Promover a mudança

"Research has shown that storytelling has a remarkable ability to connect people and inspire them to take action. "Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories," the anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson has written. Tim O'Brien, who has won acclaim for his books about the Vietnam War, put it this way: "Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is." When your organization needs to make a big change, stories will help you convey not only why it needs to transform but also what the future will look like in specific, vivid terms.

In this article we outline an effective way to leverage the power of storytelling, drawing on decades of combined experience helping senior executives lead large-scale change initiatives. There are four key steps: Understand your story so well that you can describe it in simple terms; honor the past; articulate a mandate for change; and lay out a rigorous and optimistic path forward."

Vale a pena a leitura.

Trecho retirado de "Storytelling That Drives Bold Change" 

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.

"“RULE #5: PASSION IS A STORY.
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Whatever you’re selling, you’re selling a story, and it better be a true one. Value is not a physical thing: a lump of metal and plastic and glass. It is also not a period: the hours of effort that a professional puts in to achieve some task. Value is a subjective measurement of how some product or service makes a person’s life better. It is a story, and like all good stories, it has characters and a plot and a feeling of completion, and maybe a bit of drama. This can be true for even the most prosaic of purchases.
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Always tell the truth. Forget morality for a moment; forget a desire to be a truthful person. Even if all you care about is profit at any cost, you still should never lie. The value-creation process requires an investment of effort and capital that generally pays off only over time.
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You can and must tell your story, especially if you’re bad at telling stories. A truthful brand, built on passion and real value, tells a story even if the person who created it is shy and generally lousy at storytelling."

"Your brand is not what you say you are"

"One of the most persistent myths of marketing and sales is that we can tell our customers our stories and, through this telling, we can change their minds. Yeah, right.
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If you’re telling your story to a customer, it is likely that the customer isn’t actually listening. They’re probably doing something else, or thinking about something else. Of course, storytelling is a wonderful thing. We all love to hear a good story, told well. However, most of the most powerful stories in our lives weren’t told to us. We co-created them with other people.
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We can’t tell a customer a story about why they should love us. But we can co-create a shared story with our customers. We can have conversations with customers that help them form beliefs about why they value us, and why they want to commit to our relationship.
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Your brand is not what you say you are, it’s what your customers believe you are. A conversation is the perfect setting for your customers to form clear, compelling and motivating beliefs about you. Stop telling your brand story to your customers and start co-creating stories through conversation."

Trechos retirados de "The Brand Story Conversation – Yastrow & Company"

Partir do cliente e da sua situação

"Lead your audience to what makes you special rather than leading with what makes you special.
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Get it?   All of the storytelling ideas start with the customer and their world, acknowledging the things they are dealing with.   From there, you share how you can help.  You lead them to it.
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The converse, leading with, puts all the burden on the customer to figure out why they should care.   Even if they are already looking for products in a category, you should still lead them to what makes you special.  You may do that through Situation-Impact-Resolution models, or Commercial Insights, or by demonstrating a point of view, etc. etc. etc."

Recordar "you need to enter their personal story" e "Mambo jambo de consultor ou faz algum sentido?"

Trechos retirados de "Lead to, Not with, Differentiation and Capabilities"

Conquistastes-me logo quando ao princípio

Nos filmes há aquela cena em que alguém faz um longo monólogo na tentativa de seduzir outra pessoa. Quando termina o monólogo a outra pessoa diz:

- Conquistastes-me logo quando ao princípio disseste "Bom Dia!"

Comigo aconteceu-me o mesmo, bastou-me ler a primeira skill: "Craft compelling stories":

Game-changing #leaders:
1. Craft compelling stories
2. Build a collective #leadership capability
3. Install disciplined processes to drive innovation and growth
4. Align promises made with metrics and rewards.
5. Build vibrant talent factories
https://t.co/UFFNrMLumD

— MITSloan Mgmt Review (@mitsmr) April 7, 2018

“showing up”

"“showing up” is about all it has going for it. It’s sort of like drunk-dialing your x-girlfriend. Yes, you’re making yourself top of mind with her (awareness!) and you’re occupying her thoughts to the exclusion of everyone else (attention!) – but you’re also rambling and mumbling and cursing and vomiting and being fairly incoherent. But hey! You’re showing up!
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So brands show up. Tweets and posts and videos and banners and takeovers and filters and god knows what else. Just get the message out. Just show up. That’s all we have to do."

 Ler isto e pensar nas marcas que torram dinheiro naqueles anúncios nos media tuga online ou no youtube. Imaginem estar a ouvir um disco dos Bread e no meio de uma balada ser interrompido por uma voz excitada a dizer que preciso de um site. Recordem a quantidade de barreiras publicitárias que têm de vencer para chegar a meia dúzia de linhas escritas com o conteúdo que interessa. O meu problema não é com quem vende o espaço publicitário, o meu problema é com as marcas que julgam que vão ter mais clientes com esta exposição... aquela imagem lá de cima "drunk-dialing your x-girlfriend" e pensar que ela vai gostar, é tão boa!!!

Quantas vezes é que a sua empresa se fica apenas por “showing up”, sem olhar para o que o cliente procura e valoriza, só preocupada em despachar mais umas paletas do armazém, ou arranjar mais umas billable-hours ao seu pessoal?

E o desenvolvimento das relações? "Make relationships, not things"

Trecho retirado de "Showing-up"

"Stories make us all pay closer attention to what matters"

"“Stories are the way humans exchange concepts and ideas. We want to create intimacy as we scale, and stories are the key, [so] we empower everyone to collect, on a day-to-day and weekly basis, stories of people living core values.”
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Stories make us all pay closer attention to what matters. Start paying attention to the stories unfolding in your organization, and figure out how to help the best ones spread. Because people have a lot to say, and if we’re smart, we’ll start listening."

Trechos retirados de "Use Stories from Customers to Highlight Your Company’s Purpose"

Estórias e narrativas

Na semana passada em duas empresas distintas, sem planear, na sequência da conversa lembrei-me de um exemplo que era contado numa empresa onde trabalhei como funcionário.

A empresa lidava com uma matéria-prima cancerígena e altamente explosiva. Havia uma tradição de preocupação com a segurança. Por exemplo, todos os dias por volta das 14h30 havia um sorteio para medir o álcool através do teste do balão.

Uma estória que se contava dizia respeito a um meu colega de turno muito mais velho. Num Domingo em que tinha de entrar ao serviço no turno das 16h até à meia-noite, telefonou para a fábrica a dizer que ia faltar porque se tinha excedido no almoço-festa da comunhão do afilhado e sentia que tinha bebido demais.

A empresa aproveitou o acontecimento para louvar o gesto do meu colega e não lhe cortou o salário desse dia.

Esta estória tinha ocorrido anos antes de eu entrar ao serviço da empresa e circulava nas conversas da caserna e, informalmente formatava a cultura dos novatos acerca da importância da segurança.

Por que recordo isto? Por causa deste texto "What’s Your Narrative?"

"But a community, no matter how purpose built, is not enough to create change. To create a community of action, you need urgency, purpose and the belief in what’s possible. Without those ingredients, it’s just a community of interest. To get people to act is a whole different story. This is where narratives come in."

Qual o potencial de valor capturável?

"The difference between your positive and negative value differentiation is a surplus that I refer to as the value pool. In this case the value is the difference between what you provide and what your reference competitor offers."

Olho para a figura e recordo um autor que ainda esta semana citei numa empresa, Larreché, e:

A originarão de valor, a única que não tem limites, promove a expansão da diferenciação positiva.
A captura de valor tem a ver com a maior ou menor proficiência na actução comercial.
A extracção de valor é interna e tem tudo a ver com a eficiência.

"The first challenge, again, is to figure out the mental frames that your customers (end users, OEMs, distributors) use when they think about your products or services. These lead to your value drivers, and you should have at least three but normally no more than five. Having too few gives you less flexibility in negotiations (fewer levers) and may also indicate that you don't completely understand the customer's business and its complexity. Having too many will muddy your story and blunt the impact of your most important arguments. It may also indicate that you don't understand your customer's business because you can't distinguish with confidence what truly matters to them and what is mere noise.
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Once you have set priorities, you need to think about how to build your value story. What drivers do you start with? I recommend focusing on the biggest bang or the most compelling hook and concluding with a strong value proposition in terms of dollars-and-cents impact. ... When people struggle with these steps, the most common root cause I notice is that they have made their models too complicated. Take a close look at the value drivers you have chosen and their associated impacts. Do you really need to put the tiny marginal savings there? Just because you have created a value model and a value story doesn't mean that the craft of sales and selling has fallen by the wayside. You use the first two drivers to sell them and hook them; then you can switch to a customer conversation.
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Storytelling is essential to making sure customers understand and embrace your story. Even the strongest numbers can't speak for themselves. Use the ratios and then the dollars so that the logic is transparent and intuitive for the customer. Use dramatic, round numbers and skip the decimal points. Your arguments need to be robust, but too much detail is a clear distraction when you are telling a story. That is why this task requires some emotional intelligence as well. If you have too much value, or fail to engage the customer in a conversation, you can lose credibility."

Trechos retirados de "Dollarizing Differentiation Value: A Practical Guide for the Quantification and the Capture of Customer Value"

Stress e mudança de vida

Quando li a frase de Nassim Taleb, "stress is information", foi na decisão sobre o que fazer com essa informação que pensei. Muitas vezes a informação desse stress é um sinal de que a empresa precisa de mudar:

"If you don’t like how things are going, tell a different story.
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Sometimes strategic change just means taking something from the periphery — an anomaly, a demonstration, a small innovation — and redefining it as central. Put the past in perspective, not as a set of constraints or excuses, but as a springboard to new actions. Motivate change by creating a new narrative showing how success will be achieved and why the elements are in place to get there.
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Leaders who create the future can start by rewriting history.
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Narratives should be rewritten when they inhibit rather than inspire. Individuals and institutions can get bogged down by narratives that suggest inevitability — “it has always been this way, it was meant to be this way, and it couldn’t possibly change.”
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Narratives are powerful leadership tools. People remember stories more readily than they remember numbers, and stories motivate action.
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But leaders should tread carefully. Stories should be evidence-based, meeting a plausibility test. [Moi ici: Lembrei-me logo da viragem da página da austeridade] They should be principle-based, with enduring truths embedded in them that won’t shift on a whim. They should permit action that is open-ended, creating not-yet-imagined possibilities."

Só o stress pode pressionar as empresas para a reflexão que precisam de fazer para mudarem de vida.

Trechos retirados de "If You Don’t Like Your Future, Rewrite Your Past"

Confundir o Estanhistão com Comoditização... suspeito (parte VI)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV e parte V.

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A ilustração de uma sugestão que faço amiúde aos produtores agrícolas (fruta, carne, ovos, leite não industrial, ...) e pescadores: removam os intermediários, e cheguem o mais próximo possível do consumidor com a vossa identidade, história, localização, autenticidade e ...

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Aproveitem a internet e as plataformas, aproveitem as redes sociais para serem conhecidos, não com slogans de plástico mas com casos, exemplos, histórias e fotografias.

"So that year, Mr. Holden decided to open an authentic Maine lobster shack in Manhattan. To replicate that fresh taste that he remembered, he would need to oversee, track and, where possible, own every step in the process.
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He holds an ownership stake in a co-op of Maine fishermen, which allows him to track where and how the lobsters are caught, and control the quality, freshness and pricing. He also owns the processing plant, Cape Seafood, that packages and prepares the lobsters for his restaurants.
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“We’re able to trace every pound of seafood we serve back to the harbor where it was sustainably caught and to support fishermen we know and trust,”"

Trechos retirados de "A Restaurant’s Sales Pitch: Know Your Lobster"

BTW, há dias numa longa conversa telefónica com a minha irmã mais nova, que vive na cidade de York em Inglaterra, descobri que o leite que se consome em casa dela é ... leite não industrial, leite não pasteurizado, leite integral. É mais caro, é menos eficiente, ela e o lavrador couldn´t care less! Recordar a sugestão estúpida da Newsweek.

O trabalho dos gestores

No relatório do FMI, "From Crisis to Convergence Charting a Course for Portugal", pode ler-se algo que escrevemos aqui há muito tempo:

"A worker’s productivity depends not only on the worker’s own skills or human capital but also on the skills or human capital of coworkers and managers.
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there may be complementarities between lower-skilled workers and managers; that is, the productivity of a lower-skilled worker may be higher when paired with effective managers."

A produtividade pode aumentar mexendo no numerador e/ou no denominador:

O trabalhador tem uma pequena contribuição via denominador, os gestores contribuem quer via numerador (potencial enorme para influenciar a produtividade sem ser pela guerra do gato e do rato), quer via denominador.
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Quando leio:

"Se às matérias têxteis juntarmos o calçado (9% do total em 2015), os móveis (6,2%), os produtos de cortiça (4,1%) e mesmo as bebidas, líquidos alcoólicos e vinagres (3,1%), temos um conjunto de produtos ditos tradicionais que em 2015 motivaram 41,8% das exportações das empresas com sede na Região Norte."

Trecho retirado de "Relatório Trimestral Norte Conjuntura" relativo ao 1º trimestre de 2016.

Fico a pensar no muito que os nossos gestores ainda têm de fazer sobretudo a nível dos intangíveis, trabalhando as complementaridades, trabalhando as histórias, mais do que os factos.

Estratégia e marketing

Moi, o "porteiro do marketing" em muitas PME, tinha de sorrir ao ler isto e a concordar:

"A dangerous canyon often arises between business model strategy and marketing. Separate roles, meetings, deliverables, timetables, personalities and consultancies exist on each side of the divide. When business strategy and marketing execution move forward independently – as they often do – spin, distrust, poor customer experiences and commoditization result.
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you know a company by its actions and customer experiences, not by the story it tells in its marketing communications. The actions and experiences create what Montague calls your company’s Metastory: the observed truth in the minds of customers, prospects, employees and other stakeholders. Your Metastory is what your company wants to become, if it is not already."

Trechos retirados de "Are your business model strategy and marketing communications aligned?"

A história da marca ou da empresa

"There is, always has been and always will be a market for consumer products with relatively low prices. Even so, customers will shy away from or denounce those products if they determine them to be "cheap.” They will embrace products if they see them as “affordable.”...
A product’s price does not define it. Instead, if companies clearly tell the product’s value proposition story, price will become one of many secondary features and not the product’s headlining attribute.
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To be successful in becoming relevant and approachable to target consumers, the product’s overall brand story must also be a part of a thoughtful, clear and consistent brand positioning. This will attract the target consumer and push the idea of "cheap" further into irrelevance. Affordability then becomes necessary, rather than optional, and ends up as a central strength in an effective marketing strategy, especially in tandem with a properly enforced high-quality, high-value brand story."

Estratégia, posicionamento, história, marca, proposta de valor, marketing... o que faz a sua empresa?
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E mesmo sem marca associada a um produto ou serviço, qual a história da sua empresa?
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Trechos retirados de "What Brands Need to Do to Beat the 'Cheap' Perception"

Como lidar com a resistência à mudança? (parte VI)

A propósito da série "Como lidar com a resistência à mudança?", este texto:

"Commitment, intimacy, dependability—she felt all of these, not about Diet Coke, but from it. She loved it as a constant companion, a support mechanism, a celebratory friend. This was preposterous, wasn't it? We can't connect with products the same way we connect with people!
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We don't just consume or interact with brands. We actually engage in relationships with them. With some brands, we have wild, short-term flings. Others stay with us for a lifetime, like family. Some brands offer us strictly utilitarian relationships - they are in our daily lives, yet we have no emotional connection to them. Maybe the brand feels like good medicine, like a physician, or maybe it's a loose connection, like a distant uncle you rarely see. Or maybe you rely on it, like a teacher, a coach, or even a parent. Each product and each consumer - and each relationship between the two - is different. But the young woman who so eloquently expressed her feelings about Diet Coke crystallized for me the simple truth that consumers engage in relationships with brands. If marketers were going to succeed, we would have to go beyond thinking about consumers as “target markets” that we needed to make aware of our brand and convince to purchase it. We needed to think about engaging consumers in a long-term relationship."

Sublinho a frase final:

"We needed to think about engaging consumers in a long-term relationship." 

Que relações a sua empresa pensa criar com os seus clientes?
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Continuando a olhar para a guerra de preços como uma resistência à mudança, volto aos ginásios e ao artigo do Expresso onde se pode ler:

"22% foi quanto caiu, em dois anos, o preço médio da mensalidade nos ginásos nacionais: €46 em 2011, €39 em 2012 e €35,5 em 2013, segundo a AGAP"

E recordo:

"Os ginásios com mais de um clube (cadeias) registam maiores perdas de clientes que os independentes (um único clube); de forma surpreendente, os clubes independentes que não possuem vantagens de escala, têm recursos mais escassos e menor facilidade de crédito que as cadeias, são mais resistentes e conseguem obter melhores resultados também na variação da facturação”

Ainda que inconscientemente, quem aposta na relação, na interacção? Quem aposta na co-criação de algo que é mais forte que uma oferta que pode ser retirada assepticamente de uma vending machine?
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E quem é que é mais resiliente face à crise?
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Trechos retirados de "Romancing the Brand" de Tim Halloran

Como lidar com a resistência à mudança? (parte V)

Parte I,  parte II, parte III e parte IV.
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Uma lição para as perfumarias da parte IV e para muitas outras PME.
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Ler "Expensive Drugs Work Better Than Cheap Ones":

"Expensive drugs work better than cheap ones — or at least some people firmly believe they do.
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The “expensive” placebo worked significantly better, producing a two-fold improvement compared with the “cheap” one. The effect was apparent not only in tests of physical ability, but also as measured by brain imaging. In fact, the effect of the expensive placebo was not significantly different from that of levodopa, the most effective medication for Parkinson’s disease.
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“We make more dopamine when we have heightened expectations of efficacy.”"

Como é que escrevi na parte IV?

"numa história que dê profundidade à relação com a coisa comprada, por causa daquilo que a coisa comprada permite que a pessoa percepcione e experimente." 

Que histórias, que profundidade, que relação a sua empresa dá acerca da sua oferta?
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Por exemplo "Will A Set Of Sheets Make You Sleep Better?" e se a história resultar? Tal como o placebo, percebemos que o importante não é o produto, é o que o produto permite que o cliente sinta, percepcione, experimente.

A história acerca da oferta (parte III)

Parte II.

"in a market, there is always a price to pay, and the price is not just about money down.
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Each person will trade off what they get vs. what they pay as they see fit.
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The key point for brands is that they need to make it very clear to their customers what the trade-offs are. Most don’t. They don’t carry storylines that explain why consumers are paying what they’re paying and why they’re getting what they pay for. They sell an aspiration – which of course is a key aspect of marketing – but it is an uninformed aspiration because they often don’t position price as an expectation indicator. They still see it, and treat it, just as a cost.
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Price, when it is talked about, should be the clear and present underwriter of the experience."

Mesmo numa relação B2B, esta abordagem faz sentido.
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Trechos retirados de "Why Price Establishes The Brand Experience"

Mais importante que o cão que morde o homem e sem syrizices

O título aponta para o óbvio, para o cão que morde o homem, "Calçado português duplica vendas na Polónia e tem "futuro promissor" neste mercado".
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O crescimento do calçado português e das suas exportações já é habitual e merece sempre ser saudado. No entanto, neste artigo, o que gostava de realçar é este trecho:

"o preço médio de um par de sapatos de couro importados na Polónia foi de 19 euros em 2013 (16 euros em 2009), surgindo entre os preços mais elevados os produtos enviados de Portugal (33 euros/par), de Itália (32 euros/par), da Eslováquia (26 euros/par) e da Tunísia (25 euros/par).
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No caso português, os preços do calçado exportado para a Polónia "têm vindo a aumentar todos os anos acima do preço de qualquer dos 10 principais fornecedores", registando uma apreciação de 50% face a 2009."

No imaginário polaco, na mente polaca, se calhar no porta-moedas polaco, em média, um par de sapatos feito em Portugal é mais valorizado do que um par de sapatos feito em Itália.
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Notável trabalho de empresários, de associação e centros de competência sectorial, com paciência estratégica e, sem "syrizices de proteccionismo", infelizmente tão queridas a outros sectores.
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Notável trabalho de criação e divulgação de histórias e narrativas.

A história acerca da oferta (parte II)

A propósito da importância das histórias que as empresas contam, ou não, acerca das suas ofertas:

"When should salespeople sell with facts and figures, and when should we try to speak to the buyer’s emotional subconscious, instead? When do you talk to Mr. Intuitive, and when to Mr. Rational?
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we spend too much time chasing sales opportunities that eventually stall out. We need to improve our ability to sell to Mr. Intuitive.
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Logic is slow.
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Intuition is fast.
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95% of our purchase decisions take place unconsciously – but why, then, are we not able to look back through our decision history, and find countless examples of emotional decisions? Because our conscious mind will always make up reasons to justify our unconscious decisions.
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Here’s the short rule of thumb: sell to Mr. Rational for simple sales, and Mr. Intuitive for complex sales.
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If you want to influence how a customer feels about your product, provide an experience that creates the desired emotion. One of the best ways for a customer to experience your complex product is by sharing a vivid customer story. Research has shown that stories can activate the region of the brain that processes sights, sounds, tastes, and movement. Contrast this approach to a salesperson delivering a data dump in the form of an 85-slide power point presentation."

E a sua empresa... que histórias conta? Há algum compilador que as selecciona, alguém que as edita e um mecanismo de distribuição junto de quem contacta com potenciais clientes?
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Trechos retirados de "When to Sell with Facts and Figures, and When to Appeal to Emotions"

A história acerca da oferta

Excelente conselho:

"The temptation is to see story as a luxury item: something that brands implement to lift their margin. There’s nothing wrong with that of course – it’s powerful and it works. ... Our view is that most brands, no matter where they are priced in the marketplace, need a storyline.
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Without a storyline, a product is just that. It has everything it needs (hopefully) to do what it’s being bought for but that also means it’s just another detergent, car oil, computer, whatever
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The real power of story is that it provides context, in two senses. First of all, it helps consumers differentiate an offering by attaching more than just functionality to a product. It can also help them understand why a product is priced the way it is – up or down.
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Secondly, and perhaps just as importantly, a storyline gives the brand owner a consistent and differentiated narrative upon which to base and evolve brand marketing.
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Finally, stories introduce humanity. They make you think through and act upon a narrative that is fundamentally rooted in human truths. Stories generate empathy. We see ourselves in the tale. Or we see a side of ourselves. Or we see the ‘me’ that we would like to be."

Quais as histórias que conta e contam acerca da oferta da sua empresa?
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Ainda ontem numa empresa discutíamos a incoerência do seu site, estilo bombardeamento de promoções, com a essência da empresa, especialista em situações críticas... nem uma estória, e têm tantas, para posicionar, contextualizar e humanizar a sua oferta.
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E na sua empresa?
Trechos retirados de "Every Brand Price Point Needs A Story"