"despedir é sempre resultado de uma maldade ou de preguiça da gestão" (parte VII)

Parte VI.

O que dizer da provocação, para muitos, deste título, "As Your Company Evolves, What Happens to Employees Who Don’t?"?

"When companies evolve at a rapid pace, often people cannot keep up. Some individuals who fit our company in its infancy became a weaker fit over time. They may have had difficulty keeping up with our company’s growth rate and the requirements of their evolving roles.
.
Often, I doubled down on an untenable position to keep an employee on because I didn’t understand how much harm the wrong fit could cause — especially when a person had been with us for so long."

O trecho que se segue faz-me recordar o caso concreto de uma empresa que recusava retirar um trabalhador que gerava reclamações, por causa de defeitos no produto em que tocava, porque não tinha posto alternativo para o colocar e não o queria despedir por causa da lealdade mostrada ao longo dos anos:

"People and the needs they fulfill evolve constantly, especially in small companies that grow very quickly. A good fit isn’t just about putting the right person in the right seat, but about putting them there at the right time.
.
One of the things that separates good leaders from great ones is the ability to recognize when those three factors are out of alignment and to act upon that information, particularly in the case of a loyal, long-term employee."

Postura louvável em termos humanos, por parte da gerência, mas depois não me venham falar de produtividade baixa.

Any efficiency measure applied relentlessly ...

Não tenho tido tempo para pesquisar informação sobre o que está na raiz do problema actual da Ryanair.

No entanto, no Twitter chamaram-me a atenção para Outubro de 2015:

@ccz1, troca tweets de 2015, não sei até que ponto esta desorientação actual na Ryanair não tenha surgido precisamente do tal DNA que refere https://t.co/wseCWNgQw3

— highalpha (@veryhighalpha) September 19, 2017

Entretanto, na passada terça-feira numa empresa recordei o exemplo dos nabateus por contraponto com o fragilismo do esticar demasiado a corda com sistemas com respostas côncavas:

"Any efficiency measure applied relentlessly ultimately becomes inefficient."

Hoje, apanho estes textos de Seth Godin:

• Building on maximized systems
• Optimized or maximized? 

Claro que a minha proposta é outra:

"As a valuable contributor seeking to build a career, you benefit when you develop a unique asset, because that asset gives you the leverage to choose a niche in a system that respects optimization instead."

O poder da interacção para lidar para com o desconhecido

Mais do que o Big Data, apostar na interacção:

"As opposed to “complicated” systems, where (a) components and and variables, (b) their dimensions, and (c) their purpose in a given system are known; "complex" systems are those in which one or more of (a), (b), and/or (c) is not known.
.
Managing complex systems thus requires managing ignorance, which may even include the system's objectives
...
One way to address the ignorance that complexity entails is to “engage" counterparts with whom one co-addresses this ignorance. Such engagement connects the managers of these organisations together, … In “engaging with” (as opposed to one actively studying and the "other" being a passively studied), both parties co-explore something as well as each other and each other's way of engaging. In working together, they discover how the differences of how each would engage alone, and when compared, can help each party to ascertain the blind spots it would otherwise keep about a given issue.
...
In the management of this multi-relations and multi-role complexity, it must never be forgotten that counterparts themselves have their own agendas."

Trechos retirados de "Strategy for a Networked World" de Ramírez & Mannervik.

"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"

Batota e modelos de negócio

"it has been found that business models cannot be static.
...
business models can be conceived as a set of relations and feedback loops between variables and their consequences, and recommend that strategic management should aim at developing these to create virtuous cycles, leading to an evolution of the business model.
...
it has been argued that business models cannot be anticipated fully in advance and that they rather must be learned over time through experimentation. Such experimentation could lead to business model innovation through trial-and-error learning. In line with these findings, one capability we identify as critical for fuelling business model change is to identify, experiment with and exploit new business opportunities.
...
business models can generate virtuous cycles e positive feedback loops that would strengthen parts of the model over time. They consider such virtuous cycles to be crucial elements in successful business model operation, and thereby suggest that different aspects of managing business models can reinforce their consequences. Similar to their conceptualization, we found in our study that the strategizing actions together with the critical capabilities worked as complementarities, meaning that in combination these elements fuel more sustained value creation through successful business model change over time.

...
The role of strategic management is then to develop such virtuous cycles."

Como não pensar no papel da batota. Tomar consciência do que está a funcionar e forçar a nota.

Trechos retirados de "Dynamics of Business Models e Strategizing, Critical Capabilities and Activities for Sustained Value Creation" de Leona Achtenhagen, Leif Melin & Lucia Naldi, publicado por Long Range Planning (2013).

Subir na escala de valor

"O melhor vinho branco do mundo é português"

Subir na escala de valor passa também por acções deste tipo.

Em vez de confiar apenas no gosto dos clientes trabalhar para desenvolver relações com outros actores do ecossistema. Estes jurados juntos funcionam como influenciadores dos potenciais compradores.

Ao mesmo tempo este activismo que destrói sistemas de criação de valor genuíno: "CDS-PP Madeira pede que Governo Regional apoie os viticultores em mais 0,40€".

Como é possível escrever estas coisas:

"por os viticultores “produzirem a matéria-prima para um produto genuíno e mundialmente reconhecido pela qualidade”"

Tão reconhecido que precisa de apoios...

We are all weird, and proud of it

Ainda me lembro de sair de casa por volta das 19h, já era noite de Outono de 2011, para correr a ouvir o livro "We are all weird" de Seth Godin. Logo escrevi "We Are All Weird - Um manifesto sobre Mongo".

Ao ler este texto de Seth Godin, "Beware of false averages", como não recordar com ironia os fantasmas estatísticos tão típicos do século XX e, sobretudo, sonhar com a esperança de um futuro baseado na metáfora de Mongo e na explosão de tribos.

As interacções como a base para a criação de valor

"As business becomes more system-like with "business ecosystems ("BE") ... becoming the norm and  not the exception, value and its production requires more system-like, networked, and emergent conceptual frameworks.
...
In the strategy frame we use in this book, we place interactivity as the focus for where value is created and assessed. Interactivity is, of course, also a major source of risk as well of value.
...
Our argument is that this central concern with the interactivity that has become so ubiquitous inescapably leads strategists to rethink value creation and strategy.
...
Attending interactivity also involves thinking of value as contingent, always located in a setting - no longer as isolated in things or individuals or groups - and dependent on those whom it connects and who co-create it as well as in termos of those it affects positively or negatively.
...
patterns of interactivity that enable the production or co-creation of value and values arise or can be designed.[Moi ici: Aquela situação da empresa que toma consciência que está bem e pretende perceber porquê, para fazer batota!!!]
...
So perceived patterns of interactivity do not therefore require any intentional design on the part of any particular actor, though they might arise in part because of such intent - and often do arise in this manner in business.
...
the notion of value arises for the strategist when one takes the perspective of an actor within a pattern of interaction.
...
how actors choose which interactions to privilege over others, and how they relate one interaction to another.[Moi ici: Como não recordar tantos postais deste blogue, como estes de 2007, 2012, 2013 e 2014]
.
An organization's managers express its intents - and thus its values - by configuring interactions to establish (more or less) continuing patterns of activity with other actors. Are interactions with employees more important than those with customers? are interactions with shareholders more important than those with employees? For which of these interactions is the strategy primary constructed? These senior managers take views on what possibilities for value co-creation their organization is providing for which actors, and make choices that reflect and reinforce their values.
...
We consider this configuring of interactions as a design activity. We use the term Value Creating System (VCS) for the pattern of interactions intentionally configured by the strategic planning carried out by an organization. The designed interactions become manifested as "designed" offerings.
...
if the key to creating value is to design and co-create configuring offerings that mobilize others (who may have the role in the interaction of customer or supplier or partner or employee or investor, etc.) to co-create value, then a key source of success is to conceive the VCS and make it work.
...
value is not simply "added", but is mutually "created" and "recreated" among actors with different values. These multiple values are "reconciled" or "combined" in co-creating value, and as we shall see bellow, cannot be reduced to a single metric, like the price of a commodity.
...
We characterise VCS as designed activities that are part of much broader business ecosystems or business ecologies ("BE")
...
we consider strategy as entailing reconfiguring roles, actions and interactions among economic actors through designed configuring offerings that result in a given VCS.
...
In co-creation, it is the co-created offerings and the relationships these manifest, not the "business unit" actor, which becomes the central unit of (competitive and collaborative) strategic analysis.
...
Designing co-creation requires the strategist having the role of ascertaining and ideally defining the engagement and the dialogue that underpins designing novel and distinctive value creation."

Trechos retirados de "Strategy in a Networked World" de Ramírez & Mannervik.

BTW, como não recordar Storbacka e Nenonen:

• Não é armadilhar, é criar harmonia, é construir uma sinfonia... 
• Os mercados como configurações (parte III)
• Scripting markets

O contexto tem muita força (parte XV)

 Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII, parte VIII, parte IX, parte X, parte XI, parte XII, parte XIII e parte XIV.

"Many companies do a good job of analyzing and planning for competitive risks, such as new market entrants or the threat of substitution, but they give only pro forma attention to noncompetitive uncertainties, including cybersecurity, natural disasters, and geopolitical risk—even though the impact of these events can be immediate and catastrophic. And herein lies the proverbial problem and opportunity. The problem for companies—and sometimes also economies and societies—is what to do and how to react when things go awry (as they inevitably will) and there is no plan in place."

A importância do contexto. Agora imaginem quando uma empresa é liderada por fragilistas... olha! Veio-me à mente a recordação do "He puffed, and puffed and puffed one last time."

Trecho retirado de "Taking Advantage of Risk"

Curiosidade do dia

"Juros da dívida portuguesa a cair para mínimos desde o final de 2015"

Quer isto dizer que se perderam quase dois anos?

Futurizar

""A crescente automatização de processos gera necessidades de pesados investimentos em processos produtivos que, para serem rentabilizados, exigem taxas de ocupação elevadas, no limite tendendo para a laboração contínua."

Mas Mongo não vai nesta direcção, Mongo é diversidade, flexibilidade, rapidez, irregularidade.

De um lado um exército clássico do outro uma célula da Al-Qaeda.

Mais tarde ou mais cedo as limitações do modelo (que impõem estas restrições de quantidade) vão gerar oportunidades para organizações tipo-Local Motors e quiçá, se os governos não continuarem prisioneiros das corporações, a uma réplica do que aconteceu com a explosão da cerveja artesanal.

Trecho retirado de "Fabricantes advertem que sucesso do setor automóvel depende de ganhos de produtividade"

BTW, a seu tempo veremos pedidos de apoio para os contribuintes, via Estado, apoiarem estas empresas a montarem represas para atrasar a sua inevitável derrocada/reformulação porque os seus clientes terão desaparecido e as Local Motors preferirão fornecedores mais pequenos.

"Work is interaction"

O marcador "interacção" regista a importância que ao longo dos anos dedico ao poder da interacção como fundamental para a co-criação de valor e diferenciação. Algo que agora encontro em "Strategy for a networked world" de Ramírez & Mannervik.

"The system of skills and responsibilities has been made on the assumption that all that has to be done can be known or forecasted with efficiency and insight.
.
In mass-production, work corresponds mainly with what has been planned. But today, in more contextual problem solving, work corresponds mainly with complex engagement with the customer.
.
Instead of skills the focus changes to contextual relevance. The most modern definition of work is “an exchange in which the participants benefit from the interaction”. Interestingly, cooperation is also described as “an exchange in which the participants benefit from the interaction”.
...
Due to the variety of contexts, work requires interpretation, exploration and negotiation. The interpreter is the worker together with the customer, not a manager.[Moi ici: Como não sorrir ironicamente dos morons que se ajoelham perante o bezerro da eficiência e acham que um bot é capaz de co-criar arte com um humano...]
.
What defines most problems today is that they are not isolated and independent but connected and systemic. To solve them, a person has to think not only about what he believes the right answer is, but also about what other people think the right answers might be. Work, then, is exploration both what comes to defining the problems and finding the solutions.
.
Most decision makers are still unaware of the implications of the complex, responsive properties of the world we live in. Enterprises are not organized to facilitate management of interactions, only the actions of parts taken separately. Even more, compensation structures normally rewards improving the actions of parts, not their interactions.
...
To succeed in the new economic spaces we need symmetric relationships and open organizations. When customers are identified as individuals in different use contexts, also the sales process is really a joint process of solving problems. You and your customer necessarily then become cooperators. You are together trying to solve the customer’s problem in a way that both satisfies the customer and ensures a profit for you.
...
The industrial make-and-sell model required (explicit) skills as we still know them. The decisive thing was your individual knowledge and individual education. Today, in new economic spaces you work more from your network than your skills. The decisive thing is your network. Work is interaction."

Trechos retirados de "Rethinking skills and responsibility"

O que é um concorrente em Mongo? (parte II)

Parte I.

Agora acabo de ler estes trechos de "Geographic Patterns of Craft Breweries at the Intraurban Scale" de Isabelle Nilsson, Neil Reid & Matthew Lehnert, publicado por The Professional Geographer.

"The emergence, growth, and success of the craft brewing industry are a David versus Goliath story.
...
as an industry takes on an oligopolistic structure, it often produces an increasingly homogeneous product (American pale lager) that depends on economies of scale in production, marketing, and distribution to perpetuate its success. Although American pale lager has historically satisfied the palates of most Americans, there emerged a growing segment of the population that preferred craft beer. Craft beer drinkers prefer craft over mass-produced beer for a number of reasons, including its greater variety in terms of styles and flavors; the independent, local, and small-scale nature of craft breweries; and the innovative nature of the industry, which means that there are always new beers to sample. The growing popularity of locally produced craft beer mirrors what has happened in other food- and drink-related sectors; witness the increasing number of farmers markets and wineries across the country.
...
Early craft beer drinkers have been referred to as insurgents or rebels, who identified a “hot cause”—a desire for more choice in terms of taste, quality, and styles of beer. Hot causes, however, require “cool mobilization”; that is, someone must engage in actions that challenge the status quo and turn desire into reality.
...
Home brewing clubs provided a venue where individuals could hone their skills, experiment with new recipes, and share ideas with fellow enthusiasts. The clubs were critical in developing the culture of collaboration that is a cornerstone of the industry today. They also became the places where the seeds of revolution were sown, a revolution that manifest itself when, one by one, some home brewers decided to commercialize their hobby. Collaboration was particularly valuable for the early home and commercial craft brewers, as there existed only a small number of books on the brewing process. Hence, home brewing clubs became places where knowledge was traded and collective learning occurred. Home brewing clubs were akin to communities of practice. They were also places where tacit knowledge, such as demonstrating how to make and use brewing equipment, was exchanged."

Quando ontem à noite em "Strategy For a Networked World" de Ramírez & Mannervik li:

"Collaboration is at Least as Important as Competition
...
in the VCS aproach to strategy, collaboration is at least as important as competition. The decisive strength lies in how well the interactions within the VCS enable values to be co-created, i.e. on how well the actors collaborate, and how capable they are to attract and keep actors to collaborate with. This means that the roles they are offered in a VCS have to be attractive.
...
It follows that the ability to invite, interest, enroll, and mobilize others into one's VCS is more important than focusing on competing with opponents who provide similar products or services and have designed competing VCS.
...
competing organizations also can engage each other in collaboration to achieve a common value.
...
Collaboration helps the pie to get bigger for everyone; competition is about what size of a given pie one might take.[Moi ici: Este trecho é certeiro!]
...
The VCS framework invites and allows a focus on how to come together to "make the pie bigger", enabling better, and more varied types of value to be co-created among actors, by actors, and with and for other actors - jointly."

E:

"In a networked world, co-designed configuring offerings imply that strategy is as important in terms of collaborative advantage as it is in terms of competitive advantage - perhaps even more so. It is a world of business where those who design offerings with others create better design and value than others who do not collaborate in the designing."

Curiosidade do dia

"the trajectory of his interests can be traced in the titles of his books, from “The Moral Economy of the Peasant” to “The Art of Not Being Governed.” His best-known book, “Seeing Like a State,” has become a touchstone for political scientists, and amounts to a blistering critique of central planning and “high modernism,” the idea that officials at the center of a state know better than the people they are governing.
...
Scott argues that a state’s interests and the interests of subjects are often not just different but opposite.
...
Scott says, is that there is a crucial, direct link between the cultivation of cereal crops and the birth of the first states. It’s not that cereal grains were humankind’s only staples; it’s just that they were the only ones that encouraged the formation of states. “History records no cassava states, no sago, yam, taro, plantain, breadfruit or sweet potato states,” he writes. What was so special about grains? The answer will make sense to anyone who has ever filled out a Form 1040: grain, unlike other crops, is easy to tax. Some crops (potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava) are buried and so can be hidden from the tax collector, and, even if discovered, they must be dug up individually and laboriously. Other crops (notably, legumes) ripen at different intervals, or yield harvests throughout a growing season rather than along a fixed trajectory of unripe to ripe—in other words, the taxman can’t come once and get his proper due. Only grains are, in Scott’s words, “visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable.’ ” Other crops have some of these advantages, but only cereal grains have them all, and so grain became “the main food starch, the unit of taxation in kind, and the basis for a hegemonic agrarian calendar.” The taxman can come, assess the fields, set a level of tax, then come back and make sure he’s got his share of the harvest.
...
It was the ability to tax and to extract a surplus from the produce of agriculture that, in Scott’s account, led to the birth of the state, and also to the creation of complex societies with hierarchies, division of labor, specialist jobs (soldier, priest, servant, administrator), and an élite presiding over them. Because the new states required huge amounts of manual work to irrigate the cereal crops, they also required forms of forced labor, including slavery; because the easiest way to find slaves was to capture them, the states had a new propensity for waging war.
...
War, slavery, rule by élites—all were made easier by another new technology of control: writing. “It is virtually impossible to conceive of even the earliest states without a systematic technology of numerical record keeping,” Scott maintains. All the good things we associate with writing—its use for culture and entertainment and communication and collective memory—were some distance in the future. For half a thousand years after its invention, in Mesopotamia, writing was used exclusively for bookkeeping: “the massive effort through a system of notation to make a society, its manpower, and its production legible to its rulers and temple officials, and to extract grain and labor from it."

Trechos retirados de "How Civilization Started"

Sorrio com ironia - go ahed morons (parte II)

Já depois de ter escrito a parte I dou de caras com este artigo, "The Tragic Crash of Flight AF447 Shows the Unlikely but Catastrophic Consequences of Automation":

"Our research, recently published in Organization Science, examines how automation can limit pilots’ abilities to respond to such incidents, as becoming more dependent on technology can erode basic cognitive skills.
...
Automation provides massive data-processing capacity and consistency of response. However, it can also interfere with pilots’ basic cycle of planning, doing, checking, and acting, which is fundamental to control and learning. If it results in less active monitoring and hands-on engagement, pilots’ situational awareness and capacity to improvise when faced with unexpected, unfamiliar events may decrease. This erosion may lie hidden until human intervention is required, for example when technology malfunctions or encounters conditions it doesn’t recognize and can’t process.
...
This idea – that the same technology that allows systems to be efficient and largely error-free also creates systemic vulnerabilities that result in occasional catastrophes – is termed “the paradox of almost totally safe systems.” This paradox has implications for technology deployment in many organizations, not only safety-critical ones.
...
As automation has increased in complexity and sophistication, so have the conditions under which such handovers are likely to occur. Is it reasonable to expect startled and possibly out-of-practice humans to be able to instantaneously diagnose and respond to problems that are complex enough to fool the technology? This issue will only become more pertinent as automation further pervades our lives, for example as autonomous vehicles are introduced to our roads.
...
Organizations must now consider the interplay of different types of risk. More automation reduces the risk of human errors, most of the time, as shown by aviation’s excellent and improving safety record. But automation also leads to the subtle erosion of cognitive abilities that may only manifest themselves in extreme and unusual situations."

E embora use essa metáfora muitas vezes, liderar uma empresa não é escolher um destino e um caminho. Durante a viagem o destino ou o caminho podem deixar de fazer sentido.

Processos são fluxo, são caudal

Duas empresas em que estou a trabalhar actualmente, e que pertencem a sectores económicos diferentes em cidades diferentes, identificaram como o seu problema principal a falta de um processo estruturado.

No livro "Balanced Scorecard - Concentrar uma organização no que é essencial" uso a metáfora de uma rua para ilustrar a importância dos processos para o fluxo do trabalho, comparando a moderna Avenida da Boavista no Porto, uma estrada larga e recta, com a Rua do Bonjardim, uma rua pré-Marquês de Pombal, cheia de curvas, constrangimentos e irregularidades.

Na consultoria e formação uso a metáfora do fluxo, do caudal:

"(processos são fluxo, são caudal, são vontade de cumprir um desígnio, são horizontalidade" (fonte)

"A versão obsoleta da ISO 9000, a de 2000, define processo como: “conjunto de actividades interrelacionadas e inter actuantes que transformam entradas em saídas”, não tem nada a ver com papeis, é acção, é transformação, é fluxo." (fonte)

"Um processo existe para cumprir uma finalidade: um processo é transformação, é acção, é fluxo, é aquilo que fazemos para contribuir para o negócio." (fonte) 

Em "Liberate Your Team with Clearer Processes" encontro:

"At their heart, effective processes are not about adding red tape — they are about enabling “flow.”
...
Wherever there is an activity that happens repeatedly in your business, there is a potential flow. As a leader, you have the choice to leave this flow to chance, to control it, or to channel it.
.
Think of a river. If the banks are not strong and defined, the river dissipates across the countryside and has little force. This is like the operation in which employees are given little guidance, and whose efforts meander or collide. Another river may have locks that strictly regulate how much water can flow when and where. This is a company that tries to control every step every employee takes every day. The entire system is rigid and slow, because management can never keep up with the exceptions and re-prioritizations, and employees’ time is consumed by filling out forms and following procedures.
.
By contrast, a company with effective processes is like a river with strong banks. People’s attention and energy are channeled where they will have the most impact. The work environment, habits, tools, and methods guide people into doing things right the first time, based on a continually evolving set of shared best practices. No locks are required: Instead, employees are liberated to focus their creativity on developing new best practices, delighting customers, noticing changes in the competitive landscape, or tackling their company’s next moon shot.
.
Designing processes this way involves looking at how work naturally gets done and where simple structures can increase the throughput of value"

Curiosidade do dia

Quem lê este blogue sabe o quanto há muito contesto as teorias do FMI sobre a relação entre custos unitários do trabalho e a competitividade. O FMI partilha a sua visão da competitividade com o bicicletas Pais Mamede.

Basta pesquisar nos marcadores deste postal.

No entanto, ao ler "Governo contesta teorias de competitividade do FMI" ocorre-me um reparo, o mesmo que aqui escrevi em Junho de 2011:

• "Se me vendem a redução da TSU para tornar as empresas que exportam mais competitivas não engulo. Tirando o caso das commodities, associadas a grandes empresas, o preço não é o order-winner das nossas exportadoras. [Moi ici: Recordo o injustamente esquecido relatório que provava que quanto mais um sector era aberto ao exterior menos desemprego tinha]

...

• Se me venderem a redução da TSU para facilitar a vida às empresas que vivem do mercado interno concordo, o grosso do emprego está aqui e estas empresas vão viver tempos terríveis, o aumento futuro do desemprego virá sobretudo daqui, e tudo o que for feito para lhes aliviar o nó na corda que vai asfixiando o pescoço das empresas será bem vindo.

• Se me venderem a redução da TSU para capitalizar as empresas concordo."

O problema não é a competitividade, o problema é a sustentabilidade das empresas que vivem do mercado interno. Recordar o caso da Starbucks. Recordar a inconsistência estratégica.

Sorrio com ironia - go ahed morons

Há dias numa empresa, a propósito da cláusula da comunicação da ISO 9001, conversava sobre o que é uma boa comunicação interna.

Por vezes encontro empresas que tratam os seus trabalhadores humanos como seres racionais e ponto.  Ou seja, não basta enviar um e-mail a avisar que foi aprovada uma metodologia de tratamento de reclamações e que os envolvidos devem revê-la para estarem preparados para o seu uso.

Os humanos não são como a personagem Spock que tem a lógica como critério único de actuação. Os humanos são muito mais complexos. Por isso, também, não há dois humanos iguais.

Recordo a cena de dois adultos, de boa-fé, perante os mesmos factos poderem agir de forma distinta.

Os humanos valorizam, dão crédito a quem os compreende naquilo que é irracional, ou meta-lógico.

A maioria dos humanos são satisficers, como os nabateus, e não maximizadores. Os maximizadores tramam-se quando os sistemas não são lineares e têm uma zona côncava, os maximizadores são fragilistas por excelência.

Quando era miúdo pedi aos meus pais que comprassem um livro gigante e colorido chamado "A História do Homem nos Últimos 2 Milhões de Anos". O género Homo pode andar por cá há cerca de 2 milhões de anos, mas trazemos connosco material genético que evolui há vários milhares de milhões de anos.  Ao longo desses milhares de milhões de anos a evolução dotou-nos de uma série de  enviesamentos com o fito não de conhecermos a realidade como ela é mas o de sobrevivermos para deixar descendência.

Por tudo isto, ao ler "AI May Soon Replace Even the Most Elite Consultants" fico com um sorriso de ironia. É certo que há muitos campos em que a Inteligência Artificial vai ajudar a tomar decisões, a perceber o que se encontra por trás de paletas e resmas de dados. No entanto, julgo que é algo simplista acreditar que uma boa decisão só se baseia em análise quantitativa. A minha velha recordação da luta entre MacGiver e Sandy e esta outra mais recente:

"Há meses CEO disse a propósito de um procedimento para validação de investimentos na sua empresa:
- Se perguntar ao meu pai porque optou há 8 anos por investir uma pipa de massa numa máquina fora da caixa, quando o mercado estava em crise, e que agora dá-nos o pão nosso de cada dia, ele diria que  "teve um feeling"."

Ainda ontem li em "Strategy for a Networked World":

"Qualitative analysis is at least as important as quantitative analysis in understanding a value creating system design and/or how its design emerged" 

Como se tudo se resumisse à incapacidade do processador da informação, como se não houvesse genuína incerteza na realidade:

‘invites us to abandon the utopia of a single-natured universe . . . and to be clairvoyant about the structural difficulties we encounter when we critically open the possibility of a game entailing different natures’ 

Trecho encontrado em "Value Co-production: Intelectual Origins and Implications for Practice and Research" de Rafael Ramirez, publicado por Strategic Management Journal, 20: 49–65 (1999)

Parece que voltamos a Einstein, Schrödinger e Heisenberg e à discussão sobre a natureza determinista ou não do universo.

Se acredito no que citei aqui sobre a natureza do valor só posso acreditar na importância crescente da arte, da interacção, da humanidade à medida que Mongo se impõe. Por isso, sorrio com ironia pelos que confiam demasiado em algo analítico ... recomendo a leitura do Livro do Eclesiastes.

Apetece dizer:

Go ahead punk moron fragilistas make my day!

"make systems Tsunami proof"

Recordar ""-THERE WILL BE TURBULENCE!" por isso, safe-fail"

"Fragile systems collapse under stress. The opposite of fragile is robust – a system unaffected by stress. Robust systems do not improve. Antifragile systems gain from stress. Antifragile is a neologism coined by Taleb. Nature is antifragile. Hormesis, the long terms gains of the body from small stressors, is a recognized biological phenomenon which illustrates antifragility. The stresses in antifragile systems are like a live attenuated vaccine which protects the body from its more virulent counterpart.
.
Black swan events can’t be predicted. But systems can be made less prone to outliers. According to Taleb, we should focus on pay-offs, not probabilities; exposure, not risk; mitigation, not prediction. Antifragile is Taleb’s peace offering – an epistemological middle ground where the unknowable compromises with our need to act. The fault lies not in our failure to predict Tsunamis, but in failing to make systems Tsunami proof."

Trechos retirados de "Why Doctors should read books by Nassim Taleb"

Acerca do valor

"consider value creation as synchronic and interactive, not linear and transitive. Customers in this alternative view create value, they do not destroy it. Value is not simply ‘added,’ but is mutually ‘created’ and ‘re-created’ among actors with different values. These multiple values are ‘reconciled’ or ‘combined’ in co-producing value and, as we shall see below, cannot be reduced to a single metric.
...
Empirical research shows that how an elicitor poses the problem affects the values which judgements appear to express. Values are thus contingent, more than subjective. They do not reside ‘in’ an individual, independent of his actual actions, nor ‘in’ a good, independent of the interactions to which it is subjected."

E pensar nos que querem automatizar contactos, que querem bots, que querem relações eficientes...

Trechos retirados de "Value Co-production: Intelectual Origins and Implications for Practice and Research" de Rafael Ramirez, publicado por Strategic Management Journal, 20: 49–65 (1999)

Curiosidade do dia

Pormenores aqui.

Desenhar mercados, deliberadamente

"The new major aims to prepare students to think at the nexus of economics and computer science, so they can understand and design the kinds of systems that are coming to define modern life."

Pode ter uma variante interessante, muito para lá da tecnologia e das startups. Os promotores da concorrência imperfeita não descuram o estudo e teste de modelos de configuração dos mercados/ecossistemas porque acreditam que os mercados/ecossistemas não só podem surgir, sem design deliberado, como podem ser desenhados por actores com o poder de agirem como pivôs.

Trecho retirado de "Two sciences tie the knot"

Só as crises ...

"Your identity is very closely related to your dominant business model your company runs. The difficult part is to question yourself who you are and who do you want to be in the future due to the new technology. Your identity is very closely related to your current success as a dominant incumbent based on a dominant business model.
.
If you are a successful bank, you will digitalize a bank and not think about how sexy payment services are and how you can create payment services where you do not need a bank anymore like Paypal, Apple Pay or Google Wallet do. Actually, it is pretty much the end of your career when you work in payment operation center of a traditional bank, even that payment is the service that keeps customers today with their banks.
...
If you are a successful luxury car brand, you digitalize the current business model (eg. offering even more hardware options to individualize the cars as Daimler is doing it with its Smart Factory initiative) and not rethink really who you are, how technology will change the way what a car is and what will be a software function or what will be hardware and why customers really buy your cars and how this can change.
...
It is not the technology that matters, but what you with technology to serve your customers better."

Quando as pessoas se questionam porque é que é difícil os insiders darem o salto para a subida na escala de valor, quando me perguntam porque é que escrevo que "curiosos nacionais entrassem", ou seja, outsiders, talvez os trechos acima ajudem a explicar. Só as crises empurram os insiders para este tipo de mudança.

Trechos retirados de "It’s the business model, stupid! A wake-up call for incumbents like Daimler"

Temos ainda muito trabalho por fazer

"As exportações de moldes ascenderam, em 2016, a 626 milhões de euros e foi a quinta vez consecutiva que bateu recorde, ultrapassando pela primeira vez na sua história a barreira dos 600 milhões. Face a 2010, o resultado representa um crescimento de 92%. Atualmente, Portugal é o terceiro maior produtor europeu e oitavo a nível mundial."

Há tempos, ao auditar um fabricante de moldes, tive um choque. Percebi algo que até então me passava ao lado. Para mim um molde era, basicamente, um bloco composto por peças metálicas. Agora, vejo um molde como algo bem diferente, uma espécie de relojoaria mecânica e digital ou mesmo de computador. A parte metálica está lá mas tem pouca margem e é feita cá em Portugal. A parte do fillet mignon, a parte com as margens generosas, é feita na Suíça e Alemanha. E os clientes, alemães e franceses, especificam que querem os sistemas de injecção do fornecedor A ou os componentes do fornecedor B.

Ou seja, temos ainda muito trabalho por fazer. Seria interessante que curiosos nacionais entrassem neste campeonato do valor acrescentado (sistemas de injecção e acessórios) para complementar o trabalhar do metal.

Trecho retirado de "A resistência da cerâmica à China e a globalização dos moldes"

O que é um concorrente em Mongo?

Ainda em "Value Co-production: Intelectual Origins and Implications for Practice and Research" de Rafael Ramirez, publicado por Strategic Management Journal, 20: 49–65 (1999) sublinho:

"A value co-production view emphasizes that economic actors hold different roles in relation not only to different counterparts (one is one’s suppliers’ customer; one’s customers’ supplier), but also in relation to a single counterpart. For example, one economic actor ‘A’ may simultaneously be ( i ) a supplier to another economic actor ‘B’, (ii) as well as a customer of economic actor ‘B’, (iii) as well as a competitor of ‘B’, (iv) as well as a partner with ‘B’ to co- produce value with and for a third economic actor ‘C’, and (v) possibly a competitor with ‘B’s partners, if ‘A’s own alliance with others competes with ‘B’s."

Que relaciono com:

"Aunque las cervecerías artesanales sí compiten una contra la otra en estos distritos cerveceros, sus productos tienden a ser mucho más diferenciados de los de las cervecerías grandes, por lo que la competencia es menos directa.
...
Aproximadamente un 90% de los cerveceros artesanales profesionales empezaron como cerveceros caseros.
.
Según el estudio, el espíritu colaborativo y experimental de estos clubs de cerveceros caseros persisten en los distritos de cervecerías artesanales de hoy día."

Trechos retirados de Las cervecerías artesanales están transformando los vecindarios industriales de EEUU.

Como não recordar os temas:

• Live and let live
• a ver motards e Dastardlys

Uma guerra tão antiga quanto a minha vida de consultor, tentar convencer os empresários a fugir desta paranóia que só leva a erosão do preço. Pensar mais na concorrência, esses malvados inimigos, do que nos clientes.

Por isso, a promoção da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais. Por isso, a crença de que a mentalidade de empresas como Uber, Facebook, Google e Amazon algures vai falhar. Esta mentalidade quer o monopólio da carteira, da atenção do cliente, o promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais não acredita que faz tudo sozinho, sabe que há coisas em que decidiu não ser bom e, por isso, em certos contextos, em certos ambientes, em certos momentos da vida de um potencial cliente a sua oferta será adequada, noutros não. 

A explosão de diversidade em curso

Um dia e a quantidade de artigos que se encontram e que têm tudo a ver com a tendência para Mongo, para o Estranhistão, para a explosão de diversidade de tribos, para o triunfo das pequenas séries e da autenticidade sobre a eficiência.

• Las cervecerías artesanales están transformando los vecindarios industriales de EEUU;
• In High Spirits
• This 10-Year-Old’s $2 Million Amazon Business Is Leaving Competitors In The Dust

Via "Strategy for a Networked World" de Ramirez & Mannervik cheguei a "Value Co-production: Intelectual Origins and Implications for Practice and Research" de Rafael Ramirez, publicado por Strategic Management Journal, 20: 49–65 (1999) de onde sublinho:

"A value co-production framework does not consider this outline to be entirely inapplicable, but it takes it to be applicable only in specific value creating conditions, inscribed in a wider topology of possible forms of value creation. A co-produced value creation framework is thus of a ‘higher logical type’ than the industrial one, and entails at least the following organizing characteristics:

1. Scope economics are as important as scale economics, allowing smaller units to compete against big ones — e.g., in steel making.

1. Short product life cycles and production runs becoming economically viable, enabling ‘micro-marketing’ and ‘tailor-made mass co- production’ to emerge.

1. Enhanced asset liquidity and reconfigurability are making fixed or sunk costs increasingly risky: activity-based costing, customer- centered analytic accounting, and other battles to eliminate ‘average’ and ‘fixed’ costing per- spectives are signs of this.

1. Co-production is inviting ‘hollow,’ holo- graphic, ‘virtual,’ ‘keiretsu’-like organizing. In many industries, these designs compete well with integrated industrial firms."

Curiosidade do dia

Império Otomano foi travado em Viena. pic.twitter.com/CKtl08YwAB

— JoãoMiranda (@joaomiranda) September 12, 2017

Hoje vi este tweet e respondi que não foi travado, foi simplesmente atrasado até 2050.

Agora que cheguei a casa fui pesquisar a informação e confirma-se. De acordo com o Vienna Institute of Demography, que publicou em 2006 este estudo "New Times, Old Beliefs: Projecting
the Future Size of Religions in Austria" encontrei:

"If current fertility trends remain constant, Islam could represent the majority religion for those below 15 years of age in 2051."

Ainda acerca da produtividade

Ontem em "Será que...?" comentei um artigo de opinião sobre a produtividade e o facto de ela ter sido mais baixa em 2015 do que em 2008.

Outra linha de abordagem ao tema pode passar pelo que procuro formalizar neste postal.

O mundo industrial, o mundo em que os indicadores económicos que usamos actualmente foram forjados, era um mundo muito linear:

Ainda hoje temos um imposto com um nome que cristaliza o pensamento dessa época. IVA = imposto sobre o valor acrescentado. Naquela cadeia acima, cada interveniente acrescentava valor até que ao chegar ao cliente final ele era destruído por consumo.

Acontece que nos dias de hoje, cada vez mais e mais intensamente o valor é co-construído, é contextual, é subjectivo. E as interacções entre os actores deixaram de ser lineares. Por exemplo, quando o antigo "cliente final" vai à internet e avalia o hotel onde esteve ... como é que pode ser visto como o último elo de uma cadeia? Pode ser o influenciador que convence um outro potencial cliente a optar por esse mesmo hotel.

Num mundo em que vez de transacções as interacções são cada vez mais importantes, e interacções cada vez mais variadas e densas:

Talvez os indicadores desenhados para o mundo industrial não sejam capazes de medir a crescente parte de valor gerado nestas interacções que não apareciam no radar industrial.

Talvez a produtividade medida seja mais baixa não porque é mais baixa mas porque os algoritmos de cálculo estão obsoletos.

Ainda ontem, no âmbito de uma auditoria interna ao sistema da qualidade de uma empresa, dizia a um aditado para não se preocupar com os valores crescentes dos custos da não-qualidade que implementaram este ano. Recordei o velho livro de Campanella e da lição que aprendi e que confirmo uma e outra vez: nos primeiros anos de cálculo dos custos da qualidade eles aumentam sempre. Porquê? Por que o desempenho está pior? Não! Porque estamos a aperfeiçoar o algoritmo de cálculo e vão aparecendo item importantes que nos tinham escapado na iteração anterior.

Começar pelo fim, um grande truque

Para um adepto do "começar pelo fim":

"Motivation research has found that we tend to be the most driven and enthusiastic about a project when we begin it and when we’re about to complete it.
...
For relatively simple goals, there was no difference between forward planning and backward planning. If a goal is short-term or requires only a couple of steps, the two are likely no different. But for complex tasks (like planning out how to study for a comprehensive exam), students preparing backward anticipated the necessary steps more clearly and followed the original plan to reach the set goal. They had higher expectations for reaching their goals and felt less pressed for time during progress toward them.
...
Backwards planning may have helped the students forecast success rather than failure. If one starts at the end goal, the assumption is that efforts were successful to get there, while moving from the present to the future doesn’t necessarily assume success, and forces the goal setter to think through obstacles that might prevent it from happening. Research has shown that envisioning the steps necessary to complete a goal reduces anxiety, increases confidence, and lead to more effortful actions. Further, goal setters feel closer to the end goal in terms of time when they envision success rather than failure."

Trechos retirados de "Trying to Get Ahead? Plan in Reverse, Study Suggests"

A essência da estratégia

Estratégia é ter coragem de assumir que há coisas em que se será mau deliberadamente, e que há coisas em que se procurará ser muito bom.

Num mundo que requer cada vez mais concentração e foco, há cada vez menos espaço para bruce jenners medianos.

Quantas empresas são capazes de assumir este risco de se focarem em algo à custa de menosprezarem outras opções?

"“Ikea is so good at so many things. Why is it so bad at delivery?”
...
ultimately, it comes down to focus:
.
Ikea refuses to expose itself to the idiosyncracies of its customers,” [Frances] Frei says. “There is no way they could do their own delivery with that signature Ikea crisp efficiency—there are too many variables. So they make you conform to them.” Ikea makes great stuff cheap—and that is the draw.
.
As the authors put it, this is a case study in how a large retailer can succeed by failing. This is the essence of focus. Ikea focuses on cost and the a big part of it is also educating your customers that delivery is not the preferred option to purchase its products and that customer service is not something you should expect. Since this allows the firm to reduce its cost even further (potentially), it is the “definition” of focus: doing something poorly and using it to do something even better."

Como não recordar o clássico "What is strategy?" de Porter:

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do,” 

Trechos retirados de "Ikea: Why is it so bad at delivery?"

Curiosidade do dia

"Porém, se não vos receberem, sacudi o pó das vossas sandálias assim que sairdes daquela cidade, como testemunho contra aquela gente."

Lucas 9, 5

Será que...?

Quando comento o pensamento da tríade, daqueles que continuam encalhados no século XX, normalmente adopto um registo irónico. Por isso, por exemplo, costumo compará-los a uma espécie de Saruman no alto da sua torre isolado do resto do mundo.

Por exemplo, e peço desculpa por voltar a usar estes exemplos, quando Sérgio Figueiredo em 2005 decretava a morte do calçado português, ou quando André Macedo em 2008 fazia a missa do sétimo dia do têxtil português, ou quando Vítor Bento em 2013 tecia loas às vantagens competitivas do século XX, ou quando Pais Mamede em 2015 explicava o sucesso das exportações portuguesas, eu não podia deixar de ficar incrédulo, eu não podia deixar de me rir porque todos os dias via exemplos reais, exemplos anónimos, de quem estava a dar a volta por cima, com vantagens competitivas completamente ao arrepio do enquadramento do século XX.

Neste texto, "Os trabalhadores sabem mais mas a produtividade baixou. Porquê?", sinto que o autor, que julgo que continua encalhado no século XIX, e isso é oura estória, adopta um registo esquisito...

Acreditar que a produtividade cresce automaticamente só porque os trabalhadores têm mais escolaridade é tão básico... tão errado.

Falar da produtividade e do emprego em 2008 sem falar da insustentabilidade dessa mesma economia, sem referir o BES, sem referir as obras públicas, sem referir as limitações dos algoritmos de cálculo da produtividade, parece-me pouco.

Falar da produtividade acreditando em modelos lineares, sem admitir informação incompleta e sem admitir erros de percepção e decisão dos agentes económicos, parece-e pouco.

O autor termina sugerindo algo que é corriqueiro neste blogue:

"Para encontrar respostas para diagnosticar o que parece ser uma doença estrutural, a primeira coisa que devíamos estudar é tão óbvia que parece mentira ninguém o fazer: temos um problema de produtividade ou temos um problema de produção? Aquilo que cada empresa faz, aquilo em que cada trabalhador labora, as grandes apostas da economia real do país têm condições para gerar, realmente, a riqueza que precisamos de criar? Estou a achar que não..."

Há milhares de anos que neste blogue defendemos que há muito maior potencial de aumentar a produtividade actuando sobre o valor co-criado, sobre o que permite aumentar o preço unitário num mercado competitivo, do que actuando sobre o que permite reduzir os custos unitários.

Fico com a ideia de que o autor acredita que devia haver um Cybersyn que estipulasse o que cada empresa devia produzir, e até que as empresas menos produtivas deveriam ser expropriadas para serem geridas por iluminados cheiros de escolaridade académica.

Gostava que fosse possível criar uma Matrix que simulasse estes mundos socialistas crentes num Grande Geometria, num Grande Planeador, numa economia planificada.

Acredito que o aumento da produtividade é em primeira medida da responsabilidade de quem decide o que produzir para que mercados e a que preços. No entanto, também acredito que é um trabalho a fazer empresa a empresa, e creio que nenhuma empresa deve ser "obrigada" a seguir caminhos que os seus proprietários legítimos não querem seguir ou têm medo de seguir. Qual a alternativa?

Algo que o autor do texto considera blasfémia!

Deixar o mercado funcionar, deixar de proteger as empresas com regras e leis feitas à medida. Quem tiver unhas e for capaz de encontrar um nicho que o sustente tem direito à vida, os outros adeus.

BTW, será que o autor estaria de acordo com o encerramento do jornal onde escreve, um jornal que manifestamente não cria a riqueza capaz de o sustentar? Será que o autor estaria de acordo com eliminar os apoios à produção de leite que protegem os produtores com menor produtividade?

Prisioneiros da era industrial

Aqui uso as metáforas de Magnitogrado ou Metrópolis para ilustrar o paradigma de produção no século XX.

Já aqui escrevi que o século XX começou em Outubro de 1913, quando arrancou a linha de montagem da Ford. Foi com um sorriso irónico, a pensar nos encalhados da tríade que continuam prisioneiros do modelo mental do século XX, que li em "Strategy for a Networked World" de Ramirez & Mannervik:

"The so-called "end user" in this industrial era representation of how value is created and destroyed thus equalled that which in value chain terms was called the "final" customer. For producers, value was "realised" in the transaction, which simultaneously joined and separated them from customers. In this context, value was equated to the price that the customer paid
...
Consistent with this understanding of value, Hirschhorn (1984) specified that in industrial manufacturing, value creation was characterised by:

1. economics of scale;
2. large, physically and temporally concentrated production facilities;
3. long production runs;
4. mass markets;
5. task specialisation; and
6. standardisation."

Mete impressão como tanta gente na academia continua prisioneira deste modelo.

"Although much of manufacturing is still of this pattern, large parts of the economy and even important parts of industry have been increasingly moving away from it." 

Recordar os exemplos do calçado, do têxtil e do mobiliário portugueses, que ilustram como à revelia dos seis pontos acima as empresas deram a volta ao rolo compressor chinês.

"seizing enhanced value creating opportunities" (parte II)

Na Parte I aborda-se um afunilamento mental que prejudica as empresas porque as impede de visualizar oportunidades.

"Every business misses the future and gets disrupted by an outsider. This happens because the incumbents are stuck in their ways, doing the same thing over and over again and never zoom out to take a look at the macro view.
...
“You know who should have invented Airbnb? Marriott Hotels,” says Black, starting a strange metaphor. “But they didn’t, because they’re so far up their own ass in the micro of running hotels that they could never, ever see outside of where they are. So, change instead comes from some eggheads down in Silicon Valley.”
...
“Disruption never comes from within. Every disruption is caused from the outside because everybody on the inside buys into the bullshit.”"

Trechos retirados de "Disruption Never Comes From Within"

"seizing enhanced value creating opportunities"

"This increasingly networked ubiquity has given rise to recognition of the apparently inexorable rise of systems, such as so-called "business ecosystems (BE)", in which strategists can design and realize systems of value creation.
...
The notion of industries, just as the notion of value chains, is becoming ever more outdated and hinders strategists from understanding their changing business landscapes and identifying threats and opportunities for realizing value potentials.
.
The construct of "industries" does not allow the strategist to consider uncertainties in the broader contexts that can transform existing playing fields, or that give rise to new ones - such as "nutraceuticals". Focusing strategic attention on industrial sectors, ..., prevents considering or seizing enhanced value creating opportunities.
...
Our research and experience suggests that redesigns of systems that help value to be created, rather than product - and industry - specific competition strategies (and optimization within existing product and technology categories) is called for if something substantial is to be done about opportunities and threats linked to the inefficiencies that we see in business and societies at large today."

Trechos retirados de "Strategy for a Networked World" de Ramirez & Mannervik.

Relacionar com:

"Making good choices is central to business and personal success. Integrative thinking is important because it provides a way out of our natural inclination to lose sight of the bigger picture by taking entrenched positions or to opt for shoddy compromises. Integrative thinking doesn’t choose one solution making a few trade-offs to placate the opposing view. Rather it looks for altogether new creative approaches."

Trecho retirado de "Integrative Thinking Revisited"

Começar pelos visionários

"There’s a lesson in all of this. When your idea is truly new and different, target the few, not the many.
...
The problem, as Steve Blank explains in The Four Steps to the Epiphany, is that most new products target large addressable markets. That may work with an incremental innovation, but for something truly new, you first need to identify “visionary customers” or people who want or need a product so badly that they don’t care if it’s not quite perfect.
...
While focusing on a just a few, visionary customers is not the ultimate goal, it will get your product into the hands of people who will pay you and help you refine it by exposing flaws that you’re not likely to be aware of at first. They will also be a great source of insight about which features you should develop next.
.
That’s exactly what’s happening now with Google Glass. As the technology gets battle tested in real world work environments, the technology itself is being improved. The company is also building out an ecosystem of partners who are designing industry specific applications and building traction in the marketplace."[Moi ici: Interessante este ponto que, li ontem, ajuda a explicar o sucesso do facebook sobre o Myspace]

Recordar Geoffrey Moore

A locomotiva a vapor começou por substituir os animais nas minas, só depois transitou para outros campos.

Trechos retirados de "Build For The Few And Not The Many"

Acerca das exportações YTD - mês 7 (2017)

Olhando para os números do acumulado das exportações nos primeiros 7 meses de 2017 e 2016, e usando a minha habitual bitola, é possível perceber que as exportações das PME continuam a crescer a bom ritmo. O parcial I em Abril representava 46% do total, em Maio subiu para 49%, em Junho atingiu 51% e em Julho chegou aos 53,7%, apesar da subida pornográfica das exportações de combustíveis (+ 41% de crescimento homólogo). Quem segue este blogue sabe o quanto significa apara mim aqueles 53,7%.

Quebras importantes nas exportações de vestuário, cerâmica, floricultura (mais de 50% em cada rubrica).
Células a amarelo na tabela denotam aceleração das exportações de 2017 relativamente ao ritmo de 2016.

BTW, aquele crescimento do calçado ... gostava de o ver escalpelizado por dimensão das empresas.

Curiosidade do dia

O que será pior: ter havido furto ou não ter havido furto?

Imaginem que isto acontecia numa empresa privada minimamente organizada.

Imagem retirada daqui.

Diferenças

Diferentes clientes-alvo, diferentes propostas de valor, diferentes vantagens competitivas, diferentes preocupações e constrangimentos.

De um lado, "O empresário que paga acima da média e não quer horas extra". Antes de ler o artigo, só com o título, fiz uma aposta: Tens de ter marca própria e muito valorizada.

"“A beleza salvará o mundo”. Esta citação do escritor russo Fiódor Dostoiévski aparece na primeira página do site da Brunello Cucinelli, um empresário italiano. Embora menos conhecida do que impérios como a Prada e a Gucci, a Brunello Cucinelli é um ícone da alta moda, que fatura 450 milhões de euros e cresce 10% ao ano."

Bingo!

Do outro lado, "Luís Onofre, patrão do calçado: “O absentismo nos homens é quase zero e muito grande nas mulheres”". Cada vez mais o sector de calçado português tira partido da resposta rápida, da flexibilidade, à medida que os compradores encomendam cada vez mais tarde, cada vez em quantidades mais pequenas seguidas de reposições rápidas do que tiver mais sucesso.

BTW, isto vai ser cada vez mais frequente no futuro, "Líder da ANJE: “Há quem queira investir e fazer fábricas e não tem trabalhadores”".

To participate and influence the formation of sense making and meaning

Mais um texto muito bom de Esko Kilpi:

"Management thinking is moving towards an understanding of human action as a process of sense making. What an organization becomes emerges from the sense-making relationships of its members, rather than being determined by the choices of few powerful individuals.
...
Many local interactions generate emergent outcomes that cannot be traced back to any specific management actions. Looking towards the future, we create what happens next, without knowing what will happen next.
...
The key management capability is not being in control but to participate and influence the formation of sense making and meaning. It is about creating a context that enables connectedness, interaction and trust between people.
.
Most people believe that the role of leaders is to choose strategic directions and then persuade others to follow them. A modern view of strategy is about exploration and experiments, a search process of trial and error. The openness to the possible through the search process leads to managers having to live with the paradox of being in control and not in control simultaneously.
...
The fundamental dynamic of evolution is not competitive selection, but interactive cooperation. Management is then about self-influencing cooperation."

Trechos retirados de "The future of management"

"The key source of success is to conceive the VCS and make it work"

Há anos li um extraordinário artigo de Storbacka e Nenonen, "Scripting markets: From value propositions to market propositions", publicado por Industrial Marketing Management Volume 40, Issue 2, February 2011, Pages 255-266.

Alguns postais que escrevi por essa altura foram:

• Os mercados como configurações (parte III) (Julho de 2011)
• Não é armadilhar, é criar harmonia, é construir uma sinfonia... (Julho de 2011)
• Boleias de passageiro clandestino que permitem viver mais um dia mas não ensinam a pescar (parte III) (Dezembro de 2011)
• Scripting markets (Abril 2014)

Agora em, "Strategy for a Networked World", de Rafael Ramirez e Ulf Mannervik, encontro tantas referências que me soam a uma outra forma de desenvolver o conceito de "scripting market":

"In today’s networked world, conceptualising value on the central basis of two-way exchanges as one did in the industrial era (with the idea of “value-added” products or services) has become very limiting, in fact too limiting, for capturing the full potential of value creation.[Moi ici: Aqui a fuga às relações diádicas e a importância do ecossistema]
...
render value creation more synchronous, less sequential, and more interactive than ever before.
.
Such innovations help to pack in more options for interaction and thus more interactions, and more actors and more possibilities for further action to co-create many more values per unit of time and space than ever before.[Moi ici: Outro tema caro a este blogue - a importância das interacções]
.
These novel interaction possibilities in turn change what people value and can trust,
...
These possibilities for interacting are now bundled in ever denser packages (“denser” meaning more functions per space and time unit, and thereby also per person or interactor). These possibilities help people and their organisations to co-create value in ways that were unimaginable a few decades ago. [Moi ici: Densificação, um tema que vi referido pela primeira vez num livro de Normann e Ramirez que li em 2008 e reli em 2013)]
...
Value co-created by two or (typically now) more actors, with and for each other, with and for yet other actors, is an invitation not only to rethink organisational structures and managerial arrangements for value creation, but also to rethink value creation itself.
...
thinking of value and values as contingent, always located in a setting — no longer as isolated in things or individual bodies or groups of bodies. Value and values here become dependent on those with whom one connects and in connecting, who co-create value. [Moi ici: Valor é co-criado e não criado por quem produz] They also matter in terms of those this co- creation affects positively as well as negatively.
.
[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue é fundamental] Patterns of interactivity arise or can be designed.[Moi ici: Quando se descobre que as interacções podem ser desenhadas, abre-se um mundo de possibilidades] These patterns connect those we term “actors” as co-creators, and their designed interactions support or may even constitute their roles and identities. In turn, these actors’ roles and identities interact with each other, and in doing so form interconnected patterns; so these roles and identities in turn thus maintain the interactions.
...
[Moi ici: Segue-se o TRUQUE!!!] We consider this configuring of interactions to be the result of a design activity. We use the term VCS for the pattern of interactions intentionally configured by the strategic planning carried out by an organisation.
.
The designed interactions become manifested as (“designed”) offerings: configuring offerings that set the overall design of and integrates a VCS, and supporting offerings between any two actors in such systems.
...
if the key to creating value is to design and co-create offerings that mobilise others (who may have the role in the interaction of customer or supplier or partner or employee or investor, etc.) to co-create value, then the key source of success is to conceive the VCS and make it work. We suggest that this designing of offerings is a key task for strategists and managers engaging in strategy work today."