O papel da relação, o trunfo da interacção

Em "Experiential marketing : secrets, strategies, and success stories from the world’s greatest brands" de Kerry Smith e Dan Hanover sublinhei:

"For decades, just three differentiators—or as we call them, core value propositions (CVPs)—distinguished brands from one another and drove all marketing campaigns: price, performance, and service.
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But over the years, heightened competition and fragmentation eventually commoditized the three CVP drivers. In nearly every category, virtually every brand began to promote lower prices, high performance, and excellent service. Put another way, the marketing campaigns and the brand promises became nearly identical. The logos and taglines may have been different, but the messaging was the same.
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It all begged the question: If marketers were no longer differentiating their brands, why were people choosing to buy them?
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Because, as it turned out, there weren’t three core value propositions - there were four. Yes, purchase decisions had been primarily influenced by price, performance, and service. But we found that purchases, more and more, were actually being driven by a fourth CVP: relationship.
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Studies, focus groups, and market research began to show that consumers who considered themselves to be “in a relationship” with a company were less influenced by price, performance, and service."

Como não pensar logo em ""Don’t let algorithms replace leadership"" e em "É isto que os humanos têm de procurar em Mongo!"

"Don’t let algorithms replace leadership"

"True markets create maximum efficiency; they offer buyers the lowest price and sellers the greatest demand , but they also slash search costs for everyone in the process. And that’s really the point of markets: efficiency gains for all.
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Make it a network, not just a market. Markets aren’t always the right answer. They work best for interchangeable commodities — soybeans, bonds, car rides. When it comes to hiring an accountant, lawyer, or doctor, price competition probably isn’t the only factor, because high-value services aren’t commodities. So in these industries, don’t build markets. Build networks, ones where people can compare and contrast similar, but not the same , services along multiple dimensions of quality.
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Create relationships. The best and most enduring way of minimizing risk is also the oldest and simplest one: Do business with people you’ve come to trust. ... So the most prosperous and viable micromarkets will probably be those that can leverage natural social dynamics to manage risk, lower search costs, and create a better deal for everyone. Relationships beat transactions every time; they’re simply more economical.
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Don’t let algorithms replace leadership. In the brave new world of micromarkets, the algorithm is the boss. It issues the orders, tracks performance, and guarantees delivery, quality, and reliability. But let’s admit it: Algorithms don’t make very good bosses.
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When an algorithm’s been programmed for brutal efficiency, it’s the job of the wise leader to know when efficiency’s not the right goal. We often think that algorithms can replace leaders. But the truth is the opposite. Algorithms make leaders more necessary. Micromarkets need leaders who can make sure that the algorithm is not only a machine that grinds up human potential  but also a ladder that offers people ways up.
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And that’s exactly where micromarkets are most failing today."

Trechos retirados de "To Manage a Platform, Think of It as a Micromarket"

Quando o "mainstream" vem ter connosco (parte I)

Vivo aqueles dias em que o que escrevia aqui e era novidade, e era quasi-blasfémia para as mentes formatadas no Normalistão, está prestes a tornar-se mainstream. Pelo menos lá fora, por cá os cemitérios terão de recolher ainda muitos guardiões do eficientismo e da tríade encalhada no século XX.
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Uma sensação estranha para quem gosta de ser contrarian.

"Nor is leadership performing in that other sense, the sense of being “a high performer.” And yet too often we look for leaders among the profit maximizers and goal attainers. But a leader’s fundamental role isn’t merely to perform the same tasks as yesterday, just more efficiently; it is to redefine the idea of performance entirely.
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Leadership is in an uncertain place. We long desperately for better leaders. But perhaps it is precisely our longing that’s the problem. We’re waiting for a rescue at the cost of our own redemption. Because it’s easier to complain about the leaders we have than to try to do better. After all, it’s a pretty hard job."

Trechos retirados de "Are You a Leader, or Just Pretending to Be One?"

O papel da arte!

Sábado, ao ouvir o deputado Pedro Duarte a pedir mais uma revolução no Ensino, desta feita para apostar e quatro vectores: ciência; engenharia; tecnologia e economia, escrevi no Twitter:

de q interessa a tecnologia, a engenharia, a economia e a ciência, sem a arte?

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) April 2, 2016

É preciso não conhecer a biografia de Jobs, ou os textos de Hilary Austen, ou o futuro de Mongo para esquecer o papel da arte.
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Sem arte como é que a Bang & Olufsen teria o sucesso que teve?
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Sem arte como haveria concorrência imperfeita?
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Esquecer a arte é continuar a pensar que o valor resulta de um cálculo e não de um sentimento. Por tudo isto, recomendo a leitura deste texto "Hedi Slimane: The Steve Jobs of Fashion":

"Like many industries, Big Fashion companies keep acquiring tiny, money-losing, buzz-worthy brands… that never quite go mainstream. They die silently and perhaps mercifully. But the real question is: why is this a pattern, when it’s both predictable and pointless? Because the fashion industry is making stuff for critics. Like many industries, from tech to media to sports, it’s trying to please them, win them over, even pander to them. But the critics aren’t the people who are buying the stuff. Result: shapeless, gigantic, genderless clothes that critics love… but that are driving the business of fashion to stagnation. They’re out of touch with what people actually want, love, hunger for.
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He also, importantly, made clothes people actually wanted to wear, and that looked better up-close in stores than they did on the runway. The fashion world was shocked.
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But collection by collection, he built a devoted cult of fans precisely because he was ahead of even the critics. The self-referential game of pleasing critics might feel good — but it doesn’t necessarily build a business.
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To do that, you have to make products people truly desire. It’s a dirty word in boardrooms, desire. We’re more comfortable with calculative, rational expressions of wants. We can put them in spreadsheets and crunch and process those. There’s just one tiny problem. So can consumers. You don’t pay royally for stuff that you’re running a calculation in the back of your mind about. You pay royally for stuff that enchants, hypnotizes, and entrances you. Stuff you love. Stuff that we love — whether that “stuff” is people or clothes or phones, to be crude — suspends the rational bits of us. It intoxicates us and leaves us giddy. We say to ourselves, “Of course it’s too expensive… but I don’t care. I have to have it.” [Moi ici: Excelente!!! Isto é Mongo! Isto é a concorrência imperfeita! Isto é arte!]
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At the core of this financial success is real artistry.
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Clusters like Brooklyn and Detroit are putting artistry and craft back into products from chocolate to coffee to furniture today. But the harsh truth is that Big Corporations see artisanship as marketing. They try to brand it, tricking people into thinking there’s artistry in things – Tesco’s “fictional farms” marketing ploy is a recent example — not really practicing itor investing in it. They should take a lesson from Slimane and actually do it.[Moi ici: A importância da autenticidade]
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That’s how you get out of the trap of simply riding trends and cashing in on them: ignoring critics, breaking rules, making things people truly desire, and making them with real artistry. It takes a rare combination of personal genius and organizational risk – which is perhaps why we don’t see that many Slimanes out there. Still, we can always hope for more."

The value conversation

"Twentieth-century businesses were built for value propositions, but twenty-first-century businesses are built on a new institution: the value conversation. Twenty-first-century organizations don’t manage by monologues solemnly intoned from the inside out and the top down. They manage through dialogue that starts from the outside in and the bottom up. By democratizing decision making in a multitude of ways, constructive capitalists are able to allocate resources with maximum agility."
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Esta mudança é fundamental para passar para uma "demand-driven economy" daí o grito "Get out of the building!!!"
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Trecho retirado do livro "The New Capitalist Manifesto" de Umair Haque.

Não basta produzir - é preciso criar valor

É um mantra neste blogue. Algo que políticos, sindicalistas e muitos empresários anda não perceberam.
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Num mundo com excesso de oferta e escassez de procura:
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"Today, every company is in the same business: the outcomes business. The great challenge of the twenty-first century isn't deciding which flavor of meaningless, industrial age stuff to produce. It is learning to make stuff that's not meaningless stuff in the first place. It is learning how to make a lasting, tangible difference to well-being because that is the only foundation  for the creation of authentic economic value.
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Constructive capitalists are discovering that twenty-first-century businesses don't produce goods, they produce betters: bundles of products and services that make people, communities, society, the natural world, or future generations economically better by ensuring they achieve positive, tangible outcomes."
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Não basta apostar no corpóreo, é preciso apostar no "algo mais":
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"What's the best way to make the competition irrelevant? It's a question that has obsessed generation after generation of strategists, pundits, and gurus. Is it new business models, new market space, harder hardball, or better knowledge? The answer is: none of the above. It's Brian Fitzpatrick's concise summary of Google's great insight: "Disrupt yourself before someone else comes along and does it."
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Call it the resilience principle: disrupt yourself instead of protecting yourself. If you can, you might just gain the power to evolve thicker value faster - making the competition, still protecting the same old thin value, seem feeble and paltry by comparison.
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A radical institutional innovation - a philosophy. Most companies have a competitive strategy, but few have philosophies. What's the difference? Night and day. Competitive strategies say, "Here's how we'll get people to buy our stuff, no matter what." A philosophy says, "Here's how we'll make stuff people want to buy, no matter what." Compatitive strategy is about war on the competition through war on competition itself: its goal is limiting free and fair exchange by blocking, deterring, and smashing rivals. But when a company has a philosophy, the tables are turned on war. Companies that have philosophies no longer make war on competition.
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Philosophy is concerned with discovering "first principles" - the fundamental laws that explain the world around us. So it is with organizational philosophies; theyare concerned with discovering, articulating, and living  the first principles of value creation. They are fundamental laws that explain how we won't merely prevent others from creating thick value, but instead how we will create, refine, and hone thick value. When an organization specifies how it won't block free and fair exchange, the doors of evolution open, and the result is resilience."
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Trechos retirados de "The New Capitalist Manifesto" de Umair Haque.
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Paulo Vaz, director geral da Associação Têxtil e Vestuário de Portugal (ATP) perdeu tanto tempo nos últimos anos a lutar contra as importações europeias de produtos chineses e paquistaneses e... que não viu a mudança, que não aproveitou a oportunidade. Tão concentrado em defender o passado que foi surpreendido pelo presente. A 10/10/10 escrevi sobre o erro da ATP ao desprezar "Qual é o recurso mais escasso?", a 2 de Janeiro sobre o erro de se agarrar como uma lapa a defender o passado em "Ainda podia ser melhor" e sobre a importância de investigar para perceber os acontecimentos e... fazer batota aproveitando a onda.
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Se estivessem atentos ao presente (tão sensemaking) perceberiam isto, por exemplo "Por categorias, as exportações de produtos têxteis registaram um crescimento de dois dígitos, já que subiram 12,1 por cento. As exportações de produtos acabados (vestuário e artigos para o lar, entre outros) registaram um crescimento de 4,5 por cento.

Assinalável é a evolução das exportações de tecidos especiais e tufados, que cresceram 29 por cento, e das fibras sintéticas ou artificias descontínuas, que aumentaram 23 por cento. Os tecidos impregnados, revestidos ou estratificados e os artigos de uso técnico subiram 18 por cento." e relacionariam com isto "Têxteis do lar portugueses apostam nos “produtos topo de gama” na China"

Valor versus custo

"Twenty-first-century capitalism must organize the better saving and accumulation of every kind of productive resource for tomorrow. Its precepts and commandements must begin with minimizing economic harm and end with maximizing the creation of authentic economic value.
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The first axiom is about minimization: through the act of exchange, an organization cannot, by action or inaction, allow people, communities, society, the natural world, or future generations to economic harm.
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Conversely, the second axiom is about maximization: the fundamental challenge facing countries, companies, and economies in the twenty-first century is creating more value of higher quality, not just low-quality value in greater quantity. Think of it as reconceiving value creation: not merely creating larger amounts of thin, inconsequential value, but learning to create value of greater worth." (Moi ici: Não se consegue isto à custa do enfoque nos custos... concentração na criação de valor.)
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Trecho retirado de "The New Capitalist Manifest" de Umair Haque.

Purpose First. Then Profit.

Este postal de Umair Haque "Purpose First. Then Profit." merece ser lido e relido:
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"90% of boardrooms tend to think profit is the fundamental animating purpose of commerce, companies, and trade.
It’s not. Profit is an effect, not a cause; a reward, not the accomplishment (unless your goal is an economy that’s nothing more than a herd of drooling zombies lumbering their way around a game of creaking musical chairs). The cause, the accomplishment, the outcome—these are the stuff of purpose. In short: though the vast majority of beancounting, overquantified, fatally oblivious C-suites think so, from an economic perspective, profit is not purpose. Put the two together, and you get what might call a yawning, gaping “purpose gap”.
The result of the purpose gap? 90% of companies can’t get to grips with one of the most significant and powerful institutional innovations around. They can’t craft a meaningful, resonant—and disruptive—philosophy, a statement of first principles that defines in sharp, clear terms how they will create value (instead of merely extracting it), because they don’t (or won’t) put a bigger, more enduring purpose first.
The endgame? Many industries become ponziconomies, creating little or no authentic economic value—because the bulk of firms within them are earning profits which are mostly an illusion."
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Para formular, para entender, para viver uma razão de ser, um propósito, uma missão, há que: primeiro abandonar as teorias e ter sentimentos, e sonhar!
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Conhecem economistas comentadores da realidade económica que estejam apaixonados por produtos ou por clientes?

Outro subsídio para os encalhados

Ainda não li, ainda não me chegou, o último livro de Umair Haque "The New Capitalist Manifesto". No entanto, com base nesta crítica "BOOK REVIEW: The New Capitalist Manifesto by Umair Haque" julgo que pode ajudar os encalhados a descobrirem algumas diferenças entre a economia do século XX e a economia da segunda década do século XXI:
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"Haque sees clearly that 21st Century capitalism is not merely about producing better products and services. It’s about institutional innovation, i.e. reinventing management so that the organization systematically delivers more value sooner, rather than systematically generating products and services of dubious social and ecological value.
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Haque contrasts the clumsiness and inefficiency of 20th Century firms pushing products towards customers, with firms like Lego (toy bricks) and Threadless (T-shirts) that use the power of pull (or spinning), by incorporating the customers into the very process of decision-making as to what will be produced. As a result, the firms make quantum leaps forward in the agility of decision-making; the firms systematically make better decisions sooner.
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Haque contrasts competitive advantage (lower costs) of the 20th Century firm with constructive advantage, i.e. an advantage in both the quantity and quality of profit."
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Estou a escrever isto e a ouvir na Antena 1 a história das peripécias de um locutor em Schiphol bloqueado pela neve. Queixa-se da incapacidade das companhias aéreas nórdicas para fazer face a uma situação inesperada... eheheh
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Num mundo cada vez mais incerto, mais transiente, mais diferente, mais Mongo... adivinhem quem vai ter a vantagem, quem vai ter a vantagem construtiva?

Tempo para reflectir, tempo para agir ... tem de haver um tempo para tudo

As notícias sobre as agências de viagens em dificuldades sobre os 10 mil restaurantes que fecharam levam-me a reflectir sobre a urgência das organização periodicamente realizarem uma reflexão estratégica: o que mudou lá fora no mundo? o que vai continuar a mudar lá fora? o que pode surgir de novo lá fora? como nos tem corrido a vida? a continuarmos assim vamos a algum lado? o que é que tem corrido mal? o que é que tem corrido bem? que surpresas tivemos no último ano? como podemos ser diferentes? quem são os nossos clientes-alvo? o que é que lhes está a acontecer? os nossos esforços de sedução têm resultado?
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"Business is, above all, busy. And maybe it's too busy.

Let's face it. Most of us spend most of our time chasing the immediate reward, the short-run "objective," the near-term "goal — in short, the expedient and the convenient. But maybe business's obsessive focus on doing hasn't defused any of the following conflagrations, and is, instead, dumping Molotov cocktails on each: customers as detached, distrusting, and "disloyal," investors firing back at boardrooms, regulators with bloodlust a-burning in their eyes, and about a trillion low-cost factories who can do it all faster, quicker, and cheaper anyway.

What most companies (and economies) don't do is to stop doing — and that's a self-defeating problem. We seem to be clueless about making room for deep questioning and thinking: reflecting. Our doing/reflecting ratio is wildly out of whack. Most action items might just be distraction items — from the harder work of sowing and reaping breakthroughs that matter.

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The most disruptive, unforeseen, and just plain awesome breakthroughs, that reimagine, reinvent, and reconceive a product, a company, a market, an industry, or perhaps even an entire economy rarely come from the single-minded pursuit of the busier and busier busywork of "business." Rather, in the outperformers that I've spent time with and studied, breakthroughs demand (loosely) systematic, structured periods for reflection — to ruminate on, synthesize, and integrate fragments of questions, answers, and thoughts about what's not good enough, what's just plain awful, and how it could be made radically better.

They consistently ask — in my experience, at least once a week, in informal, quick powwows — a handful of interrelated questions, never taking for granted that they've found the right, perfect, everlasting answer, but understanding instead, that the better answers evolve (and coevolve) with the world around them. In turn, reflection becomes the rocket fuel for experimentation, the lifeblood of high-level innovation, the spark of deeper meaning, and the wellspring of enduring purpose.

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The catch is that most companies don't know how to reflect. They've been finely engineered, instead, to do. So here's how to craft your own reflection items. (Moi ici: A minha mente recua ao tempo em que como consultor sub-contratado tive de realizar um trabalho numa empresa industrial em que um dos sócios classificava toda a gente que não estava na linha de montagem como malandros. BTW, essa empresa já não existe há uns anos.)

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Why. On the odd occasion most boardrooms reflect, reflection often starts with "how." But that's the lowest order question. The biggie, the more productive, provocative question to start with, is: why are we here — really? Here's an example of a "why" reflection item: "Are we really just here to sell more sugar water? Or is there a bigger, more resonant, and fundamentally worthier goal we could — and should — be pursuing, like ensuring no human being goes thirsty?"

What. From why, move to "what." What are the competencies that let you achieve, attain, accomplish your "why"? Does your current "what" support your desired "why" — or not? For example, if you're just here to sell sugar-water, then "innovating" slightly new flavors of soda every few months, and finding novel markets to "sell" it in (read: competencies in product innovation and mass marketing) is probably good enough. But if you have the impertinence to exist for bigger reasons, then you're probably going to upgrade your "what" to support it. Like, for example, if you're here to ensure no human being goes thirsty, then mere humdrum "innovation" of flavors isn't good enough — you're going to have to rethink "what", and redefine a new set of breakthrough competencies (perhaps in radically efficient water cycling).

Which. After "what", ask "which." Which products, services, partners, and assets underpin the most productive, efficient, effective ways for you to bring your competencies to life — and which don't? Does your "which" ignite your "what"? If you're here to "innovate" sugar water, then thinking in terms of orthodox buyers and suppliers might do the trick. But if your "what" is bigger, like slaking the world's thirst, then you're probably going to have to upgrade your "which", too — to, for example, include impoverished, thirsty people, and water-poor communities as vital partners in a micro water (re)distribution grid.

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Primarify. When many companies reflect, they choose to use third-, fourth-, or fifth-hand data. "Hey, Billy Bob — what do you think of this XYZ survey about ABC, commissioned by 123, for 789?" But nth-hand data is, by definition, an off-the shelf commodity — hence, it's often empty of deeper insight. Better reflection is built on primary data — preferably, face-to-face interaction. So get busy talking to your customers, investors, buyers, suppliers.

Qualify. Garbage in, garbage out: reflection isn't just about numbers. It's about why the numbers happen in the first place, and what the numbers really mean to humans. So to reflect best, you need a rich matrix of "qualitative data" that your questions and answers can germinate in. What does that mean? Just people's perspectives about human experiences.

Simplify. The jargon that's so beloved of boardrooms and beancounters is kryptonite to reflection. The best reflection isn't simplistic — but it is simple, cast in concepts that have meaning outside the boardroom, because it's those concepts that indicate that what you're reflecting has breakthrough potential. "Cross-functionalizing the marketing mix to drive incremental revenue generation opportunities" isn't reflection (and heaven knows few breakthroughs ever lie down that path). Conversely, "we will reduce the number of thirsty people in the world" is a reflective statement — simple, resonant, meaningful.

If, as I've argued on this blog and in my book, 21st century advantage is about doing meaningful stuff that matters the most, then here's my suggestion: what got you here, as Marshall Goldsmith says, won't get you there. Breaking through the industrial age's rusting, cracking ceiling won't happen by just doing more of the same. We'll have to invest not just in action, but in deep, sustained, prolonged reflection. (Moi ici: Os saltos de produtividade que precisamos, como economia, só podem vir do abandono sistemático do que sempre fizemos, para abraçar novos desafios, para resolver novos problemas.)
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That's not to say you'll instantly solve every big problem just by reflecting. But you might get a tiny bit closer. And it's those small steps that count."
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Trechos retirados de "Making Room for Reflection Is a Strategic Imperative"