Parte IV - partir pedra e conversas estratégicas

Continuado daqui: Parte I, Parte II e Parte III.
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Neste postal de há quase dois anos A eficácia é mais importante do que a eficiência reflecti sobre a importância de partir pedra.
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Quando uma equipa de gestão discute e discute e parece que não avança, ao formular uma estratégia, está na realidade a criar uma comunhão de interpretações, está na realidade a criar uma rede de sinapses, nos indíviduos e na equipa, que lhe permite modelar uma visão do que é a realidade, de como a organização vai actuar sore a realidade, de qual é a informação relevante para perceber os padrões que emergem da realidade, que simulações estão a ser cumpridas, que hipóteses estão a ser rejeitadas pela realidade ... de tal forma que, quando a realidade não se conjuga com o teórico, rapidamente os indivíduos e a equipa observam-orientam-decidem-actuam, o ciclo OODA.
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E percorrido muito mais rapidamente do que quando a equipa e as pessoas individuais não têm um modelo para descortinar, de entre a avalanche de informação, o que é relevante e o que é ruído.
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Daí também a atribuição de um capítulo, o sétimo ("Using Scorecards to Boost a Strategy-Grounded Dialogue"), no livro “Making Scorecards Actionable” de Nils-Goran Olve, Carl-Johan Petri, Jan Roy e Sofie Roy ao tema das conversas estratégicas.
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"Hence, we argue that the most important dialogue regarding scorecards is when the employees are invited to take part in the creation of the strategy map, when they understand and subscribe to the targets, and when they get to know the results compared with the goals. And, maybe most important, when they can take action if they see that the intended strategy is not materializing.
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Scorecards may be used by management to discuss intentions and results with its superiors, and scorecards may be used to align the units’ efforts with other units in the organization, but if management does not use the scorecards to engage all employees in a continuous discussion on aspirations and achievements, then the scorecards are not likely to yield any significant results."
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“when an outcome deviates from plan in the scorecard, it inevitably boosts a discussion in the group on why this happened and what can be done to correct it. Companies that manage to capture these suggestions and – more importantly – manage to execute them are more competitive than those who do not. Capturing ideas for improvements is not complicated in principle, but still takes some effort in practice.”
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Termino esta série com uma deriva para outros campos, na Parte V: Zapatero e outros.

Parte III – o sistema límbico, os casos amorosos e a agilidade nos ciclos OODA

Continuado daqui: Parte I e Parte II
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Aos burocratas de Bruxelas, aos macroeconomistas e aos gestores profissionais de estufa, com a falta do conhecimento em primeira-mão, algo que advém da experiência, falta o conhecimento intuitivo. O conhecimento intuitivo permite a actuação rápida e a antecipação, ao percorrer os ciclos OODA de forma mais rápida que os outros actores no mercado. Assim, tal como no exemplo do jogo de xadrez da Parte II, é como se fizessem-se duas jogadas consecutivas por cada jogada do concorrente.
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Sem esse conhecimento intuitivo, e trabalhando com modelos matemáticos que não toleram o lado ‘soft’ (não têm casos amorosos com os produtos, serviços e clientes), só são capazes de equacionar manobras de confronto aberto, de ataque frontal, de evolução na continuidade, cortes epistemológicos não são com eles, só linearidade e Lanchester.
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Para ter o conhecimento em primeira mão, o conhecimento que gera a intuição, que permite o golpe de asa e que permite a agilidade há que treinar a experiência de perceber, de identificar, de percepcionar os padrões que emergem da realidade:
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Adrian Slywotzky no seu livro “Thr Art of Profitability” cita o seguinte trecho do livro “ABC of Reading” de Ezra Pound:

“No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish:
“A post-graduate student equipped with honours and diplomas went to Agassiz to receive the final and finishing touches. The great man offered him a small fish and told him to describe it.
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“Post-Graduate Student: ‘That’s only a sunfish.’
“Agassiz: ‘I know that. Write a description of it.’
“After a few minutes, the student returned with the description of the Ichthus Heliodiplodokus, or whatever term is used to conceal the common sunfish from vulgar knowledge, family of Heliichtherinkus, etc., as found in textbooks of the subject.
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“Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish.
“The student produced a four-page essay. Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of three weeks, the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it.”
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Depois, na interpretação do texto de Ezra Pound refere:
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““I guess it’s about the importance of observation— about getting beyond what you read in textbooks and learning instead from close, direct, unfiltered study of real things. The way the student in the story learned something meaningful about fish by actually looking at a fish rather than reciting scientific terminology. It’s the difference between knowing something indirectly and knowing it directly.”
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E remata num diálogo com a ponte para os negócios:
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““And how would you observe a business if you wanted to examine it the way the student in the story examined the fish?”
“Look at the P&L? Read the annual report?”
Zhao shook his head. “No, no!” he declared. “Those things are fine in their place, but they’re more like the textbooks that the student in the story had already memorized. If you want to know a business, you’ve got to look at it first-hand like a biologist studying a specimen. You’ve got to visit their stores or their factories or their offices, try their products, test their services, cruise their websites.
“Most important, you’ve got to talk with their customers—or better yet, live with them. Get to know their needs and wants and problems by spending time with them, seeing what they do, what works for them and what doesn’t, what annoys them and what makes their lives easy or productive or fun. Reading about focus groups and survey results is okay. But you’ll learn more by meeting a real, live customer and spending an hour with him than you can learn from fifty research studies or analysts’ reports.”
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Gary Klein no seu livro “The Sources of Power” refere, acerca da intuição:
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“Intuition depends on the use of experience to recognize key patterns that indicate the dynamics of the situation (agora que leio este trecho sinto que Peter Schwartz diz o mesmo quando escreve sobre a preparação pessoal para a criação de cenários). Because patterns can be subtle, people often cannot describe what they noticed, or how they judged a situation as typical or atypical”
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“This is one basis for what we call intuition: recognizing things without knowing how we do the recognizing. … we size the situation up and immediately know how to proceed: which goals to pursue, what to expect, how to respond. We are drawn to certain cues and not others because of the situation awareness.”
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“Many people think of intuition as an inborn trait – something we are born with. I am not aware of any evidence showing that some people are blessed with intuition, and others are not. My claim in this chapter is that intuition grows out of experience.”
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“Because of their experience, experts have learned to see all kinds of things that are invisible to others. That is why they can move freely in their domains while novices must pick their way carefully through the same terrain.”
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“Pattern matching (intuition) refers to the ability of the expert to detect typically and to notice events that did not happen and other anomalies that violate the pattern. Mental simulation covers the ability to see events that happened previously and events that are likely to happen in the future.”
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Gerald Zaltman no livro “How Customers Think” chama também atenção para a intuição:
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“… most human communication (as much as 80%) occurs through nonverbal means.”
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“With so much evolutionary practice, our brains are far better at sensing and interpreting paralanguage than they are at understanding spoken or written language.”
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“As important as it is, consciousness is the end result of a system of neurons processing information in largely unconscious ways. Feelings, the conscious experience of emotions, are only the tip of the iceberg.”
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“… thought occurs when neurons become active. Different groups of neurons – thoughts- communicate back and forth with one another. One thought literally leads to another, which may lead back again to the earlier thought. Sets of connected neuronal groups constitute mental models, or what researchers sometimes call scripts or schema. Mental models help us interpret the flood of stimuli and information that our brains absorb from the world around us. Because we simply can’t process all of the incoming information entering our brains, we need a system to filter it, to group it, and to otherwise render it more understandable.
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For the sake of efficiency, our mental models help us decide which information to attend to and what to do with it. For example, people’s mental models determine their approach to ill-structured problems, their attraction to a particular auto design, their disposition toward snack foods, …
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Moreover, groups of people … share important features of their individual mental models. Called consensus maps, these shared features can yield valuable insights for marketing strategy development.
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As you might imagine, human beings possess an extraordinary number of mental models … We often become aware of our mental models only when an experience dramatically contradicts those models and the expectations that lie at their core.”
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Tudo isto contribui para salientar a importância das 'conversas estratégicas', a importância do 'partir pedra', tema a abordar na Parte IV desta série.