"the importance of saying “no”"

Dizer não, é difícil e, muitas vezes, nunca chega a ser enunciado. Afirmamos as escolhas do que decidimos fazer e não clarificamos as escolhas do que não queremos, ou não devemos fazer. Por vezes isso dá asneira grossa. Sobretudo quando se compete em mercados muito competitivos, mercados polarizados (um link de Maio de 2006) e cheios de salami-slicers, não de Bruce Jenners. Segue-se aquela sensação de não ser nem carne, nem peixe, um stuck-in-the-middle, um médio que não se diferencia, que não emociona ninguém, que não tem inimigos.

"Remember the days when Tim Cook would brag about how Apple’s product line could fit on a single table? It would be much harder to make that claim today.
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When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he slashed the company’s product line to a few core products and preached the importance of saying “no” — not just to ideas you don’t like, but also to those you love if they don’t work within the larger vision. [Moi ici: Recordar "the next big thing"] He revitalized the company with a focused product line, which helped grow its cult following. [Moi ici: Recordar o recente "The paradox of focusing on a niche"] As Apple’s values change, this kind of focus is under threat.
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Apple under Jobs wasn’t perfect. Jobs certainly wasn’t either. But it’s undeniable that Apple stood for something that redefined our expectations of personal computing and mobile devices. The company’s products looked great, and the options were streamlined, not confusing. Their prices were aspirational but, usually, attainable.
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Cook’s Apple has shifted from focusing on the products to focusing on the share price."

Trechos retirados de "Apple’s Product Line Is a Mess"

Para reflexão

O desafio do valor

Steve Denning em duas reflexões chama a atenção para o desafio do valor.

• "Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy"

Acerca daquilo a que chamo hollowing ou a radioclubização das empresas. 

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"Christensen retells the story of how Dell progressively lopped off low-value segments of its PC operation to the Taiwan-based firm ASUSTek — the motherboard, the assembly of the computer, the management of the supply chain and finally the design of the computer. In each case Dell accepted the proposal because in each case its profitability improved: its costs declined and its revenues stayed the same. At the end of the process, however, Dell was little more than a brand, while ASUSTeK can—and does—now offer a cheaper, better computer to Best Buy at lower cost.
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Christensen also describes the impact of foreign outsourcing on many other companies, including the steel companies, the automakers, the oil companies, the pharmaceuticals, and now even software development. These firms are steadily becoming primarily marketing agencies and brands: they are lopping off the expertise that is needed to make anything anymore.

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We now live in the age of customer capitalism. Making money and corporate survival now depend not merely on pushing products at customers but rather on delighting them so that they want to keep on buying. To prosper, firms must have knowledge workers who are continuously innovating and delivering a steady supply of new value to customers and delivering it sooner.

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Focusing everyone in the organization on delivering additional value to customers is what gives a firm resilience."

• "Peggy Noonan On Steve Jobs And Why Big Companies Die"

"There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. He’s at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to “build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.” Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about “why decline happens” at great companies: “The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues.” So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company’s daily life. They “turn off.” IBM and Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but “they didn’t know anything about the product.” In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products."
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"This isn’t quite the whole story. It’s not just the salesmen. It’s also the accountants and the money men who search the firm high and low to find new and ingenious ways to cut costs or even eliminate paying taxes. The activities of these people further dispirit the creators, the product engineers and designers, and also crimp the firm’s ability to add value to its customers."

Acerca do que não é "estratégia"

Excelente artigo "So, you think you have a strategy?" de Freek Vermeulen.
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Os teóricos que estão sempre prontos para amaldiçoar os empresários portugueses não perdem nada em ler o artigo e em perceber que o mesmo não foi escrito a pensar nesses patrões. E, no entanto, a vida não é um mar de rosas lá fora.
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"Most companies do not have a strategy.
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when it comes to strategy, I’d say there are three types of CEOs:

• Those who think they have a strategy — they are the most abundant
• Those who pretend to think that they have a strategy, but deep down are really hesitant because they fear they don’t actually have one (and they’re probably right) — these are generally quite a bit more clever than those in the first category, but, alas, are fewer in number
• Those who do have a strategy — there are preciously few of them, but they often head very successful companies

I often wonder why such bright CEOs and their deputies miss the most basic necessities of cogent and executable strategy. They fail because they:

• Are not really making choices Strategy, above all, is about making choices; choices in terms of what you do and what you do not do. (Moi ici: O que vamos fazer e o que não vamos fazer!!! Terry Hill, Steve Jobs e Gordon Ramsay são/foram mestres nesta necessidade de concentração no essencial. BTW, o que é que esta empresa não vai fazer?)... companies don’t concentrate; they cannot resist the temptation of also doing other things that, on an individual basis, look attractive. As a consequence, they end up with a bunch of alternate (sometimes even opposing) strategic directions that appear equally attractive but strangely enough don’t manage to turn into profitable propositions.  (Moi ici: Pena que poucos conheçam a curva de Stobachoff ou os números de Jonathan Byrnes) Too many strategies lack focus.  (Moi ici: Concentração, concentração, concentração no que é essencial!!!)
• Are stuck in the status quo Another variant of this is the straightjacket of path dependency, meaning that companies write up their strategy in such a way that everything fits into what they were already doing anyway. This is much like generating a to-do list of activities you have already completed. Last year. There might be nothing wrong with sticking with the tried and true, if it so happens that what you were doing represents a powerful, coherent set of activities that propels your company forward. Regrettably, more often than not, strategies adapted to what you were doing anyway results in some vague, amorphous marketplace statement that would have been better off in a beginners’ class on esoteric poetry, because it is meaningless and does not imply any real decision about what needs to be done in order to be a vital company in the next one to three years. (Moi ici: Falta-lhes espírito de matador, espírito assertivo... são como os treinadores de futebol que tentam tirar pressão de cima da equipa. Lembro-me sempre das fotocópias que Mourinho colou no balneário do FC Porto - para aumentar a pressão sobre os jogadores!!!) ...
• Have no relationship to value creation Sometimes companies make some decisive choices, but it is wholly unclear why these choices would do the enterprise any good. Strategy is not just about making choices; executives need a good explanation why these choices are going to create the company a heck of a lot of value. (Moi ici: Só os escolhidos é que falam de valor, os outros falam de preço, de custos, de competição, de benchmark, de... Os eleitos pensam na vida, na experiência de uso na vida dos clientes.) Without such logic, I cannot call this line of thinking a strategy at all. ...
• Are mistaking objectives for strategy We want to be number one or two in all the markets we operate in. Ever heard that one? I think it is bollocks. ... but the real question is how. We want to be number one or two in the market; we want to grow 50 per cent next year; we want to be the world’s pre-eminent business school — and so on. These are goals, possibly very good and lofty ones, but in terms of amounting to a strategy, they do not. You need an actionable idea and a rationale — a strategy — of how you are going to achieve all this. Without a true plan of action, lofty goals are but a tantalising aspiration.
• Keep it a secret The final mistake I have seen, scarily common, as to why CEOs who think they have a strategy don’t actually have one (despite circumventing all of the above pitfalls) is because none of their lower-ranked employees actually know about it. A strategy only becomes a strategy if people in the organisation alter their behaviour as a result of it. ... A good litmus test is to simply ask around: if people within the organisation do not give you the same coherent story of how the company is to prosper in the future, chances are it does not have a strategy, no matter how colourful the Powerpoint slides. These slides may fade in powerfully on the projection screen, but (in the marketplace) they fade out into strategic oblivion."

Por onde vai começar a cortar?

Ontem no postal "Acerca de Mongo: conseguem re-imaginar as oportunidades?" recordei Gordon Ramsay e uma das atitudes que mais aconselho nas empresas: focalização, concentração no que é essencial.
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Hoje, encontrei isto:
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"Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the "A-Team" on each product. What are you saying "no" to?"
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Lembram-se da lição de Terry Hill?
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Lembram-se quais são as encomendas mais importantes?
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Por que é que as lojas "IN-N-OUT Burger" são mais rentáveis que as lojas McDonald's?
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Porque o menu é mais restrito... divergência, divergência, divergência... especialização, especialização, especialização.
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"Temos de ter tudo para nos ajudar a vender" pois...

Um desafio... o desafio

O desafio por excelência é o da concentração no que é essencial (o subtítulo do livro).
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Focar a atenção para o que interessa é tão difícil...
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"The second lesson is the actual wisdom of his thinking concerning technology, which touches on the line of thinking which says it's not the thing that's important, it's the *experience* of the thing.
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Garr sobre Steve Jobs "Steve Jobs & the art of focus"

O que Guy Kawasaki aprendeu com Steve Jobs

"What I Learned From Steve Jobs":
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Gosto particularmente de duas:
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"“Value” is different from “price.”
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Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price."
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"Marketing boils down to providing unique value."
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E o que serviu para a Apple por que razão não há-de resultar para a sua empresa? Valor é a palavra-chave!

Como o mundo mudou...

No dia da morte de Steve Jobs recordo o final dos anos 80 do século passado onde, no meu ZX Spectrum, programava no mais básico BASIC a produção de uns gráficos tridimensionais que permitiam visualizar o comportamento de um corante, a rodamina B, ao longo do rio Douro, entre Salto de Castro e Miranda do Douro. Primeiro passo para o esforço de modelização do comportamento do rio como um reactor pistão não ideal.
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Como o mundo mudou...
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E Jobs percebeu, muito antes do mainstream, o truque da vida no planeta Mongo:
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"... in a way that science can't capture..." (ver entre o minuto 4:03 e o minuto 4:09)
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E o truque é esse, salientar o que a ciência não pode capturar. Tudo o que a ciência captura, é algoritmizável e transformável em trabalho de máquinas.

Um programa para uma PME

O Pedro Soares recomendou-me este artigo "Steve's Seven Insights for 21st Century Capitalists".
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Claro que desconfiava que eu encontraria alguns iscos demasiado aliciantes para deixar passar:
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"Matter. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water — or do you want to change the world?"" (Moi ici: Se lerem Steven Pressfield em "The War on Art" vão perceber o que é a Resistência, vão perceber porque tanta gente desiste e prefere a segurança anónima em vez de ousar)
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"Do the insanely great. "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it." We're awash in a sea of the tedious, the humdrum, the predictable. If your goal is rising head and shoulders above this twisting mass of mediocrity, then it's not enough, anymore, to tack on another 99 features every month and call it "innovation." Just do great work." (Moi ici: Mateus, 13: 44-46 gosto particularmente da atitude do negociante de pérolas. Ele não é um simples negociante, ele alia o seu trabalho com o gosto pelo belo)
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"Build a temple. "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."" (Moi ici: ;-))
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"Don't build a casino. (Moi ici: Esta é, apesar da beleza das outras, a que mais aprecio. Atá já a transcrevi recentemente num postal... se calhar esta é o princípio e o fim de seguir as outras) "The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament." This one's easy in principle — but difficult in practice. To illustrate: guess how much debt Apple has? Zero. Not as in "a few million," but as in: "not a single penny." "

"Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff."

Nas acções de formação sobre o desenvolvimento de um sistema de gestão baseado no balanced scorecard que animo costumo usar um caso de uma empresa têxtil, com marcas próprias e que, entre outras coisas sofre deste mal:
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"A empresa em 2009 colocou no mercado cerca de 250 conjuntos, na marca ALFA 26 referências foram responsáveis por 50% das vendas da marca, na marca BETA 13 referências foram responsáveis por 52% das vendas da marca."
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Quando se começa a discutir a necessidade de concentrar recursos, nomeadamente o tempo, no que é essencial, começa o discurso da gama, da importância da gama, da one stop-shop... os números falam por si.
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Qual foi o conselho de Steve Jobs para a Nike?
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""Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. Absolutely beautiful, stunning products. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.""
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""Apple is a $30 billion company yet we've got less than 30 major products. I don't know if that's ever been done before," Steve Jobs told Fortune magazine in 2008. He added:
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Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done."
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Trechos retirados de "Steve Jobs's Strategy? "Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff""