Scale is the force that commodifies

"The belief in scale and speed and efficiency has a commodifying effect. In the absence of a special consciousness and care, they extract our humanity. And so our workplaces are soon well structured, roles are defined, behavior is prescribed, and what was a startup now becomes a place we call work. Even when, as in a startup, freedom faces the resistance of so-called marketplace reality, we still are quite ready to surrender it. The code for this is "taking it to scale. Scale is the force that commodifies our way of being together."

Já não estamos no século XX, já não vivemos da produção em massa, já não temos demografia para a suportar, temos de apostar na arte, temos de apostar na diferenciação. A estratégia não pode passar pelo tamanho.

Trecho retirado de "Confronting Our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging" de Peter Block. 

Puro sumo!!!

Five Feynman rules for Life: 🧠

i) Take mistakes as Lessons.
ii) Focus is the key.
iii) Study hard what interests you the most.
iv) Don't worry about what other people think.
v) Skills are more valuable than your grades.

— Prof. Feynman (@ProfFeynman) January 7, 2022

Para pessoas e para empresas. Puro sumo!!!

Acerca do i) recordo, para começar, "Managing the Unexpected - Sustained Performance in a Complex World" de Karl Weick e Kathleen Sutcliffe: 

"Preoccupation with failure, the first high-reliability organization (HRO) principle, captures the need for continuous attention to anomalies that could be symptoms of larger problems in a system."

Acerca do iii) recordo Youngme Moon e a mensagem de "Different" em "There’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones"

Acerca do iv) recordo David versus Golias em Lidar com os Golias!

the decline of 'best practice'

"Let us explore the decline of 'best practice' a bit further by critiquing its application to strategy from two angles: first, from a simple economics perspective and, second, from a social or psychological perspective.

If firms seek to copy others then their products and services and values become increasingly similar. And when that happens, the main means of customer differentiation between competitors is price. Competition is therefore reduced to a price war, and, because everyone's costs are similar (because they have sought to replicate best practice production methods), everyone's margins decline (one study has shown that this sort of 'strategic herding' led to a 50 per cent decline in margins in the five years to 1999 among German wireless telecommunications providers). [Moi ici: Recordar Youngme Moon] In other words, the cream is only a treat worth stretching for when the rest of the bottle is milk, and everything being creamed is a recipe for stagnation. As managers become more focused on developing the 'technologies' necessary for copying, the less concerned and able they are to promote substantive innovation or to get anything different 'out of the bottle'.

From a social or psychological point of view, we can analyse the decline of best practice in the twenty-first century by taking the classic motivation theories of Maslow and Herzberg and combining and playing around with them in a postmodern manner ...

While Maslow suggested that all humans move from satisfying food and shelter needs at base; up to safety needs; then on to belongingness or family or love needs; then once this is satisfied status; and finally self-actualization at the tip of the triangle, nowadays we do not believe that people are so uniformly linear. While our lower order or physiological needs may be common, as people satisfy their basic needs, such as food, shelter, safety, and efficiency, they generally look for ways to differentiate themselves. People want different things and once their basic needs are satisfied they increasingly seek to differentiate from others by associating with products that express or augment their identity.

...

If we add in Herzberg’s idea that there are some things that really motivate us to go that little bit extra, and others that are simply ‘hygiene factors’ – things that we expect and so therefore take for granted (e.g., cleanliness in a restaurant, air bags in cars), so that their presence does not act as a motivator but their lack is a positive demotivator  [Moi ici: Recordar o exemplo dos factores que se estiverem presentes não geram satisfação, mas se estiverem ausentes geram insatisfação]  – we can say that increasingly, in the West at least, the physiological functions of a product or service are hygiene factors. 

...

Thus, the basic attributes of products or services – function, efficiency, safety, cost, etc. – increasingly become ‘hygiene factors’; things that dissatisfy customers if they are not present but do not motivate them to purchase if they are. Motivators to purchase are thus increasingly the things about a product or service that go beyond these hygiene factors to indicate a particular identity or lifestyle choice. And, because people are different, it is increasingly difficult for one company to be all things to all people ... Hence, there may no longer be a general ‘one best way’. It depends upon which particular identity or cluster of identities you are trying to target or relate to."

Trechos retirados de "Images of Strategy" de Stephen Cummings e David Wilson.

"a myopic strategy that leads to consistent mediocrity"

"customer loyalty is driven more by emotional factors than by rational ones.
...
Ask yourself this: Is your company trying to minimize complaints or maximize customer delight? Given the research I’ve cited, you might think that every company would be trying to create dynamic, delightful customer journeys infused with emotion. You’d be wrong. Many focus almost solely on complaints. Their goal: Eliminate the customer’s pain at every point where the consumer and the company intersect. It’s a myopic strategy that leads to consistent mediocrity, because companies miss much of what the customer experiences on his or her journey.[Moi ici: Recordar "There’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones"]
...
The journey between visiting a company’s website, say, and making an actual purchase is an emotional, cognitive, and motivational process. It’s the mix of those forces that creates feelings, memories, and stories about an organization, whether positive, negative, or ambivalent. It’s this variability that creates opportunities for companies to deliver memorable experiences. Rules and standardization can get in the way.
...
When companies focus on reducing variance in customer experience, eliminating outliers, they make sure that, statistically speaking, as many customers as possible occupy the middle of a normal distribution curve. Terrible customer experiences get a lot of attention, which reinforces the strategy of standardizing operating procedures and laying down more rules. Imposing controls helps bring experiences closer to expectations. While eliminating bad experiences may reduce complaints, result in fewer angry customers, and trim costs, the unanticipated consequence of moving most customers to the middle of distributions is that it will also result in consistent mediocrity. They will have undifferentiated, average experiences, which will leave them with few, if any, memories.
...
For that reason, positively varied emotional journeys can have the richest payoff. They leave indelible memories, increase customer loyalty, and have multiplier effects in a world where customers are closely connected. For companies that embrace variability, even terrible experiences that spawn negative emotions — such as that lost purse at Disney World — are an opportunity. If the company surprises and delights the customer by efficiently and innovatively resolving his or her problem, the dominant emotion, the one that lasts in memory, will be positive."

Trechos retirados de "The Magic That Makes Customer Experiences Stick"

"e eu respondi ao calhas!!!"

Li ontem, um título qualquer que dizia que o número de jovens que de manhã vai para a escola em jejum está a aumentar.

Sorri e lembrei-me logo de uma estória que aqui escrevi em Fevereiro de 2010 (o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras vai sorrir):

"Esta semana, em conversa com o administrador de uma PME que partilha da minha desconfiança em relação aos inquéritos, entre sorrisos, contou-me esta estória pessoal:
.
Esta semana, tinha sido convocado a comparecer na escola de um dos filhos. Uma vez lá chegado percebeu que o assunto era por causa de uma resposta que o filho tinha dado num inquérito (daqueles que se preenchem com cruzes) feito pela escola. À pergunta "Costuma vir para a escola de manhã sem comer, sem tomar o pequeno almoço?" O filho respondeu "Sempre!!!"
.
O pai ficou atónito, mas é claro que o filho tomava pequeno-almoço antes de ir para a escola!!!!???
.
O pai saca do telemóvel, liga ao filho e pergunta-lhe porque é que ele respondeu daquela forma:
.
"Sei lá! Puseram-me um inquérito chato à frente e eu respondi ao calhas!!!""

Obter informação sobre a satisfação dos clientes é um tema deste blogue desde pelo menos 2006. Não obter um número e ficar mais ou menos satisfeito porque o "grau de satisfação dos clientes" subiu, mas obter intuições sobre o que melhorar, sobre oportunidades para inovar, sobre onde aprofundar a diferenciação.

A quem ainda confia em inquéritos de satisfação de clientes para obter informação útil recomendo a leitura de "Customer Surveys Are No Substitute for Actually Talking to Customers":

"For many organizations, surveys like this qualify as “talking to the customer.” They’re ubiquitous – appearing in hotel rooms, after online purchases, and in hospital emergency departments. But do they really qualify as customer consultation? Or are they a symptom of an isolated management just putting on a show of interest? What can be done instead?
.
The obvious answer is to talk with customers directly. But executives are often put off by the idea of interviewing customers individually, believing that it involves many hours and massive expense. Instead they get together in a group and guess what the customer — or any stakeholder — wants, with only the flimsy, half-hearted responses of customer surveys to guide them. It usually results in the wrong answers and the wrong strategies."

Para reflexão

"Differentiation is the key driver of brand power. Your company’s core values must embody what makes your company uniquely “you”—what makes you stand out from others.
.
To start to identify what your core values really should be, start by thinking about your business category. Core values should differ from category values, which all companies in any given category must adopt.
...
Second, for your company’s values to be unique, the words or manner in which you choose to describe them should be distinctive. Instead of defaulting to overused terms, express your core values differently from other companies that might hold somewhat similar beliefs. Use a style or voice that uniquely represents your organization. Doing so provides more than a veneer of differentiation; it makes your values more distinct because they embody the spirit and personality of your organization.
...
There isn’t one right set of values for every organization. Your core values should describe the collective attitudes and beliefs that you desire all employees to hold, translate those into specific actions and decisions that they should make, and then in turn show how those behaviors produce customer experiences that define and differentiate your brand. Your core values need to be unique."

Trechos retirados de "Ban These 5 Words From Your Corporate Values Statement"

"Build from your strengths"

"In their efforts to compete, business strategists often forget a basic principle: Build from your strengths. The most successful companies have a clear, well-articulated view of what's important to them and their customers. They understand that the way to win consistently is through what they do rather than what they sell.
.
These companies also understand that “what they do” is unique to them; they have their own capabilities and practices that no other company could quite duplicate, even if it tried. In that sense, building from your strengths is the most reliable way we have found to differentiate your company.
.
This advice is easy to state and difficult to follow — not just in business, but in every aspect of human endeavor. Focusing on what you are great at doing is intuitively compelling, but few companies drive their strategy this way. It’s too easy to get caught up in chasing what others do — fixing the inevitably long list of weaknesses in your company, or seeking out what’s new in a world of change.
.
But when you understand what you’re great at, and design your capabilities and strategy accordingly, you can define how you want to compete, and shape your own future rather than waiting for others to do it for you."

Lembrei-me logo de Youngme Moon e "Different"


Trecho retirado de "Design for Your Strengths"

"uniqueness is a necessary condition for outstanding performance"

Quase me arrepiei ao perceber que escrevi este postal há sete anos, "Now, something completely different... para nos deixar a pensar", como o tempo voa.

A provocação desse postal, resultado de uma reflexão baseada no livro "Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd" de Youngme Moon, materializa-se neste texto, "Does It Pay to Hire Consultants? Evidence from the Bordeaux Wine Industry":

"On average, I found that wines made with the help of consultants had higher quality ratings. However, they also had less extreme quality ratings. Use of consultants, therefore, correlated with middle-of-the-road, less extreme wine ratings: neither excellent nor terrible. Many outstanding wineries did not use consultants, preferring to use only in-house talent.
...
This is because the coin of the consultant’s realm is knowledge, which has two main origins: expertise, gained through education and training, and experience, accumulated by working with clients. Importantly, the raison d’être of consultants is not to provide their clients with ordinary knowledge. It is to develop best practices and to use them to improve their clients’ performance.
...
Because best practices are more tested than the practices of individual firms, they decrease the likelihood of very low performance. On the other hand, uniqueness is a necessary condition for outstanding performance. Because best practices are less unique than the practices of individual firms, they also decrease the likelihood of very high performance."

BTW, "Paradoxically, the firms that could benefit the most from help are the very ones that are less likely to hire the help they need."

Um conselho que ignoramos muitas vezes

Um conselho que ignoramos muitas vezes "A Self-Improvement Secret: Work on Strengths":

"But why give so much attention to improving our weaknesses? Why not build on our strengths?
.
New research by psychologists Andreas Steimer and André Mata sheds light on these questions. The team found that people believe that they can change their weaknesses more than their strengths.
...
Neglecting strengths might also have negative consequences. People may believe that their weaknesses will be lost over time, but that their strengths are there to stay. Because of this, we might not be very motivated to work on our strengths.
...
If we choose to think about our ability to develop our strengths, we might seek out different opportunities for self-growth that capitalize on our strengths. One way to improve yourself is to sharpen a skill you already have."

Recordar:

• Now, something completely different... para nos deixar a pensar (Maio de 2010) 
• Strategy is about strengths and trade-offs (Setembro de 2015)

Strategy is about strengths and trade-offs

"Unfortunately, we are more sensitive to our weaknesses than our strengths.
...
if a business tries to increase its “average score,” it may end up having little or no uniqueness. [Moi ici: Como não recordar Youngme Moon e "Different"] Not many people want to go to a restaurant that is all Bs, no Cs but no As. To gain customers, a company has to be distinct. As long as it provides a distinct value, there will always be customers who will like it.
...
Somehow, in school, we appreciate students who are “balanced.” As a result, we tend to emphasize fixing weaknesses rather than developing strengths further. This idea is poor from a strategy perspective. Strategy is about strengths and trade-offs.
.
Unless the allocation of resources is biased toward strengths, a company will lose its distinctiveness and will end up getting unnoticed as one of many similar companies.
.
How Can We Identify, Develop, and Use Strengths for Strategy?
.
One may wonder if there is any strength on which strategy can be built, particularly when you are much smaller than competitors. How can we find our strengths? Compared with large rivals with abundant resources and skilled people, it may seem like we do not have any strength! Let me repeat. We are trained and educated to be sensitive to our weaknesses. Thus, it is not surprising that we have a hard time articulating strengths. However, identifying strengths is one of the first steps to take in formulating a strategy. In doing so, the following three points are helpful:

• Point 1: Strengths and weaknesses are relative terms. Even if you think you are not particularly good at one thing, if your competitors are even worse, that may be your strength.

...

• Point 2: When you examine one by one, it might seem like you do not have any uniqueness. However, you may be able to develop a strong business model by combining those parts more consistently than your competitors.

...
Again, strategy is built on strengths. Given the limited resources within a company, resources should be used to further develop strengths, not to fix weakness. By developing strengths, a company becomes distinct. By fixing weaknesses, a company becomes average. Who wants “average” that has no uniqueness? Strengths do not have to be big or obvious. The strength may be subtle and small, which is perfectly fine. All a company needs to do is to understand its strengths (and weaknesses) well, and formulate a strategy that uses the strengths so that competitors cannot easily imitate it. [Moi ici: Esta frase para mim, hoje, é um bocado difícil de aceitar. A estratégia tem de se basear nas forças. Contudo, forças e fraquezas não são uma verdade absoluta, são classificações subjectivas. Recordar as vinhas velhas do Douro e os que partem já derrotados. Se a estratégia for eficiência as vinhas velhas são um estorvo, uma fraqueza, se a estratégia for qualidade/distinção as vinhas velhas são um ponto forte. O conselho? Partir da base da effectuation (Bird in Hand Principle – Start with your means - Entrepreneurs start with what they have), uma PME não tem dinheiro para mudar o mundo. Tem antes de pensar: com o que tenho e com os recursos a que posso aceder, como posso partir de pontos fortes? ]
Peter Drucker once said, “Thinking is very hard work. And the management fashions are a wonderful substitute for thinking.”

• Point 3: Strengths and weaknesses depend on what game (or war) is played. If you are really macho, you may be good at wrestling or weightlifting, but probably not at high jump. When the game changes your weaknesses may become your strengths and vice versa."

Trechos retirados de "The cores of strategic management" de Katsuhiko Shimizu.

Assim, talvez ter inimigos entre os clientes ou ex-clientes seja bom sinal (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.
.
Quando escrevi o que escrevi na parte II, limitei-me a desenvolver um modelo mental que pode ser descrito por este esquema:

Ontem, fui levado a reler o artigo "The High Price of Customer Satisfaction", citado em "Cuidado com os pré-cozinhados". É impressionante como retive e incorporei a mensagem do artigo no meu racional. Primeiro, recordemos uma citação de ontem:

"allowing a galaxy of small companies to compete with multinationals"

PME não procuram ser as líderes de quota de mercado, por isso, com um pouco de pensamento estratégico, podem facilmente competir com vantagem com os pesados dinossauros das multinacionais. Vejamos então, algumas citações do artigo relido:

"Managers often assume that improving customer satisfaction and financial performance go hand in hand. The reality, however, is much more complex.
...
Customer satisfaction has become the most widely used metric in companies’ efforts to measure and manage customer loyalty. The assumption is simple and intuitive: Highly satisfied customers are good for business.
.
However, the reality has not proven nearly so simple. In fact, we have found that if you look across industries at the correlation between companies’ customer-satisfaction levels for a given year and the corresponding stock performance of these companies for that same year, on average, satisfaction explains only 1% of the variation in a company’s market return."

Quando leio estes artigos americanos aprendi a usar uma dupla precaução, estes consultores e professores tratam com que tipo de empresas? Quase sempre com empresas grandes e muito grandes. Continuemos:

"High customer-satisfaction ratings are typically treated by managers as being universally good for business. Our findings indicate, however, that the benefits are not nearly so clear-cut.
...
For example, a large [Moi ici: Estava mesmo à espera disto. "Large" significa, perseguir quota de mercado] beverage distributor in the midwestern U.S. found that the return on its satisfaction efforts was negative.
...
If we look at one key factor that drives customer satisfaction — low prices — it is easy to see why this is the case. [Moi ici: Empresas grandes, buscam a maior quota de mercado. Logo, recorrem ao "lowest common denominator", o preço, por exemplo, para seduzir os clientes]
...
In general, satisfaction and price are almost always inversely related. As a result, lowering price tends to be one of the easiest ways to improve satisfaction levels. [Moi ici: Apetece escrever "OMG" que racional mais básico... pois, racional de dinossauro. Como é que escrevia o @pmarca no Twitter há dias? "I like to say that if you are afraid of large corporations then you have never worked for one."]
...
For example, the majority of customers of a large financial services company we examined were highly satisfied. The problem was that over two-thirds of these  highly satisfied customers were also unprofitable to the company. The customers’ high satisfaction was driven largely by the belief that they were getting exceptional deals — and they were.
...
[Moi ici: E para terminar, esta desconcertante mensagem que se segue] What is clear from our research is that there is not one right way to improve satisfaction. Different approaches are required depending upon the profiles of the company’s customers and the nature of the competitive environment. Moreover, it may even  be necessary to accept lower average satisfaction levels in the pursuit of greater market share by appealing to a larger, less homogeneous customer base." [Moi ici: Empresas grandes vivem de market share, têm de trabalhar para uma base de clientes menos homogénea e usar o preço como forma de aliciamento... idealmente querem tratar os clientes como plankton. As PME não precisam de enveredar por esta via, podem fugir da quota de mercado e apostar em segmentos muito mais exigentes, muito mais homogéneos e que valorizam outras coisas que não o preço.] 

Assim, talvez ter inimigos entre os clientes ou ex-clientes seja bom sinal (parte II)

Parte I.
.
Vamos recuar a 2008 com esta imagem:

Quanto mais pura é uma estratégia, maior a rentabilidade.
.
Então, porque razão é que uma empresa há-de enveredar por estratégias híbridas?
.
Suspeito que por causa do "bezerro de ouro" da quota de mercado.
.
Quando uma empresa opta por uma estratégia pura, por exemplo, escolhe como clientes-alvo, para o seu projecto de turismo no Douro, os birdwatchers entusiastas e endinheirados, escolhe servir um nicho e deixa de lado muitos potenciais clientes que não se encaixam no perfil.
.
Voltemos ao teste da parte I: Se o contrário de uma estratégia não é estúpido, então, uma empresa bem sucedida terá clientes muito satisfeitos (evangelistas), os birdwatchers entusiastas e endinheirados, os clientes-alvos da estratégia. E, terá também, clientes muito insatisfeitos (potenciais terroristas), os clientes-alvo de uma estratégia oposta, os apreciadores de paisagens, ou os apreciadores de paz e sossego, ou os apreciadores de vinho do Douro, ou ...
.
Além da quota de mercado, outro factor que pode levar uma empresa a optar por estratégias híbridas é a crença na relação:

Se uma empresa medir a satisfação dos clientes recorrendo a questionários genéricos, bem intencionados mas não construídos com base na sua estratégia, fica condenada à comoditização, como tão bem explica Youngme Moon.
.
Recordar:

• "Os clientes errados não têm razão"
• "Now, something completely different... para nos deixar a pensar"
• "Não é armadilhar, é arte";
• "Cuidado com os pré-cozinhados"

.
Se essa empresa medir a satisfação dos seus clientes terá um resultado não muito abonatório, pois a alta pontuação dos evangelistas será "aguada" pela baixa pontuação dos terroristas.
.
Ora, se uma empresa tem em conta a quota de mercado e a suposta relação entre satisfação e resultados financeiros, vai começar a pensar em "namorar" os clientes que não são o alvo, para as poder aumentar, para poder chegar a mais gente e ganhar mais. Por isso, vai abandonar a sua estratégia pura e vai enveredar por uma estratégia híbrida, para melhorar a opinião dos terroristas. Como consequência, os evangelistas vão deixar de ter a a empresa em tão alta consideração.
.
Resultado:

• a quota de mercado vai aumentar;
• a satisfação medida vai aumentar;
• a diferenciação face a outras empresas vai baixar;
• a empresa vai-se comoditizar;
• a margem vai baixar.

Assim, valores elevados de satisfação, associados a elevadas quotas de mercado, acabam por se correlacionarem com margens mais apertadas.
.
Um tema muito parecido com este é desenvolvido por Ajit Rao em "Value Promise versus Value Delivery" publicado por Journal of Creating Value 1(1) -91 –100. Alguns excertos:

"If one reviews customer satisfaction questionnaires, one would find that in any sector, there are minor differences between the questionnaire of one brand of service provider and another.
This indicates that most companies today are offering and measuring ‘commodity’ customer service. The questionnaires are mostly similar, especially in the factors (themes) and attributes that are covered in the survey.
...
the customer satisfaction scores of most banks is going up. Yet, the share of the wallet is decreasing, possibly because most customers are unable to differentiate one bank from another, based on quality of service, and hence, customers end up choosing a bank/product based on charges, fees or interest rates.[Moi ici: Como não me lembrar de conversa ao almoço na semana passada em que gerente se queixava que o seu sector, muito regulado, presta um serviço de excelência e não é recompensado devidamente por isso. Falei-lhe logo no marxianismo.]
...
Over the past several years, managers have been largely preoccupied with improving operational effectiveness [Moi ici: Cá está a minha preocupação com a cristalização do movimento da Qualidade] resulting in the rise of the quality movement, the six-sigma movement, etc. A natural fallout of these improvement efforts was the overall enhancement in customer satisfaction.
.
Organizations are also benchmarking themselves with their competitors, not only within their markets but also with companies in other regions. So when a company makes a change in any of its processes other companies quickly follow those best practices. This tendency is resulting in ‘raising the bar’ when it comes to service delivery at customer ‘moments-of-truth’.
...
As a result, customer satisfaction of most organizations is going up. However, in the process, there is hardly any differentiation in the services delivered from a company in one sector to another.
...
Those organizations that view service as a competitive edge focus their energies in improving customer satisfaction. However, over time, while these companies do indeed improve customer satisfaction, they do so at the cost of poor differentiation compared to competition.
...
Hence despite improving customer satisfaction, these sectors end up competing on price and promotions.
...
Organizations cannot view service delivery or customer experience independent of the brand and only as improvements in operational excellence; organizations will need to bring strategy back into service delivery by ensuring that the brand promise is delivered at every interaction point with the organization. Indeed, the management and measurement of customer satisfaction will no longer be about just plain satisfaction but about relevant satisfaction or satisfaction in the context of truly aligning the experience with the brand promise."[Moi ici: Este sublinhado final é tremendo de importância... se bem interiorizado, cada empresa teria um questionário de satisfação em função da sua estratégia e não um genérico que o consultor trouxe]

Fugir da manada

Em Mongo, no Estranhistão, não se pode ser médio.
.
Ser médio é fazer parte da multidão homogénea, ser médio é estar perdido como o Wally, os clientes não distinguem:

Ser médio é não se destacar em nada.
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Por isso, vale a pena ler "You Can’t Win With Average":

"We must be different. We must be lopsided.
.
No more herdlike regression toward the mean – we must find the things that at which we’re great, and build on those."

"companies must invest in their differences"

"As product categories mature, there is a tendency for all offerings to resemble one another. Traditional marketing techniques and competitive pressure result in a homogenous set of products. To break free of this cycle, companies must invest in their differences rather than attempting to match competitor’s strengths.
...
As market segments become mature, the initial differences between products disappear as all participants micro-segment and competition drives development of parity features and attributes.  It’s a bit like Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruption–as businesses adhere to best practices they can sow the seeds of their own undoing. In this case, hyper-mature categories suffer from a sameness borne of relentless
...
Businesses have a hard time breaking free from this pattern because traditional marketing techniques are aimed at finding competitive gaps and filling them. The race towards parity from all participants results in an undifferentiated mass of features and attributes."

Quando se quer ir a todas as oportunidades, quando não se está ciente das vantagens competitivas, quando não se está focalizado.

Trechos retirados de "The race to sameness"

A experiência é o produto (parte II)

Parte I.

"For decades, businesses have sought technology, features, and optimizations to maintain or increase an advantage over their competitors. But the value of investing solely in these things has reached an end. The experiences people have with your products and services is the real differentiator, a strategy that must be explored and embraced in our changing world.
...
In the 20th century, in addition to an emphasis on computerization and globalization, business management focused heavily on optimization. The early days of business management began with economic theory and the work of Fredrick Taylor, who performed time and motion studies in factories to scientifically examine and select the most efficient working methods....If we fast-forward to the latest trends in business management from the past decade, you’ll see the same focus on optimization in the popular Six Sigma and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) practices."

A nossa velha busca neste blogue, à procura de um Ananias capaz de abrir os olhos a gente colada à mentalidade do século XX, resgatar os habitantes de Magnitograd de um mundo a laranja e branco, onde a eficiência reina e a resposta intuitiva é, reduzir custos, para se ser mais competitvo.

"....Because techniques of operational efficiency such as Dell’s lean, supply chain management have become increasingly well-known and easily practiced, they’re no longer the big competitive advantages they used to be. Aiming to be better at an activity that everyone else has mastered isn’t a strategy. Strategy is about tradeoffs—purposefully choosing tactics different than those used by your competition. Strategy means saying no to some activities so you can excel at others. And the result of these strategic tradeoffs is products and services that are clearly distinguished in customers’ minds, with meaningful differences that can’t easily be replicated by others. .Today, as the benefits of organizational efficiency have decreased, businesses are looking for new approaches to create value for customers and for themselves. The narrow focus on the bottom line—and all the post-profit savings that were created by being efficient—has changed to a focus on the top line, where revenues can be increased by finding new customers and defining new offerings."

No final dos anos 80 do século passado, enquanto membro de uma equipa de 6 jovens engenheiros encarregados de tratar do aprovisionamento de válvulas, bombas, manómetros, reservatórios e pouco mais, para uma extensão da nossa fábrica, aprendi a lição muito rapidamente:

1. Recolher as especificações do item do caderno de encargos da casa-mãe;
2. Redigir e enviar um fax pedindo proposta (ainda não havia e-mail);
3. Receber as propostas, estudá-las e pedir esclarecimentos;
4. Redigir mapa comparativo das propostas;
5. Justificar escolha e enviar para a chefia directa.

O método era espectacular, recordo-me de comparar bombas centrífugas e perceber que a bomba mais cara, mesmo que fosse dada, ao fim de um ano era mais cara dado o elevado consumo energético. O que me atazanava a cabeça era quando uma proposta fugia do esquema e apresentava atributos que mais nenhuma outra apresentava. Não apresentam porquê? Não têm? Não consideram relevante? Será que têm? Devo contactá-los a pedir para complementarem a informação?

"It’s the marketing MBA’s favorite tool. It gets rolled out at meeting after meeting in all of its analytical, bean-counting glory: the dreaded feature matrix, a document created by some assistant-of-something who compiled a list of all of the companies that might be considered competitors, cataloged all of their products’ “features,” and tallied the results in a giant matrix.It’s a very logical, thorough approach. By comparing you to your competitors apples-to-apples and oranges-to-oranges, you find where you’re ahead, where you’re lagging, and where you’re absolutely not represented. Unfortunately, the typical response is to focus on the deficient or missing “features.” That makes sense: who would want to face the new VP when he’s smoldering over the competitor’s market-leading Automated Configuration Wizard that you don’t even have a response to? The natural response is to seek parity with your competition."

O que estava na base da justificação da minha escolha? (passo 5 acima).
Recomendava a proposta com o preço mais baixo... É aço inox 316 SL? É! É de 14 polegadas? É! É de borboleta? É!..... Se é tudo igual, o que é que diferencia as propostas? O preço!!!

"But what is parity? It’s sameness. It’s removing differentiation between you and the competition. It’s looking only to your competitors for what defines your offering. From your customer’s viewpoint, if you’ve reached parity with your rivals then there’s no discernable difference between you and anyone else. The experience can become so banal and impotent that it either ceases to exist, or only the negative aspects of the experience (usability issues, for example) are notable. Avoid the pitfall of parity. Avoid the feature wars, vying to have more bullet points on your packaging and spec sheets than your rivals.Different is good. Competitive strategy is based on doing things differently than your competitors, and demonstrating the worth of those differences to customers."

E voltamos a Youngme Moon e ao seu "Different" e ao perigo da satisfação dos clientes se tornar num enorme nivelador

"So if reaching parity—being as good as others—is a bad idea, isn’t being the best a great idea? Maybe not. Striving to be the best at everything, to be the best in your industry, can be an all too common misstep. The problem with this thinking is that you can’t be the best at everything, and besides, being the best depends entirely on who’s doing the judging."

Porter, como recorda recentemente Joan Magretta, aconselha a fugir da batalha por ser o melhor. Aconselha antes abraçar o desafio de ser diferente!!!

"Strategies of parity are low value and short-lived. Strategies of delivering new offerings for novelty’s sake won’t survive much further than the infomercial. These approaches center on features and technologies rather than focusing on the one thing that really matters—the experience. But even though experience matters to everyone, we almost always losesight of it in product development.…to the customers the experience they have is the only thing that matters. Customers rightfully have little appreciation for the technical workings of a product. Beyond the interface, everything else might as well be magic. Think about a light switch. You flip a switch; a light turns on. How many of us care how it works? Or you put things in the refrigerator, and a day later, when you take them out, they’re cold. Magic. You pick up a handset, press seven or ten digits, and are talking to someone far away. Magic."

A experiência é o produto!
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Trechos retirados de "Subject to Change" de Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer e David Verba.

Estratégia baseada no amor (Lc 10, 21)

Excelente!!!

"Conventionally, all of the major frameworks of strategy start by recognizing that the essence of strategy is to achieve superior competitive advantage. That is what everybody adheres to. We found that that as a concept and as a mindset is extremely dangerous, because it puts competitors at the center. And if you do that, then there is a tendency to watch your competitors and try to imitate them. (Moi ici: Muitas vezes me queixo aqui no blogue do excesso de atenção que é dada à concorrência. Impressiona ver que algumas empresas conhecem melhor os concorrentes do que conhecem os seus clientes. Assim, em vez de criar experiências novas, tornam-se cada vez mais parecidas com os concorrentes...)
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And that imitation creates sameness. Sameness will never bring greatness, and, even worse, its final result is something which is the worst thing that could ever happen to a business: commoditization. (Moi ici: Youngme Moon ilustra-o de forma soberana)   Commoditization means a business in which there is nothing that you can claim that differentiates your offering, and therefore, all you can do is to fight for price. That leads to a very aggressive rivalry. In order for you to win, you have to beat somebody.

It is like strategy as war, and that, as we know very well, is not really the most effective way to manage a business. Wars just create complete devastation; they are the worst thing that could happen to mankind, yet we use that as a simile for management! We felt it was the wrong simile.

Now, if competitors are not at the center of management, then who is at the center? For us, the answer was obvious. The customer is. Therefore, the customer is the driving force. You have to start deeply understanding what the customer’s requirements are and how you can help the customer in the most effective way. This changes completely the way you figure out what actions to do.

Now, instead of trying to imitate somebody, you are trying to separate yourself from the rest of the pack."

...

"Therefore, commodities don’t really exist. The customers are all different, and if you do not understand that, you are commoditizing something — and believe it, there is so much of that happening in business in America. Typically, when I’m teaching these concepts, I ask the group of executives I teach, “Tell me, among all of you present, how many of you think that a significant percentage of your business comes from commodities?” And invariably, 100 percent of the hands come up, and I know then that they have come to the right place — because they are not thinking correctly."

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Agora, reflictam um pouco na quantidade de economistas, políticos e comentadores que todas as semanas nos catequizam dizendo que temos de reduzir custos para sermos mais competitivos... sim, até parece que essa foi e é a receita seguida pelas mittelstand...

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O meu conselho é o do abandono das folhas de cálculo e o desenvolvimento de relações amorosas com clientes, produtos e fornecedores. Ou seja, a estratégia passa pelo amor... agora, reparem no título do artigo de onde os trechos foram retirados:

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Trechos retirados de "Strategy as love, not war"

Diferentes clientes valorizam diferentes experiências (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II, parte III.
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Situação 3: Imaginem uma pessoa com alguma idade que decide comprar uma bicicleta para fazer algum exercício ao fim-de-semana, passeando numa qualquer marginal. O que pode influenciar a decisão de escolher uma determinada bicicleta?

Situação 4: Imaginem uma pessoa com uma paixão pelo cicloturismo e que acaba de ingressar num clube de entusiastas da modalidade que organiza passeios e provas com alguma regularidade. O que pode influenciar a decisão de escolher uma determinada bicicleta?

Ponham-se agora na posição de quem vai abrir uma loja para vender bicicletas. Será que uma loja preparada para servir os clientes que se enquadram na situação 3 é a mais adequada para servir igualmente os clientes que se enquadram na situação 4? O que é que cada tipo de cliente espera encontrar na loja além da bicicleta?
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Este desafio parece não ser tão drástico como o dos restaurantes. É possível ter uma loja que sirva simultaneamente os clientes da situação 3 e da situação 4. Mas quem é que fica melhor servido? E quem fica prejudicado?

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Gail McGovern e YoungmeMoon em "Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them" referem o que acontece a uma loja, por exemplo, que não se define e quer servir vários tipos de clientes... como tem de vender, o lojista deixa de ser um consultor de compra e passa a ser um vendedor, facilmente se entra no terreno de areias movediças, ou na zona escorregadia em que facilmente se acaba a vender algo que não é o mais adequado à realidade da vida de um cliente:

"Companies can profit from customers’ confusion, ignorance, and poor decision making in two related ways. The first evolves out of the legitimate attempt to create value by giving customers a broad set of offerings. The second emerges from the equally legitimate decision to use fees and penalties to cover costs and discourage undesirable customer behavior.
In the first case, a company creates a diverse product and pricing portfolio to offer various value propositions to different customer segments. All else being equal, a hotel that has three types of rooms at three price points can serve a wider customer base than a hotel that has just one type of room at one price. However, customers benefit from such diversity only when they are guided toward the offering that best suits their needs. A company is less likely to help customers make good choices if it knows that it can generate more profits when they make poor ones.
Of course, only the most flagrant companies would explicitly seduce customers into making bad choices. Yet there are subtle ways in which even generally well-intentioned firms use complex portfolios to encourage suboptimal choices—tactics that hasten the descent down the slippery slope. Complicated offerings can confuse customers with a lack of transparency (hotels, for example, often don’t reveal information about discounts and upgrades); they can make it hard for customers to distinguish among products, even when complete information is available (as is often the case with banking services); and they can take advantage of consumers’ difficulty in predicting their needs (for instance, how many cell phone minutes they’ll use each month).

Ponham-se agora na posição de quem vai abrir uma unidade de montagem de bicicletas. Será que uma unidade preparada para servir os clientes que se enquadram na situação 3 é a mais adequada para servir igualmente os clientes que se enquadram na situação 4? E se pensarmos em carros? E se pensarmos em sapatos de ténis? E se pensarmos em comida para cães?

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Lembram-se dos dinossauros azuis?

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Em cada mercado é possível identificar várias situações onde diferentes grupos de clientes valorizam mais ou menos de forma homogénea, diferentes experiências, diferentes "outcomes".

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Quando se estuda um desses grupos o truque é (trechos de "What Customers Want" de Anthony Ulwick):

"in the outcome-driven paradigm the objective is not to figure out what solutions customers like best, but to figure out where the areas of opportunity lie in a market, that is, to determine which jobs and outcomes are underserved— and, as the formula shows, that can be determined quite easily. ... we are asking how important a certain outcome is and how well that outcome is currently satisfied. ... An opportunity for improvement exists when an important outcome is underserved—that is, when it has a high opportunity score. Such outcomes merit the allocation of time, talent, and resources, as customers will recognize solutions that successfully serve these outcomes to be inventive and valuable. Given that higher opportunity scores represent better opportunities, we have devised the following set of rules:

•  Outcomes and jobs with opportunity scores greater than 15 represent extreme areas of opportunity that should not be ignored ...
•  Outcomes and jobs with opportunity scores between 12 and 15 can be defined as “low-hanging fruit,” ripe for improvement ...
• Outcomes and jobs with opportunity scores between 10 and 12 are worthy of consideration especially when discovered in the broad market. Many such opportunities are commonly revealed even in the most mature markets.
• Outcomes and jobs with opportunity scores below 10 are viewed as unattractive in most markets and offer diminishing returns."

Reparem na figura e nas suas unidades:

 Escolher um grupo, e por grupo não falo de rótulos exteriores, e identificar as experiências que os clientes procuram e valorizam (importância) e, depois, avaliar a oferta actual, até que ponto a oferta actual consegue satisfazê-los? E, assim, conseguem-se identificar os mercados "overserved" e "underserved".
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Continua, com os mercados "overserved", palco das inovações disruptivas e, depois, com a ligação dos grupos e suas experiências ao desempenho relativo no mercado.

Uma agricultura diferente

"Stewart and Lynda Resnick’s POM Wonderful pomegranate business in an example of acting creatively to generate more demand.
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In 1987, they bought 18,000 acres of nut orchards from Prudential Life Insurance. Among the almond and pistachio trees were 120 acres of pomegranate bushes. “I first wanted to replant this acreage with nut trees, but we decided to keep the bushes,” Stewart recalled. “Our company reports split results by crop and, after a few years, I noticed that we were consistently making more money per acre from the pomegranates than from the nuts.” (Moi ici: Estratificação dos resultados. Estar atento ao que sai fora do que seria de esperar)
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In the 1990s, pomegranates were a very minor crop in the United States, and Americans were largely unfamiliar with them. The fruit had its ancient origins in the Middle East, and many associated it with life-giving properties. In 1998, the Resnicks began to fund research on the properties of pomegranates. The researchers reported that the juice contained even more antioxidants than red wine. (Moi ici: Recordar "Breakaway brands") Further study suggested that the juice might lower blood pressure and that its concentration of flavonoids might help prevent prostate cancer. Since 1998, the Resnicks have donated more than $30 million to research into the fruit’s health benefits. The Resnicks developed a strategy of dramatically increasing the national demand for pomegranates."
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Estão a ver o padrão?
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Não digo que as PMEs agro-alimentares tenham de gastar milhões a suportar a investigação, mas defendo que aproveitem o manancial de informação científica para deixarem de vender fruta e passarem a vender saúde.
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Aproveitar ... breakaway brand

Não é armadilhar, é arte

Não gosto de trabalhar para o boneco.
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Não gosto de trabalhar para o auditor.
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Não gosto de trabalhar "só porque está na norma".
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A finalizar mais um projecto de apoio à implementação de um sistema de gestão da qualidade numa empresa industrial, procurou-se avaliar a satisfação dos clientes...
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E tenho de confessar... tenho tantas dúvidas sobre a avaliação da satisfação dos clientes.
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Os que só pensam em satisfazer a cláusula 8.2.1 da norma ISO 9001 e, assim, satisfazer os auditores, podem deixar de ler o que se segue. O meu ponto é mais profundo do que isso.
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Por que medimos a satisfação dos clientes?
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O que significa ter clientes satisfeitos?
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O que fazer com as respostas obtidas?
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Avaliar a satisfação junto de que clientes?
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Afirmações que há anos faria sem piscar os olhos, como por exemplo:
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"Clientes satisfeitos são clientes fidelizados"
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Deixam-me cada vez mais dúvidas.
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Em "The Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty", assinado por Werner Reinartz e V. Kumar defende-se que clientes fidelizados podem não ser clientes rentáveis. Sim, isso é pacífico na minha narrativa!
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Se uma empresa não fizer escolhas e não diferenciar o serviço que presta em função da margem que tira dos negócios com cada tipo de cliente, se uma empresa não se concentrar a servir os clientes-alvo onde pode ter uma vantagem competitiva, então, pode ter clientes muito satisfeitos e fidelizados, e perder dinheiro, ou seja, não ter futuro.
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Se uma empresa lida com clientes que não têm reflexão e disciplina estratégica para servir o elo-final de uma cadeia da procura, então, talvez tenha clientes insatisfeitos que se sentem obrigados a comprar por causa do poder de influência desse elo-final. E o que fazer nesse caso? Se já trabalharam no negócio da construção para donos de obra interessados em alta-qualidade e lidam com empreiteiros que pensam pequenino... sabem do que estou a falar. E o que significa aumentar a satisfação desses clientes directos? Reparem o dono de obra não é cliente da empresa... mas é para ele que a empresa se perspectiva.
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E o que fazer com as respostas obtidas?
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Por exemplo:

Quando comecei a trabalhar como consultor a resposta era clara, conseguiremos um maior retorno do nosso esforço se desenvolvermos acções que levem a aumentar a nossa pontuação nas perguntas com classificação mais baixa.
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Mas qual é o objectivo de uma empresa, ter pontuações elevadas nas avaliações da satisfação dos clientes, ou ganhar dinheiro de forma sustentada?
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Se todos seguirem a mesma regra, ao fim de uns anos as empresas concorrentes estarão todas iguais... Youngme Moon ensinou-me isso.
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Mandar às malvas a satisfação geral e apostar nos pontos que ajudam a "fazer batota", que ajudam a criar e alargar a diferenciação?
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Com Geoffrey Moore aprendi que existia esta curva e que ela era uma outra forma de diferenciar os clientes, para além de saber o que procuram e valorizam.
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Qual o sentido de avaliar a satisfação dos clientes da mesma forma, com as mesmas perguntas independentemente de serem visionários ou serem conservadores pragmáticos?
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Cinzia Parolini em "The Value Net - A Tool for Competitive Strategy" escreveu estas sábias palavras, um pouco na linha de Mary Kay Plantes que distingue e prefere market-driven a customer-driven, e de Storbacka e Nononen, que apesar de não usarem a mesma linguagem de Plantes querem dizer o mesmo com  a pergunta "Market Design - Are you market driven or market driving?":
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"Adopting a customer perspective does not necessarily mean basing one's strategy on what customers demand at a given moment and blindly following the indicators of customer satisfaction. Although the indications coming from final customers may be important for refining the offer of the system, adopting a customer perspective essentially means looking at the Value Creating System (Moi ici: Aquilo a que chamo cadeia da procura... ou cadeia da originação de valor) as a whole from the point of view of the end user (Moi ici: Juro que cheguei ao elo-final antes de ler Parolini) in order to identify any inconsistencies, inadequacies and bottlenecks that may be present in the offer and or the configuration of the system." (Moi ici: Algo na linha do que reflecti aqui e sobretudo aqui há alguns anos)
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"The perspective of the final customer is therefore something different from customer satisfaction"

Breakaway brands (parte IV)

Não vender café, vender prevenção da saúde "Mystery Ingredient in Coffee Boosts Protection Against Alzheimer's Disease, Study Finds"