Este é o tempo para repensar a estratégia (parte VI)

Quem já assistiu às nossas sessões iniciais de formação sobre o balanced scorecard (BSC) pode comprovar que costumo usar esta imagem. A complacência que reina em muitas organizações e que vai corroendo a capacidade competitiva dificulta uma mobilização para a mudança. Assim, só perante uma “burning platform”, como a do bote de Tintin, é que muitas organizações decidem passar à acção.
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Em tempos normais, muitas organizações que vão assistindo à redução das suas margens, à deterioração da sua capacidade competitiva, à semelhança do sapo da estória vão ficando cozidas lentamente e nem se apercebem. Só quase uma catástrofe, ou uma experiência de quase-morte parece ter poder para as despertar do seu torpor zombie.
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Nos interessantes tempos que correm, a vida das organizações parece ter acelerado, todos estão muito mais despertos, a desconfiança face ao futuro e a derrocada da procura colocaram muita gente no estado de alerta.
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Realmente, há que reconhecer o poder das palavras de Adrian Slywotzky no seu livro "Value Migration - How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition":
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“But perhaps the most dramatic market opportunities for new business designs are created by external shocks.
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These phenomena can abruptly upset the business chessboard, recasting both customer priorities and the economic viability of different business designs.
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External shocks can be very difficult to predict. What is not difficult to predict, however, is that shocks will create significant opportunities for new business designs. So while all organizations may not be able to afford the luxury of trying to predict the exact nature and timing of external shocks, there is no established competitor that can afford not to expand its competitive field of vision once a shock has occurred. In the wake of a significant external shock, the most important question becomes: What new business designs may be taking advantage of the situation to encroach on the incumbent's customer franchise?"
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Podemos fazer o paralelismo com a capacidade dos níveis elevados de work-in-progress esconderem os problemas de uma linha de fabrico. A derrocada da procura e a consequente redução da facturação tornam demasiado evidentes, e impossíveis de esconder, os problemas de deriva e desconcentração estratégica.
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Aquilo que noutros tempos é quase um luxo, ou o fruto da clarividência de alguns líderes, agora torna-se imprescindível.
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“It's counterintuitive but true that when the economy slows down, the pace of decision-making has to speed up, because you can't put off the tough choices anymore. The companies that are readiest to act on solid information are primed to shoot ahead of the business cycle.” (Ram Charan)
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“Being on the downside of the business cycle is not much fun. That said, a slump can also be an opportunity if you use the sense of urgency to improve strategy, management, and discipline. In that sense, happy and unhappy times are alike: The companies that take charge and outcompete will win.” (Ram Charan)

Este é o tempo para repensar a estratégia (parte V)

Esta época do ano é sempre boa para algumas arrumações.
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Ao empreender uma delas fui interpelado por um artigo de Ram Charan na revista Fortune de 18 de Fevereiro deste ano: "Ram's Rules".
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"Don't expect the good times to roll for quite some time, says one of the Fortune 500's favorite management gurus. But smart executives can use the downturn to make their companies better, stronger, and faster. Here's how"
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Eis as 4 regras que Ram Charan aconselha a seguir:
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"1. Keep building. When the top line looks shaky and the bottom line worse, the temptation is to go after discretionary spending. Fine - but do not consider product development, innovation, and brand building optional. Sacrificing your future for a slightly more comfortable present is not worth it. If you keep building, you can come back strong."
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"2. Communicate intensively. Get information from where the customer action is, and get it to the operating people - fast. Companies should do so routinely, of course. But they don't. It's counterintuitive but true that when the economy slows down, the pace of decision-making has to speed up, because you can't put off the tough choices anymore. The companies that are readiest to act on solid information are primed to shoot ahead of the business cycle."
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"3. Evaluate your customers. In good times, companies manage the P&L; in bad times, cash and receivables matter more. Therefore, you need to identify your higher-risk, cash-poor customers. You could decide to simply not supply them anymore - that's harsh but sometimes necessary. You don't want to be this decade's Nortel or Lucent, which continued to ship to companies whose ability to pay for equipment, it turned out, was nil. Alternatively, and this helps build good relations, work out a way to keep going - for example, by helping finance purchases or supplying smaller quantities. The point is, a downturn is a very good time to do a quality check on your customers."
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"4. Just say no to across-the-board cuts. By all means cut costs if it makes sense to do so, but make sure there is purpose in how you do it. It may be useful to clean out the metaphorical attic - for example, by pruning your product line. ... The key: If you have to cut costs, don't try to be fair about it. As I have said before, the world does not inflict pain evenly, and you have to deal with that reality."
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Este é o tempo para repensar a estratégia (parte IV)

Continuando com a reflexão de Rumelt do artigo da Mckinsey Quarterly e em linha com estes outros conselhos.
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• "If you can’t survive hard times, sell out early. Once you are in financial distress, you will have no bargaining power at all.
• In hard times, save the core at the expense of the periphery. When times improve, recapture the periphery if it is still worthwhile.
• Any stable source of good profits—any competitive advantage—attracts overhead, clutter, and cross-subsidies in good times. You can survive this kind of waste in such times. In hard times you can’t and must cut it.
• If hard times have a good side, it’s the pressure to cut expenses and find new efficiencies.
• Cuts and changes that raised interpersonal hackles in good times can be made in hard ones.
• Use hard times to concentrate on and strengthen your competitive advantage. If you are confused about this concept, hard times will clarify it. Competitive advantage has two branches, both growing from the same root. You have a competitive advantage when you can take business away from another company at a profit and when your cash costs of doing business are low enough that you can survive in hard times.
• Take advantage of hard times to buy the assets of distressed competitors at bargain-basement prices. The best assets are competitive advantages unwisely encumbered with debt and clutter.
• In hard times, many suppliers are willing to renegotiate terms. Don’t be shy.
• In hard times, your buyers will want better terms. They might settle for rapid, reliable payments. Focus on the employees and communities you will keep through the hard times.
• Good relations with people you have retained and helped will be repaid many times over when the good times return."

Este é o tempo para repensar a estratégia (parte III)

Continuado daqui.
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A revista The Mckinsey Quarterly publicou um interessante artigo de Richard Rumelt intitulado "Strategy in a ‘structural break’ ".
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Mais um convite para a reflexão estratégica que se impõe neste momento, e recheado de interessantes conselhos:
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Alguns trechos que destaco do pensamento de Rumelt são:
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"There is nothing like a crisis to clarify the mind. In suddenly volatile and different times, you must have a strategy. I don’t mean most of the things people call strategy—mission statements, audacious goals, three- to five-year budget plans. I mean a real strategy."
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"By strategy, I mean a cohesive response to a challenge. A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge. The most important element of a strategy is a coherent viewpoint about the forces at work, not a plan."
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"I think we are looking at a structural break with the past—a phrase from econometrics, where it denotes the moment in time-series data when trends and the patterns of associations among variables change.A corporate crisis is often a sign that the company’s business model has petered out—that the industry’s underlying structure has changed dramatically, so old ways of doing business no longer work."
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"We know in our bones that the future will be different. When the business model of part or all of the economy shifts in this way, we can speak of a structural break."
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"Structural breaks render obsolete many existing patterns of behavior, yet they point the way forward for some companies and at times even for whole economies."
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"The wrong way forward in a structural break during hard times is to try more of the same. The break and the hard times are sure indications that an old pattern has already been pushed to its limits and is destroying value"
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"So during structural breaks in hard times, cutting costs isn’t enough. Things have to be done differently, and on two levels: reducing the complexity of corporate structures and transforming business models. At the corporate level, the first commandment is to simplify and simplify again. Since companies must become more modular and diverse, eliminate coordinating committees, review boards, and other mechanisms connecting businesses, products, or geographies. The aim of these cuts is to provide lean central and support services that don’t require business units to spend time and energy coordinating their activities."

Não há acasos!!!

Ontem, fui assistir a um torneio de andebol onde participava a minha filha.
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Ao intervalo, duas equipas estavam empatadas 9 a 9.
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Uma das equipas, a da fotografia que se segue, sentou-se em círculo, com o treinador. Imagino que tenham aproveitado o tempo de descanso para reflectir sobre o que estava a resultar e o que estava a falhar, o que tinham de mudar e o que tinham de aproveitar ainda mais. A outra equipa, a da fotografia que se segue...
... passou o intervalo a entreter-se com remates à baliza, cada uma para seu lado, com o treinador a conversar com outro elemento da eqipa técnica.
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Estão a imaginar quem ganhou com 7 pontos de vantagem?
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E o que se passa com as empresas?
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Acabou uma parte do jogo, um novo panorama económico está a desenhar-se, com novas regras, com novos protagonistas, ... que empresas estão a preparar-se para a segunda parte? Que empresas estão a reflectir sobre que o que manter e o que mudar?
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Não há acasos!