos para uma realidade alternativa, uma que não ganha as capas dos jornais, nem o tempo de antena nos "prime-time".
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Assim, é com um gozo tremendo que encontro este texto sobre a vantagem da heterogeneidade, sobre a vantagem da diversidade, sobre a vantagem da eficácia, no artigo "The Four Service Marketing Myths" de Vargo & Lusch:

"The focus of the characteristic of heterogeneity is standardization....historically, goods production has been characterized as heterogeneous. Preindustrial cottage industries typically produced nonstandardized output. Standardization, or more precisely the goal of standardized output, is an outgrowth of more recent mass production, not an inherent characteristic of tangible output, and  even after 150 years of implementation, it remains a manufacturing goal, not a reality....The critical issue in the perception of relative homogeneity and heterogeneity is who is making the judgment. Fundamentally, standardization is concerned with quality, but this association between homogeneity and quality is relatively new and is a manufacturer-centered association, motivated primarily by the advantages in efficiency afforded by standardization in the move toward mass production that characterized the Industrial Revolution. In short, standardization is more efficient from the manufacture’s perspective and thus has (had) become the standard of quality. .
From the consumer’s perspective, however, the issue is different. Homogeneity in production often results in heterogeneous judgments of quality by individual consumers, if not whole markets....Quite often, we deal with this heterogeneity with respect to demand by offering an assortment of standardized offerings to serve “relatively” homogeneous groups, that is, segments. On the other hand, what is often referred to as the heterogeneous nature of services is often seen as more harmonious with the individualized, dynamic demand of the consumer. That is, nonstandardization on a priori grounds may allow customization that is more responsive to demand. From a marketing perspective, nonstandardization (i.e., customization) is the normative goal..The inverted implications. Service scholars have rather easily accepted the idea that services have a disadvantage in relation to goods because they cannot be standardized as easily as goods. Thus, the normative prescription is that service providers must work particularly hard to find ways to increase standardization. As noted, in reality, the situation may be the exact opposite. Although standardization may provide for manufacturing efficiency, this efficiency comes at the expense of marketing effectiveness. The normative prescription of the consumer orientation screams heterogeneity. Thus, it is standardized tangible goods that may be at a disadvantage, rather than services....
Rather than trying to make service more goods-like through internal standardization, service managers should capitalize on the flexibility of service provision, and manufacturers should strive to make their goods more service-like through the customized provision of output that meets the heterogeneous standards of consumers....
from a marketing perspective, heterogeneous offerings are the normative goal regardless of whether the core offering is relatively tangible or intangible."

Mongo é o futuro, onde we are all weird. Mongo é o mundo DIY:

A outra via

Ainda na semana passada, no âmbito de uma formação, recordei esta reflexão "O perigo da cristalização".

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Assim, foi com um sorriso cúmplice que recebi este artigo "How to Break Out of the Commodity Trap: A Lesson from Mickey Mouse".

"Look at almost any industry and you will see companies struggling to differentiate what they have to offer from everything else in the marketplace. So it’s hardly surprising that one of the most common complaints I hear from senior executives is “My product is becoming commoditized. Is there a way out?”"

"The only way out of the trap is to reframe a situation so that you can make a fundamental shift in strategy. And the best starting point for this is understanding what drives commoditization: product modularity."

"modularity comes with two unintended consequences. First, other companies can enter the industry by complying with the pre-defined standards. And the second is the globalization of production.
By lowering the barrier to entry, modularity allows manufacturers from emerging economies to grab part of the action, often taking advantage initially of cheap wages. Over time, however, these new entrants took on additional responsibilities for product design and component procurement."

Como é que a maioria das empresas enfrenta a concorrência de países de mão-de-obra barata?
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Faz asneira, e tenta combater no terreno que dá vantagem a essa concorrência!
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O artigo propõe uma alternativa:

"re-think about the problems that consumers wanted solved and to reframe its own products accordingly."

"Executives who want to counter product commoditization must start by rethinking what problems their organizations could solve, then re-integrating the firm’s activities in a radically new way. They must be prepared to take a path that the firm never imagined it would."

Em vez de se concentrar no produto, concentrar-se no problema, na necessidade, na experiência, em suma, na vida dos clientes-alvo. Muitas vezes, quase sempre, implica, em vez de cortar nos custos, aumentar esses mesmos custos.
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E a sua empresa? Como se está a diferenciar? Está numa de jobs-to-be-done, ou numa de cortar, cortar, cortar?

Mongo e a Lei de Ashby

Ontem à noite Dave Gray brindou-nos com uma série de reflexões sintonizadas com a narrativa deste blogue:
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Acerca de Mongo:
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"Competitive intensity is rising all over the world. Global competition and the web have given customers more choices that they have ever had before. This means customers can choose from an ever-widening set of choices, and it seems that variety only breeds more variety. The more choices that become available, the more choices people want.
Customers have lots of things they are trying to do, and lots of ways they are trying to do them. And you have lots of competitors who are trying to offer them better, cheaper, faster, easier ways to do those jobs.
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In the coming century the world will create a lot of variety. This is great for individuals but creates a real problem for companies.
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From drugs to microchips, from food service to entertainment, your customers will be throwing a lot of variety at you. They will demand more from you. They will want better quality, and they will want it faster and cheaper. They will expect you to respond quickly to their demands for personal and customized services. This change is real and it’s accelerating."
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Se a variedade vai aumentar... convém recordar a Lei de Ashby:
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"You can reduce variety by simplifying your system and finding ways to limit your inputs. 

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You can absorb variety by developing a capability to accept a wider variety of inputs into the system. 

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In the real world you probably will want to reduce variety in some parts of your business and absorb it in others. Tradeoffs like this are at the core of company strategy and design."

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Por fim, o problema que representa a normalização, a uniformização, num mundo que aspira à variedade:

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"Another core idea from the industrial revolution is the concept of, interchangeable parts. Standardization does make it easier to mass-produce quality products. Standards also make it easier to connect things.
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We run into problems, though, when we try to apply standards to things that inherently have a high degree of variety: for example, a customer service call. Customer problems come in all shapes and sizes, and even problems that might seem very similar on the surface can be subject to a lot of variability based on the context.
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We have gotten so used to the idea of standards as a good thing that we tend to apply them in the wrong places. For example, consider the idea of a “best practice.” The concept of a best practice assumes that there is one “best way” to solve a problem: that every problem can be isolated from its context, and a single best way of solving it can be described and shared. Unfortunately, this has caused a lot of problems in the business world, because it’s impossible to isolate problems from their context.
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A system is not just the sum of its parts. What makes a system work is not the parts in isolation, but the interactions between them, and the inherent tradeoffs that must be made to achieve different kinds of system performance. Standardization is something you apply to the parts of a system, not a whole. A best practice from one company, or from one part of a company, cannot necessarily be applied successfully elsewhere."

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Lembram-se da minha crítica à malta da Qualidade encalhada na normalização?

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"O perigo da cristalização"

A guerra em curso... ou como a inovação é como as mulheres nas empresas

Quando animo uma sessão sobre "Identificação de clientes-alvo e sua caracterização", para responder à pergunta "Afinal para quem vamos trabalhar?", costumo começar por simplificar a coisa e mostrar um mundo de clientes extremados no preço, no serviço e na inovação. Depois, mostro como cada um desses clientes-tipo tem de ser servido por um mosaico de actividades com prioridades e suportado por culturas todas diferentes.
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A figura 12 deste artigo ilustra a confusão de querer ir a todas e servir todo o tipo de clientes... claro, depois os resultados são espelhados por Byrnes e pelas curvas de Stobachoff.
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A escolha dos clientes-alvo determina a cultura, as prioridades, as políticas, as linhas de orientação, o mosaico solidário, sinérgico, de actividades encadeadas capazes de criar a vantagem do serviço e dificultarem a cópia por concorrentes.
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O pior que pode acontecer, é tentar aplicar o que está na moda numa cultura que serve um tipo de clientes-alvo com bons resultados, numa outra cultura que pretende servir outro tipo de clientes-alvo.
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Ao longo dos anos aqui no blogue referi como exemplo disto a tontice da 3M com o Lean Six Sigma:

• "Não culpem a caneta quando a culpa é de quem escreve" (Julho de 2007)
• "O que revela a leitura dos indicadores de um balanced scorecard" (Setembro de 2007)
• "Eficácia, eficiência, processos e proposta de valor" (Abril de 2010)

O problema não é português, é universal. 

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Jeffrey Phillips em "Innovation and Efficiency – Opposing Forces" expande a minha preocupação e clarifica melhor as consequências nefastas de tantos anos de experiência no corte de custos, no impacte negativo das conversas da tríade nos media. Quanto mais os académicos encalhados se enterrarem no pântano da eficiência, da normalização, do QCD, mais aumenta a energia que tem de se gastar para vencer a energia de activação para começar a competir no campeonato que interessa: o campeonato do valor, o campeonato da eficácia, o campeonato da inovação:
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"Efficiency is winning because, to continue the warfare analogy, all the troops have been trained in the cost cutting and efficiency models and methods. We have ninjas stalking through the business reinforcing Six Sigma and Lean concepts. The coin of the realm is paid out to reward efficiency gains far more frequently than innovation outcomes. Business models, processes and methods are much more attuned to efficiency. As these concepts are reinforced, they remind the rest of the troops to place emphasis on reducing risk, reducing variability, reducing costs. When an officer (read executive) argues for a new battle plan, based on innovation, the majority of the organization looks on in horror. No one is familiar with those tools and methods. They introduce risk and uncertainty, with a very indefinite outcome. And innovation doesn’t reinforce the strengths of the existing business model and strategies – in fact it may weaken or destroy the very fortress the firm has worked so hard to build. While I’ve written this in rather florid language, make no mistake, there’s a battle underway in every firm between efficiency and innovation, and efficiency is poised to win in most organizations."

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Agora, recuem, procurem uma janela para onde possam olhar o horizonte e respondam à pergunta:

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As medidas que o governo mais tem badalado nos últimos meses, relativamente à Economia, condicionam, despertam, ajudam, concentram, que tipo de abordagem, a da eficiência ou a da inovação (eficácia)?

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TSU, mais meia-hora, menos feriados... tudo relacionado com os custos de quem já está implantado... nada  relacionado com a eficácia/inovação!!!

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Os nossos amigos finlandeses (com Maliranta à cabeça) ensinaram-me a primeira citação na coluna da direita deste blogue:

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""It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Mas, e como isto é profundo:"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação." 

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O governo fez alguma coisa para facilitar a vida à entrada no mercado de novos players anónimos? Se não, como é que eles, de cabeça limpa, sem a contaminação da eficiência, podem aumentar a nossa produtividade com a inovação? Nunca esquecer Marn e Rosiello, eles foram o farol que me orientou para a viagem que me deu a conhecer o planeta Mongo!!!

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A inovação tem de ser como as mulheres nas empresas... tem de ser muito, muito, muito competente para passar à frente de um homem com muito menos competência.

"I would suggest that pharma CEOs look to Hollywood for inspiration"

Ainda hoje, durante uma reflexão com empresários, recordei esta experiência "O perigo da cristalização" ao tentar dar a minha opinião sobre onde os sistemas da qualidade podem falhar por terem encalhado no tempo.
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Já por várias vezes tenho chamado a atenção para o facto de que não existem boas-práticas à priori. Aquilo que são boas-práticas para uma indústria que vive do preço mais baixo pode ser um crime aplicar numa indústria que vive da inovação. Por exemplo:

• "Não existem boas-práticas!!!"
• "Não culpem a caneta quando a culpa é de quem escreve!"
• "Lanchesterianos e a surpresa da flexibilidade talibã"

Pois bem, acabo de ler um artigo que me encheu as medidas "What Is Really Killing Pharma":
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"I have come to believe (and I admit that this is only a theory) that as more and more of pharma’s budget was funneled into advertising and direct marketing to both the general public and to doctors themselves, the path to the top in pharma ceased to be via the lab bench and instead was by way of Madison Avenue (Moi ici: Da Wikipedia "he term "Madison Avenue" is often used metonymically for advertising, and Madison Avenue became identified with the advertising industry after the explosive growth in this area in the 1920s").
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Like today’s pharma CEOs, he knew a lot about selling but not much about what he was selling.
One consequence of this shift from science to business in the pharma industry has been less and less appreciation for the realities—as opposed to the hype and hope—of drug discovery. This is reflected both in the quixotic choices made by pharma as to what to pursue and in the stunningly bad management of the core talent in drug discovery.
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Because your modern big pharma CEO knows next to nothing about science, I have to assume they think they are adding value by imposing management schemes they do know about. Let’s consider one such disaster of a fad: lean thinking and six sigma.
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The problem, though, is the process being modeled here—drug discovery—doesn’t lend itself to this method. As any senior medicinal chemist or molecular modeler would be happy to explain to management, an embarrassingly large fraction of drug discovery involves serendipity—while you’re looking for one thing, you find another. And serendipity is, of course, the complete antithesis of a Taguchi robust process where variance, i.e. a standard deviation, can be well defined- we work in the domain of the unexpected, the domain of the “Black Swan”. Now that the method has been applied and failed, it seems ridiculous to have ever thought it might have succeeded. But not only was it applied with great vigor, it often came to be seen as a much more secure employment path than the vagaries of drug discovery. Not a little talent was wasted on these meaningless exercises and not a few careers lost to management bullshit.
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Here’s a positive suggestion: instead of using biotech as a model, I would suggest that pharma CEOs look to Hollywood for inspiration. The film industry long ago recognized that what is important is talent. No one can predict what will be a blockbuster (drug or movie), but Hollywood has at least recognized that movie-making is a talent-based industry. Perhaps today’s pharma chiefs need to see themselves as latter-day studio heads—I’m sure they’d love that!—and come to the same conclusions. Define the vision, get and keep the right people, stop making it harder for talented people to do their jobs, give them the time and resources to be creative. Then maybe, just maybe, they would start curing pharma."
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Que grande artigo!!!
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Pôe o dedo na ferida!!!
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E em linha com o postal que está a gestação na minha mente sobre os intangíveis e a criação de valor, e a dificuldade da velha academia encaixar isto na cabeça.

O perigo da cristalização (parte II)

Este postal de Março de 2008 "O perigo da cristalização" casa perfeitamente com este trecho:
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"One of the great experiments in selective innovation was Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (or MITI), which was created to guide industrial policy out of the rubble left by World War II. In addition to basic economic policy, it was also responsible for funding research and directing investment into the most promising areas.

Initially, MITI was an enormous success. It’s forward thinking management of Japanese industry created an economic miracle in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Companies like Toyota and Sony became global icons, while western nations viewed the Japanese economic juggernaut with a mix of fear and envy.

Then came Japan’s Lost Decade, and the tight network of elite banks and corporations proved to be too rigid to adapt to an enormous asset price bubble. Meanwhile, the loose network of garage start-ups and venture capital in America’s Silicon Valley created new information-based industries that no one saw coming.

While Japan had been, and to some extent continues to be, a leader in the old industrial economy that MITI designed for, it remains a laggard in information age industries even today, 20 years after the Lost Decade began.

You can’t plan for what you don’t see coming."
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Trecho retirado de "The Selective Innovation Trap"

Novidade versus massificação

"Quality is not only not necessary, for many itens, it is undesirable. If we define quality as regularly meeting the measured specifications for an item, then quality matters a lot for something like a pace-maker, it does not matter at all for a 3000 dolars haute-couture dress.

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More fashion equals less need for quality, perfect is an ilusion."

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Trecho retirado de Tribes de Seth Godin.

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Muita gente na área da Qualidade ainda não percebeu isto. Continuam no campeonato da normalização.

Mudam-se os tempos e o enfoque também tem de mudar.

Do artigo "The Competitive Imperative of Learning" de Amy Edmonson na revista Harvard Business Review deste mês retiro estes trechos:
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"Most management systems in use today date back to a manufacturing-dominated era in which firms were organized to execute as efficiently as possible. Throughout the twentieth century, the core challenge factory managers faced was controlling variability."
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"For a long while and in many circumstances, management systems that were focused on execution-as-efficiency worked brilliantly, transforming unpredictable and expensive customized work into uniform, economical modes of mass production."
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Contudo: "With the rise of knowledge-based organizations in the information age, the old model no longer works, for a number of reasons"
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Daí, o perigo da cristalização de quem não muda.

O perigo da cristalização

Esta semana voltei a entrar numa sala onde, em 1990 ou 91, frequentei como formando a minha primeira acção de formação inter-empresas na área da Qualidade.
Deparei com um cartaz afixado na parede, que ao fim destes anos todos (18 anos!!!) continua lá. O cartaz é mais ou menos assim:

Quando nos anos oitenta do século passado a palavra Qualidade invadiu o léxico da gestão, estava associada à redução de defeitos, à redução de desperdícios, ao aumento da eficiência, à redução de custos. A normalização era uma palavra e um conceito-chave.
Foi nessa década que começaram as normas da série ISO 9000, foi nessa década que a expansão japonesa atingiu o seu auge.
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Michael Porter no seu conhecido artigo “What is Strategy?” publicado na Harvard Business Review de Novembro-Dezembro de 1996 (numa tradução em brasileiro aqui) escreveu sobre os japoneses:
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“Os japoneses desencadearam uma revolução global em Eficiência Operacional nos anos 70 e 80, tornando pioneiras práticas como o gerenciamento de qualidade total e melhoria contínua. Como resultado, as indústrias japoneses se aproveitaram do custo menor e vantagens de qualidade por muitos anos.
Mas as companhias japonesas raramente desenvolvem posições distintas de estratégias dos tipos discutidos neste artigo.
Aquelas que o fizeram - Sony, Canon e Sega, por exemplo - foram a exceção e não a regra. A maior parte das companhias, imitam e emulam umas às outras. Todas as rivais oferecem a maior parte, quando não toda a variedade de produtos, as características e serviços; eles empregam todos os canais e igualam as configurações de fábricas umas das outras.
Os perigos do estilo da competição japonesa estão agora, começando a ficar mais fáceis de serem reconhecidos. Nos anos 80, com os rivais operando bem longe da fronteira de produtividade, parecia ser possível vencer indefinidamente no custo e na qualidade. As companhias japonesas foram capazes de crescer em uma economia doméstica em expansão e penetrar nos mercados mundiais. Elas pareciam não parar. Mas, assim que a abertura na Eficiência Operacional se estreita, as companhias japonesas estão, de modo crescente, sendo presas em uma armadilha que elas mesmas armaram. Se quiserem escapar às batalhas mútuas e destrutivas que devastam seus recursos, as companhias japonesas terão que aprender estratégia.”
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Tenho uma opinião um bocadinho diferente da de Porter, esta aposta na eficiência, na normalização, era ela própria uma estratégia, válida por muitos anos, até que se esgotou.
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No mercado, como em muitas outras coisas na vida, não se é recompensado por ter razão antes do tempo. Durante trinta, quarenta, cinquenta anos foi uma abordagem ao negócio que resultou para as empresas japonesas. Depois, quando as empresas ocidentais a começaram a utilizar, perdeu-se a vantagem e deixou de ser suficiente.
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Eric Beinheocker no seu fabuloso livro “The Origin of Wealth” conta vários exemplos de universos simulados criados em computador, onde populações têm de competir por recursos, conjugando regras do “Dilema do Prisioneiro” com o “Jogo da Vida”. Pondo a seta do tempo a contar e deixando os seres nesses mundos evoluírem em estratégias de sobrevivência, pode-se concluir:

“So who was the winner? What was the best strategy in the end? What Lindgren found was that this is a nonsensical question. In an evolutionary system such as Lindgren’s model, there is no single winner, no optimal, no best strategy. Rather, anyone who is alive at a particular point in time, is in effect a winner, because everyone else is dead. To be alive at all, an agent must have a strategy with something going for it, some way of making a living, defending against competitors, and dealing with the vagaries of its environment.”
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“Likewise, we cannot say any single strategy in the Prisioner’s Dilemma ecology was a winner. Lindgren’s model showed that once in a while, a particular strategy would rise up, dominate the game for a while, have its day in the sun, and then inevitably be brought down by some innovative competitor. Sometimes, several strategies shared the limelight, battling for “market share” control of the game board, and then an outsider would come in and bring them all down. During other periods, two strategies working as a symbiotic pair would rise up together – but then if one got into trouble, both collapsed.”
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““We discovered that there is no one best strategy; rather, the evolutionary process creates an ecosystem of strategies – an ecosystem that changes over time in Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction.”
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Não há estratégias eternas.
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Num mundo em que a eficiência operacional era por si só uma vantagem competitiva decisiva aquele cartaz fazia todo o sentido.
Para uma estratégia assente em trabalhar na fronteira, no limite da Eficiência Operacional, para ter um preço competitivo, há que ter um custo competitivo. Neste mundo, aumentos da produtividade são conseguidos à custa da redução contínua dos custos.
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Esta estratégia é facilmente emulada e algum tempo depois, vários concorrentes estão ao mesmo nível a competir num oceano vermelho de sangue, em que a vitória de um é a desgraça de outro.
Até que alguns “jogadores” descobrem que: preço é o que os clientes pagam, valor é o que sentem e recebem pelo produto/serviço, ou seja:
Então, a ênfase deixa de ser no custo e passa a ser no valor!!!
Por sua vez valor é:Durante anos e anos a Qualidade preocupou-se única e exclusivamente (quase) com os “Sacrifícios” (por isso é que se dizia “Quality is free”).
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O sucesso da estratégia assente na eficiência operacional culminou com a sua obsoletização. Quando é tudo igual, quando está tudo normalizado, só conta o preço.
A fuga a essa arena competitiva reside na aposta nos “Benefícios”, reside na aposta na variedade.
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Assim, quando falamos em “Normalização” como redução da variabilidade, falamos em reduzir defeitos – um propósito válido ontem e sempre.
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Quando falamos em “Normalização” como redução da variedade, falamos em reduzir a diferenciação – algo que está cada vez mais condenado ao fracasso.

Viva a variedade.