The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte VIII)

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

"RULE #8: NEVER BE IN THE COMMODITY BUSINESS, EVEN IF YOU SELL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE CONSIDER A COMMODITY.
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A commodity is an undifferentiated product that is easily copied and replicated by others. Commodities are widgets. Generic soap is a commodity; so is the dry cleaner on your way to work and the barber down the block. Commodity businesses are price takers, meaning they get paid whatever the market price happens to be. The only way for them to be truly successful is with volume and an ability to produce more cheaply than anybody else. That’s why commodity businesses tend to be dominated by huge, global corporations that use automation and outsourcing to cut their costs to the bone.
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Passion businesses never sell commodities. By definition, a passion business differentiates itself from others so that it can charge a unique price that represents its unique value.
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Commodification is like gravity, always pulling at everyone, always trying to get each product and service and worker to fall to a common level."

Nem de propósito:

O Pingo Doce tem um anúncio de TV a garantir que apoia a produção nacional com borrego a 3,99.
Todos gostamos de promoções, mas - e este é um tema pré-Covid a que esta crise podia pôr termo - só é possível haver borrego a 3,99 com a miséria dos produtores e/ou produção aditivada pic.twitter.com/3M8XHRzE5A

— João M Fernandes (@jmmfernandes) April 10, 2020

Cuidado com a pedofilia empresarial. O negócio do preço não é para quem quer, é para quem pode. https://t.co/hXdCFTocMs

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) April 12, 2020

Recordar: Pregarás o Evangelho do Valor e sobretuso Privilegiar os inputs sobre os outputs (parte IX) a propósito dos adjectivos em vez dos substantivos.

É empresário e está à espera do plano destas duas senhoras?

Demasiada gente está na posição de esperar.

Abdicam da sua autonomia e esperam que um papá os salve.

Perderam muito do pouco controlo que tinham sobre a sua vida e entregaram-no a outros que estão perdidos, mas não o revelam. Acham que quem não está perdido tem medo da livre circulação de informação?

Como empresário também se sente perdido? Já pensou em retomar a actividade da sua empresa?
Há dias citei:

"Lean thinking starts with acting: solving immediate problems to better understand the deeper issues. It differs radically from the mainstream approach.
...
Lean thinking starts with find, in the real world, by identifying immediate problems right now, moves to face as we grasp which problems are easy to solve and which aren’t, what our deeper challenges are, then to frame these challenges in a way others will understand intuitively both (a) the problem we’re trying to solve and (b) the generic form of the solution we’re looking for, and then form the specific solutions through repeated try-and-see efforts with the people themselves until we, all together, build a new (often unforeseen) way of doing things
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Effectively, the idea is that to learn anything, we first have to change something and then carefully check the results to evaluate the impact.
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"Don’t look with your eyes. Look with your feet. Don’t think with you head. Think with your hands.”

Por isso, recomendo a leitura sobre o papel de um mapa. Até de um mapa errado:

"The moral of the story is that when you are lost, any old map will do. The story demonstrates very clearly that it is what people do when they are uncertain that is important, rather than what they plan. By analogy, strategic plans function a lot like maps in which the crucial factor is not the map (or strategy) but the fact that you have something which will get you started on a path to the future. Once people begin to act (enactment), they generate tangible outcomes (cues) in some context (social) and that helps them discover (retrospect) what is occurring (ongoing), what needs to be explained (plausibility) and what should be done next (identity enhancement)."
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"The plan (or map) will not of itself actually tell them the route to take: the job of the leader in this situation is one of instilling some confidence in people to start them moving in some general direction, and to be sure that they look closely at cues created by their action, so that they learn where they are and where they want to be. When there is uncertainty or, more properly, equivocality in the environment, intelligent choices may be difficult; such situations put a premium on the robustness of the adaptive procedures rather than of the "map", the strategy or the organization."

Qual é o seu mapa? Tem um plano? Está à espera que estas duas lho apresentem?

Pense outra vez!

Quando um avião se despenha na floresta amazónica, longe da civilização, os sobreviventes costumam dividir-se em 3 grupos:

• os que dizem aos outros que têm de ficar todos junto à espera, porque o avião vai levantar voo sozinho, por magia;
• os que dizem aos outros que têm de ficar todos junto à espera, porque certamente alguém há-de aparecer à procura deles para os socorrer;
• e aqueles que resolvem meter os pés ao caminho e ir em busca da salvação.

Confesso que acho interessante ver os dois primeiros grupos a agir no Twitter. Esperam que o papá, que um cavaleiro de armadura ou aquelas duas senhoras da foto os salvem... E quando alguém menciona a terceira hipótese é logo apelidado de energúmeno.

Eu faço parte e convido-o a fazer parte do terceiro grupo:

• perceba o contexto em que está mergulhada a sua empresa;
• estabeleça prioridades para o regresso à actividade (segurança dos trabalhadores primeiro - algo muito concreto, não é BS de ter um plano de segurança, é levar a coisa a sério. Protecção dos clientes em segundo. É claro que os clientes querem qualidade e prazos, mas se virem a sua empresa como um vector de infecção... no way)
• determine os riscos da sua empresa (fornecedores, operações, logística, clientes)
• prepare as infra-estrutras de comunicação e estabeleça canais de comunicação e alinhamento
• mude os postos de trabalho com a colaboração e as ideias de quem neles trabalha (equipamentos de protecção individual, rotinas de limpeza e desinfecção, distanciamento social, horários, medição de temperatura, ...). Se os seus trabalhadores não estiverem seguros conte com absentismo, conflitos, medo, defeitos
• trabalhe com fornecedores, pode ser obrigado a encontrar outros
• trabalhe com a logística pode ter de arranjar novas alternativas
• trabalhe com clientes... será que ainda tem clientes? Será que tem de ir à procura de novos clientes, em novas geografias, com novos modelos de negócio?

Não vai conseguir ter um plano perfeito à partida? Who cares. Já estará a caminho. E fará um plano muito mais adequado à sua realidade do que um qualquer outro com a chancela daquelas duas lá de cima. E como diz um empresário amigo, prepare-se para aprender depressa e aperfeiçoar o plano com o que vai aprendendo.

Desigualdade, heterogeneidade e produtividade

Um artigo interessante sobre o aumento da desigualdade entre assalariados nos Estados Unidos. As conclusões estarão em linha com outros estudos feitos para o Reino Unido, Alemanha, Suécia e Brasil.

"In this article, we study the contribution of firms and the role of worker composition between firms in the rise in earnings inequality in the United States using a longitudinal data set covering workers and firms for the entire U.S. labor market from 1978 to 2013. Our data set has several key advantages for studying firms and inequality: it is the only U.S. data set covering 100% of workers and firms for the entire period of the rise in inequality,...Our first main result is that the rise in the dispersion between firms in firm average annual earnings accounts for the majority of the increase in total earnings inequality.
…First, the rise in earnings inequality between workers over the past three decades is strongly associated with their employers. Two-thirds of the increase in the variance of log earnings from 1981 to 2013 can be accounted for by a rise in the dispersion of average earnings between firms and one-third by a rise in the differences in earnings between workers within firms..Second, examining the sources of the increase in between firm inequality, we find that it has been driven about equally by increased employee sorting (i.e., high-wage workers are increasingly found at high-wage firms) and segregation (i.e., highly paid employees are increasingly clustering in high-wage firms with other high-paid workers, while low-paid employees are clustering in other firms).…Third, the distribution of firm fixed effects themselves accounts for essentially none of the rise in inequality. Instead, about two-thirds of the rise in inequality is accounted for by rising variance in individual fixed effects, potentially due to rising returns to skill.…Fourth, the rise in within-firm inequality is concentrated in large firms with 1,000+ employees (and even more so in mega firms). This is driven by a fall in the earnings premium in large firms for median- and lower-paid employees and by rising earnings for the top 10% of employees."

Nunca esquecer o quanto os políticos, académicos e paineleiros (a minha famosa tríade) desconhecem esta realidade da heterogeneidade crescente entre empresas, mesmo dentro do mesmo sector. Recordar: "A distribuição de produtividades está a aumentar"

"Firming up inequality" de Jae Song, David Price, Fatih Guvenen, Nicholas Bloom e Till von Wachter, publicado por The Quarterly Journal of Economics - Vol. 134 2019 issue 1

Eu tenho muito mais dúvidas do que certezas (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

Ao ler "Universities brace for huge losses as foreign students drop out" pensei: outra vítima silenciosa deste evento pandémico. Tal como o turismo, ou o negócio do desporto de massas, quando a quarentena acabar não voltarão ao que eram.

Ontem, encontrei este texto, "Chapter 1: The problem of ‘freezing’ an economy in a pandemic":

"We put the economy in the freezer under the clear expectation that we will at some stage take it back out again.
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Our argument is straightforward. Governments cannot freeze an economy, thaw it out a few months later and expect it to come back to life. Economies do not hibernate for the winter like a sleepy but otherwise unharmed and intact bear.
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As much as economists might like to think that they have knowledge and experience in kickstarting economies, we are less sanguine.
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This is an economy: a constantly, inevitably evolving, shifting pattern of relationships. We each know our part of it – our consumer desires, our business and employment relationships – but cannot, as Fredrich Hayek most powerfully said, truly know much more than that. We cannot understand all the diverse inputs that make up our cereal and our pencils and our pins, let alone how our local florist relies on its bank (and our florists bank relies on it). Even if we could know that impossibly large amount of information, that knowledge would not remain up to date for long. Ultimately every part of the economy is reliant, in some small and impossible to determine way, on every other part – networked through relationships of sustainable specialisation and trade, creating an complex overlapping pattern of economic activity. And now we are trying to freeze that pattern in place.
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A lot of the current economic policy advice being offered to governments about the cost of shutting down and then restarting the economy is almost entirely focused on the direct economic cost of the freeze as the opportunity cost of the time offline. This is invariably estimated as the quantum of GDP lost, or some factorisation of that such as jobs lost, businesses closed, capital liquidated, or public subsidy required. There is no cost attributed to the restart that is not identical with the stimulus model of replacing missing spending, whether in consumption, investment or net exports. This is mainstream economic thinking and it largely ignores the entrepreneurial costs of economic discovery and adaptation to changed circumstances. It is our view that this is actually the more critical consideration, even if it does not loom as large as a direct money cost measured in terms of spending.
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1. Economic patterns are resistant to freezing. An economy is an extremely complex pattern, and most of that complexity lies in its connective structure. Small changes in inputs or contractual linkages, as disruptions to parts of a complex system, can ramify through an interconnected network causing significant unpredictable changes in outputs. The globalised world brings us remarkable prosperity through specialisation and trade but those patterns, being so highly refined, are easy to break. Modern economies, and especially global supply chains, are therefore more fragile, and less robust, than is often appreciated. It is not possible to fix these patterns in place. But a frozen economy – where entire teams are furloughed with little to do until the crisis passes – will suffer the erosion of connections and relationships brought by time.
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2. Our economic relationships and preferences will change during the freeze. A frozen economy will thaw into a changed world. In the interim period, even as little as three to six months, a significant number of parametric and environmental conditions will have changed. Most obviously, people will come back wanting different things (maybe fewer holidays on cruise ships), having new priorities (increased appreciation for health), possessing new skills (such as cooking, or with new digital competences), revaluing assets (perhaps wanting a larger house, or a bolthole in the country), and perhaps rethinking their jobs or family situation (e.g. divorces are predicted to spike). So the demand side of the economy will be different. But so too will the supply side, as many firms will close down, and many capital goods and assets will be liquidated. And also new business plans will be developed, and old plans abandoned, and all of these intermeshed plans will need to be recoordinated. Also the regulatory and legislative environment will change, and perhaps even the physical environment, owing to the reduced levels of production and natural resource use. And tragically, there will be a shifted demographic profile. A frozen economy will thaw into a changed world, and will need to adapt to that. Because of these changes there will also be new opportunities to discover entrepreneurial opportunities that were not present when the economy was frozen.
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3. Both the freezing and thawing will invariably be uneven. Going into the freezer, there is a presumption that unessential parts will be frozen while essential parts of the economy remain unfrozen. But in most cases those have been political not market decisions about what constitutes essential.
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Furthermore, upon unfreezing some parts will already be dead, whether staying frozen to collect welfare, or because the component factors have reassembled into new forms.
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Taking all of these problems together, an unfrozen economy will emerge in a massively disequilibrium state. There will be disequilibrium trading, where some prices are wrong yet it will be unclear which ones. This will produce chaos across all markets. It will occur in commodity markets, asset markets, financial markets, labour markets. All of them. And at a higher level there will also therefore be disequilibrium entrepreneurship, as entrepreneurs and businesses try to see opportunities and make decisions to enter or exit markets, but all based on disequilibrium prices.
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The unfreezing problem is a rapid adaptation problemWhen we take the economy out of the freezer and thaw it out, it will need to rapidly take on a new form. When the economy is unfrozen and seeks to reanimate, it will need to quickly recover its connections, or make new ones. For this to happen quickly and efficiently, institutional barriers and constraints will need to be as loose and relaxed as possible. It will need to adapt quickly.[Moi ici: Uma desvantagem terrível para a economia portuguesa que nunca deixou de ser salazarista e aspira a ser nacionalizada]  This will require a period of both disequilibrium trading and re-contracting. Entrepreneurs will need to rediscover the patterns of prices, contracts and other relationships to better coordinate resources in the post-COVID-19 world."

E aqui leio e choro pelo meu país, socialista-salazarista até ao tutano, adepto de conferências de imprensa onde em vez de se transmitir informação, faz-se uma feira de vaidades toda cheia de Excelentíssima Senhora Doutora, Excelentísimo Senhor Doutor. Um país onde ter lucro é pecado, um país onde só se pode fazer o que está na lei, o que não está na lei é proibido. Um país sempre à espera de ordens. Um país do "fiquem em casa crianças, nós os adultos, que sabemos o que é o melhor para todos, vamos resolver isto". Um país habituado a ser pedinte internacional sem vergonha, e que quer acreditar que quando o capital se transforma em dívida não é preciso fazer sacrifícios para a pagar:

"If regulations don’t make sense in a crisis, do they make sense afterwards? Today we are presented the opportunity to rebuild the institutions and organisations of our modern economy. If we do this right, through a process of entrepreneurial discovery and bottom-up solutions, then we will emerge with a political-economic system that acts as an engine for prosperity, and one that is more resilient and robust to future shocks. In this book we tackle those questions and fill some of the current void of ideas and thinking about economic and political recovery. We develop a framework and principles for an institutional re-build, presenting a path to recovery based on the ideas of private governance, permissionless innovation and entrepreneurial dynamism." 

Eu tenho muito mais dúvidas do que certezas (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Porque o caldo está a aquecer, porque a quarentena vai-se prolongar, o que vamos encontrar depois da mesma será cada vez mais diferente do que tínhamos no ponto de partida. Daí que a mensagem da parte II:

"for at least the next couple months every organisation in the world is a startup"

Vai-se reforçando na minha mente.

"In a crisis, we likely won’t have immediate answers, and we therefore need to employ good questions. The most natural questions in a crisis tend to be passive, for example, “What will happen to us?” However, the possibility of shaping events to our advantage only arises if we ask active questions, such as “How can we create new options?” [Moi ici: É fundamental adoptar esta postura activa. Não estar à espera que nos digam o que fazer, como carneiros, mas assumirmos o destino, quer quanto ao retomar das operações, quer quanto ao futuro]
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Creativity involves reaching beyond precedents and known alternatives to ask questions that prompt the exploration of fresh ideas and approaches. Some good questions to ask in the Covid-19 crisis might include, for example:

• Which needs or products are taking center stage?

• What customer needs exist for which there is no current solution?

• What are we not doing for our customers?

• If we were starting over now, what company and offering would we build?

• Why are today’s loyal customers still doing business with us?"

Este trecho foi retirado de "We Need Imagination Now More Than Ever".

Recomendo a leitura dos comentários na parte II.

O caldo está a aquecer

• The 1930s Depression Was ‘Great.’ This One Might Be Greater
• Japan to pay firms to leave China, relocate production elsewhere as part of coronavirus stimulus
• A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

"it’s likely that we will see changes in consumer spending and behaviors similar to those that resulted from the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of the late 2000s.
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This point is one that is made every time there is a major recession: The bigger the economic decline, the greater the acceleration of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. This is the cycle where a recession causes declining industries and marginally successful business models to disappear faster than they would have if the national economy had continued to grow.
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The disruptions from coronavirus are on track to continue for months. For many people who have been furloughed or laid off, this will mean not regaining their jobs. Many businesses that have temporarily closed will experience business model failure. The high levels of financial debt in the economy, especially in the business community, will ensure that marginally viable business models will be destroyed even quicker than would have happened otherwise."

• COVID-19: The ultimate stress test for retailers

"For retailers, COVID-19 is an urgent threat, in addition to other already existing impacts forcing retailers to radically restructure their business and operating models to quickly adapt to change. The combination of impacts from several factors — including social, economic, environmental, technological, political, legal and ethical —​ have placed pressure on retailers to transform business models. COVID-19 is now compounding these impacts and exposing already weak spots among all segments and sizes of retailers."

• I’ve read the plans to reopen the economy. They’re scary.

"All of them then imagine a phase two, which relaxes — but does not end — social distancing while implementing testing and surveillance on a mass scale. This is where you must begin imagining the almost unimaginable.
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The CAP and Harvard plans both foresee a digital pandemic surveillance state in which virtually every American downloads an app to their phone that geotracks their movements, so if they come into contact with anyone who later is found to have Covid-19, they can be alerted and a period of social quarantine can begin. Similarly, people would scan QR codes when boarding mass transit or entering other high-risk public areas. And GPS tracking could be used to enforce quarantine on those who test positive with the disease, as is being done in Taiwan.
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To state the obvious: The technological and political obstacles are massive."

• EU Privacy Watchdog Calls for Pan-European Mobile App for Virus Tracking 
• Millennials Are Getting Stung by Back-to-Back Global Crises
• Young Adults, Burdened With Debt, Are Now Facing an Economic Crisis

Sexta-Feira Santa

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte VII)

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

"RULE #7: KNOW WHAT BUSINESS YOU’RE IN, AND IT’S PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU THINK.
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The core thing you are selling is the real value you can bring to a customer who craves your offering.
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The way you deliver it is secondary. Too often people focus on that secondary aspect. They’re in the bakery business, or they are a supermarket supplier. Don’t be locked into the secondary value-capture end of your business. Focus, instead, on the core value you create and be quite experimental and creative about how to capture that value.
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Change your value capture constantly. Change your value creation slowly.
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Value capture is just a tool, and you should use whichever tool is quickest and easiest. Value creation, though, is the core of your business. Treasure it, tend it, change it only quite slowly and deliberately."

Começar pela acção

Mais alguns trechos particularmente úteis para reflexão neste tempo de quarentena (aka tsunami económico):

"Unlike mainstream approaches, Lean thinking accepts that we do not know the shape and form of the solution beforehand. Thinking is about defining what the outcome should look like. Although this kind of thinking is rarely easy, it helps in avoiding the typical frame blindness of solving the wrong problem because you’re fixated on a specific result and/or method.
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The aim of Lean thinking is to grapple with the situation until one can scope out how to make the world a better place by moving forward in an improvement direction. The basic assumption is that the world will never be fully known or understood, and we respect that it retains some of its mystery even as some improvement dimensions become clearer.
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The more that we learn through kaizen at the workplace, the more we see that we don’t know how to do what we need to do. That’s why we need to commit to a learning curve rather than an action plan. This is another radical departure from mainstream thinking in that it’s less about fixing the immediate problem. The question is: how do we create the conditions for learning?Here again, Lean thinking differs fundamentally from the mainstream “get it done” action plan. You can make people execute an order, but you can’t force them to learn.”

Trechos retirados de "The Lean Strategy" de Michael Ballé, Daniel Jones, Jacques Chaize, e Orest Fiume.

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte VI)

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

"RULE #6: TECHNOLOGY SHOULD ALWAYS SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS, NOT DRIVE IT....Do what technology and large industry cannot do—not the same thing, only slower. To succeed in the Passion Economy, one should not condemn large-scale business and technology or dismiss them as inferior. Instead, the successful passion-based business owner recognizes the tremendous power of larger firms and their tools of automation and avoids competing directly. [Moi ici: Algo que escrevo aqui no blogue há milhares de anos. Enquanto os grandes automatizam... Mongo é demasiado complexo para automatização eficientista] If your core customer cannot easily distinguish your products or services from those of a larger competitor, you need to shift and offer something else.
...Technology-driven scale creates the space for businesses built on value and passion. Businesses built on great scale, by necessity, cannot richly engage narrow audiences. [Moi ici: Como não recordar a metáfora do plancton] Sure, they can use computer programs to create personalized recommendations or to let customers design their own style of shoe or shirt. But that is not the same as personally guiding a customer to some option he could never have imagined himself, offering a service, rooted in passion, that satisfies needs the customer doesn’t know he has.
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Technology tends toward bigness, so stay small. A central feature of this economy is that technology-driven innovation scales to unimaginable size. Create Facebook or Twitter or a new cell phone and, soon enough, everyone on earth has access to them. Unless you happen to have billions of dollars and a genius for cutting-edge technological innovation, don’t ever bother going big. There is safety in smallness. If you richly serve a small niche in a way that is hard to scale, no big company will ever think to go through the expense of identifying so small a market and serving your customers’ rather particular needs.”

Acerca do uso dos gráficos de queijo

A propósito desta foto e do uso deste tipo de gráfico:

• Save the Pies for Dessert
• A Pie in the Face for Information Visualization Research
• Why You Shouldn't Use Pie Charts In Your Dashboards And Performance Reports
• Why you shouldn’t use pie charts - Tips for better data visualization

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte V)

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

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

Covid-19 - Direcção e iteração colaborativa

Quando comecei a trabalhar a ISO 14001, nos anos 90 do século passado, fiquei fascinado com a sua diferença face à ISO 9001.

Ao trabalhar com a ISO 9001 facilmente ficávamos prisioneiros da quantidade de procedimentos obrigatórios que tinhamos de criar. Por isso, os resultados no terreno demoravam a aparecer. Primeiro tinhamos de arquitectar e construir o sistema, traduzi-lo em procedimentos e só depois começar a implementação. A implementação, porque o consultor era tótó, ou porque a gestão de topo só estava interessada na bandeira, ou porque a empresa estava sobrecarregada de trabalho, mais parecia um calvário. O objectivo da implementação era chegar a algo que pudesse ser certificado e uma bandeira atribuída. Uma vez obtida a certificação, a empresa dizia-nos adeus, e raramente havia oportunidade mergulhar na melhoria do sistema.

Entretanto, na minha cabeça remoía um artigo de 1992 na HBR - "Successful Change Programs Begin with Results"

Ao trabalhar com a ISO 14001 descobria a possibilidade de desenhar um sistema de gestão virado para atingir resultados. Um sistema de gestão como um portfolio de projectos:

Acabei por publicar um livro onde explicava a metodologia. (BTW, um projecto interessante que nunca foi pago pela editora)

No ano passado descobri mais uma norma ambiental, confesso que não a conhecia, a ISO 14005:2019 - Environmental management systems — Guidelines for a flexible approach to phased implementation.

Esta norma apoia a implementação faseada de sistemas de gestão ambiental. O que é que isto quer dizer? Em vez de começar por montar um sistema de gestão ambiental completo, com todos os ésses e érres, começar por um desafio concreto, um desafio específico. Por exemplo, melhorar a eficiência energética, ou reduzir a produção de resíduos perigosos.

Por que escrevo sobre isto agora? Porque o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras pôs-me a ler este livro, "The Lean Strategy" de Michael Ballé, Daniel Jones, Jacques Chaize, e Orest Fiume.

"Lean thinking starts with acting: solving immediate problems to better understand the deeper issues. It differs radically from the mainstream approach.
...
Lean thinking starts with find, in the real world, by identifying immediate problems right now, moves to face as we grasp which problems are easy to solve and which aren’t, what our deeper challenges are, then to frame these challenges in a way others will understand intuitively both (a) the problem we’re trying to solve and (b) the generic form of the solution we’re looking for, and then form the specific solutions through repeated try-and-see efforts with the people themselves until we, all together, build a new (often unforeseen) way of doing things
...
Effectively, the idea is that to learn anything, we first have to change something and then carefully check the results to evaluate the impact.
...
"Don’t look with your eyes. Look with your feet. Don’t think with you head. Think with your hands.”
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The point is that running experiments and experiencing consequences is an ongoing process. It is more to accelerate the learning cycle—to learn and respond, then grasp with the current situation, then adjust again—than it is to establish large-scale goals and compare our progress to them on an occasional basis rather than as a constant state. Companies must use meaningful metrics to understand meaningful actions."

Entretanto, ontem ao folher um livro, "Managing Crises: Responses to Large-Scale Emergencies" de Arnold Howitt e Herman B. Leonard. Encontrei estes trechos:

"[Moi ici: As emergências podem ser de dois tipos, as de rotina e as de crise. As de rotina são aquelas para as quais as organizações se preparam e testam. São aquelas para as quais existem planos de resposta. Já a pandemia em curso é uma emergência de crise... não há plano, não houve preparação prévia] This is not a routine emergency. There are no scripts or templates—guides, check-lists, and norms that dictate the set of things that need to be done, their order, the way they are organized, and so on. An authority-driven command and control hierarchy is a good organizational form for producing the efficient execution of known and practiced routine actions.
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This is a Crisis Emergency. This emergency has significant elements of novelty that organizations were not prepared for. The presence of significant novelty as the defining feature of crisis emergencies creates an array of distinctive challenges, requiring significantly different approaches, techniques, and processes by those engaged in them. Novelty comes in many forms and from many different sources.
...
During a crisis, leaders must relinquish the belief that a top-down response will engender stability. In routine emergencies, the typical company can rely on its command-and-control structure to manage operations well by carrying out a scripted response. But in crises characterized by uncertainty, leaders face problems that are unfamiliar and poorly understood. A small group of executives at an organization’s highest level cannot collect information or make decisions quickly enough to respond effectively. Leaders can better mobilize their organizations by setting clear priorities for the response and empowering others to discover and implement solutions that serve those priorities. To promote rapid problem solving and execution under high-stress, chaotic conditions, leaders can organize a network of teams." 

E ao chegar aqui ... recuo ao Natal de 2007 e a Boyd e à blitzkrieg (parte I e parte II):

"Give lower-level commanders wide freedom, within an overall mind-time-space scheme, to shape/direct their own activities so that they can exploit faster tempo/rhythm at tactical levels yet be in harmony with the larger pattern/slower rhythm associated with the more general aim and larger effort at the strategic level."

Como diz o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras: uma pena as empresas não estarem a aproveitar esta crise para encontrarem uma plataforma de comunicação real com os seus trabalhadores... sim, o primeiro ciclo de Senge:

Eu tenho muito mais dúvidas do que certezas (parte II)

Parte I.

for at least the next couple months every organisation in the world is a startup

1/n

— Richard D. Bartlett (@RichDecibels) April 6, 2020

Não podia estar mais de acordo com este tweet, particularmente para as empresas que fecharam durante o período de quarentena.

Vivemos aqueles minutos em que a água da praia recua, expondo áreas e profundidades sempre submersas. Depois virá o tsunami económico.

Por cá, com um hipocondríaco na presidência, o regresso ao trabalho que ainda existirá, será atrasado o mais possível, prolongando e aprofundando o caos económico.

Há dias citei:

"El coronavirus actúa como acelerador de cambios que ya estaban en marcha..."

Em Fevereiro e Março passados, ao reflectir sobre o futuro do calçado em Portugal escrevi uma série de nove postais intitulados - Quantas empresas?

No nono postal escrevi:

"As empresas de calçado devem manter e tirar o máximo partido da actividade que conseguem ter através do modelo de negócio actual. Paralelamente, devem criar uma empresa, ainda que virtual, dedicada a desenvolver o negócio do futuro. E para desenvolver o negócio do futuro essa empresa tem de se comportar como uma startup: sem clientes, sem negócios, apenas com hipóteses de produtos e de clientes."

Muito provavelmente, para muitas empresas, isto já não será apenas uma opção, terá de ser a realidade.

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

"RULE #4: FEWER PASSIONATE CUSTOMERS ARE BETTER THAN A LOT OF INDIFFERENT ONES.
...
Value pricing requires selling to the right people. Saying good-bye is the hardest part. When switching to the Passion Economy approach, it is counterintuitive, yet essential, to stop working with many of your existing customers. If you haven’t applied the rules of the Passion Economy before, it is highly unlikely that most of your customers truly recognize your full value and are paying you the appropriate amount for it.
...
Don’t say good-bye too quickly. You can never have too narrow a niche, but you can rush to your niche too quickly. ... It will take time to find enough members of that group and persuade them that you and only you are right for the job. It can be tempting to wake up one day, realize that your customers aren’t the right fit, and tell them all to go away. But unless you have amassed a sizable war chest of excess cash, it is best to transition slowly and deliberately.
...
Some firms create a new name and, for a while, essentially operate as two companies—a legacy firm for existing customers and a new one that works only with the targeted niche.
...
The best customers, eventually, are the ones who seek you out. When you have identified the proper niche and served clients in that niche well, you will eventually develop a reputation among your target customer base such that new clients reach out to you before you need to pursue them. The narrower your niche, the more likely you are to receive inbound interest rather than having to pursue an aggressive sales strategy.”

Eu tenho muito mais dúvidas do que certezas

Não consigo ter essa clarividência sobre o nosso futuro, não entendo porque diz que tanta coisa irá mudar. Houve uma interrupção de fornecimentos, serão retomados, mais tarde ou mais cedo. Ponto. Temos que falar sobre isso.

— Pedro!Alves! (@PedroAl76208940) April 5, 2020

Foi muito mais do que uma interrupção de fornecimentos. E o "mais tarde ou mais cedo" é fundamental.

• Quanto capital foi destruído?
• Como se comportará a procura dos consumidores? Desemprego vai durar quanto tempo nos mercados dos clientes? Como se comportarão face ao e-commerce? O seu padrão de consumo não sofrerá alterações?
• Como chegar aos clientes? Viagens ao estrangeiro e feiras vão ser muito restritas? 
• Quantos clientes vão fechar? Quantos clientes vão encomendar quantidades mais pequenas a preços mais baixos?
• Que percentagem de lojas vai reabrir? Quanto tempo demorarão os consumidores ao voltar aos espaços fechados dos centros comerciais?
• Quantos fornecedores e subcontratados voltarão a abrir portas? 
• Como será o regresso ao "novo normal"? Quarentena levantada? Quarentena aliviada? Escolas abrem? Quem fica com os pequenos para que os pais possam ir trabalhar? E as pessoas com imunidade reduzida, pela idade ou historial clínico, poderão regressar ao trabalho? Que garantias darão as empresas aos trabalhadores de que a sua segurança será prioritária?
• Que carga austeritária cairá sobre as empresas e consumidores nos países de produção e de consumo?

Eu tenho muito mais dúvidas do que certezas.

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Ainda do capítulo 2 “The Rules of the Passion Economy", retirado de "The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century".

"RULE #3: THE PRICE YOU CHARGE SHOULD MATCH THE VALUE YOU PROVIDE
...
Price should drive costs, not the other way around. [Moi ici: Recordo este postal sobre o vocabulário do valor] It took me a long time to understand the significance. We are wired to think that price is connected to cost.
...
Value is a conversation. [Moi ici: Recordo este postal sobre a interacção e o valor da fricção positiva. Recordo o postal de ontem]
...
You shouldn’t charge market prices. Market prices are based on the idea that whatever it is you are selling is a commodity that is no better and no worse than what everyone else is selling. Your products and, especially, your services should be unique—so special to your customers that there is no obvious reference point.
...
You should spend time with your clients, pointing out how you are saving them money in other ways, helping them make more money, or making their lives considerably more enjoyable. The price you charge should be the opposite of a fixed amount on a price tag. It should come from frequent discussions with your client.
.
Passion pricing is a service. The very process of discussing pricing can often be a central part of the service you are providing. When talking with a client about how much value your product or service delivers—how much more money the client makes, how much cost they eliminate—you are helping that client better understand her own business and needs. [Moi ici: Recordo este postal sobre o Total Value Ownership e este sobre o Cost of Ownership]
...
Pricing low is not a strategy. One of the most common errors people make is finding out what the competition is charging and then pricing their own goods or services a bit lower. This is not a strategy; it is the abdication of strategy to the competition. It avoids asking the crucial Passion Economy question: What is the value I am creating that is beyond that of similar businesses or services, and who am I creating it for?"

"weeks where decades happen"

Um pequeno extracto da longa lista que descreve o corte epistemológico que separa o Mundo 1.0 do Mundo 2.0:

Lista mais completa em "World 2.0 — “There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen”".

Gosto particularmente destes:

• "Assume zero government competence" e pensar mas mentes que pensam assim: 
  
• Institutions are Ghost ships
• Trust people

Beyond product versus service

A few days ago I was asked if ISO had definitions for what a product is and what a service is.
I researched ISO 9000: 2015 and found:

• Product - output of an organization that can be produced without any transaction taking place between the organization and the customer
• Service - output of an organization with at least one activity necessarily performed between the organization and the customer

It is at these times that you can see how slow a giant organization that works on the basis of consensus is.

ISO 9001 was created in the 1980s when everyone believed there was only one way to compete, based on price, based on efficiency, betting on perfect competition. I remember this feeling of discomfort with a message that does not suit small and medium-sized companies in a small country open to the international market. In March 2008 I wrote "The danger of crystallization" to express this decoupling between the ISO quality movement and the real world.

Who, like me, was trained in the 1980s and saw Japanese industrial superiority, was educated to choose variability as the great enemy. That is why my company started to be called Redsigma (reduce sigma, reduce standard deviation, reduce variability). However, somewhere along the way, I had my moment on the Road to Damascus and realized that the biggest concern should not be with variability, but with increasing variety. Only through variety can the suckiness of sameness be beat.

In 2011 I read Dave Gray and kept his phrase "Everything is Service!" and also "In the same way, a product can be considered as a physical manifestation of a service or set of services: a service avatar."

Those who are still competing with the mental frame of the 1980s seek to automate everything, seek to standardize everything, seek to increase efficiency at all costs, seek to reduce variability. Therefore, they bet on products that can be produced without interaction with the customer. For them, interacting with customers is a friction to be removed.

Those who believe that there is an alternative to pure and hard competition based on efficiency, value variety, value interaction with customers that promote personalization, create tailor made products, bet on co-development, bet on co-production, value co-creation.

So, what is the point of those definitions above? I see big machines being developed and delivered as a service to a specific customers.

Curiosidade do dia

Tanta falta de noção...

Como é que os salários portugueses podem ser suportados a produzir o que se importava da China?

Enfim... é esta gente que toma decisões que afectam a criação de riqueza em Portugal.

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte II)

Parte I.

Ainda do capítulo 2 “The Rules of the Passion Economy", retirado de "The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century".

A segunda regra parece tirada de tantos postais escritos neste blogue desde 2006: 

"RULE #2: ONLY CREATE VALUE THAT CAN’T BE EASILY COPIED.
...
you should be careful not to produce value — create a thing that people want—at scale. [Moi ici: Recordar os "sábios" da Junqueira. BTW, da próxima vez que ouvirem Vítor Bento na TV lembrem-se do que ele disse e da suckiness dos gigantes] Creating value at a large volume is something only huge companies can do profitably. ... Your value should be created slowly and carefully. Absorbing the significance of this point can be hard. Only focusing your attention on those things that reach a relatively small and strongly opinionated customer base, things that are hard to do, will be worth your while. [Moi ici: Recordar as tribos assimétricas de Taleb]
...
in the current economy, you want to do the opposite of what in the past has usually been considered good business sense. The moment one of your products or services takes off and becomes widely copied, you should begin abandoning it and looking for the next thing.
The more stuff you make or the more clients you take on, the harder it is to maintain excellence and to adapt your products and services in a way that both you and your customers want. Leave scale for the mass market. The Passion Economy is about quality and the conversation you have with your clients." [Moi ici: Recordar a co-criação] 

E o day-after? (parte III)

 Parte I e parte II.

"Many countries are now discovering how dependent they are on supplies from China.
...
This will add another layer of uncertainty over trade policies.
.
Businesses will be forced to rethink their global value chains. These chains were shaped to maximise efficiency and profits. And while just-in-time manufacturing may be the optimal way of producing a highly complex item such as a car, the disadvantages of a system that requires all of its elements to work like clockwork have now been exposed.
...
Resilience will become the new buzzword. Firms will think harder about diversifying their supplier base to hedge against disruptions to a particular producer, geographic region or changes in trade policy. This means building in redundancy and perhaps even moving away from the practice of holding near-zero inventories. Costs will certainly rise but, in the post-Covid world, concerns about supply chain fragility will come right after those over cost. Firms will be expected to assess resilience of their second and third-tier suppliers, too.
...
Coronavirus will not end globalisation, but it will change it. Companies will have to adapt to succeed. That’s what viruses force us to do, including economically."

Trechos retirados de "Coronavirus will change the way the world does business for good"

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte I)

Terminei a leitura sem descanso de "The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century" de Adam Davidson. O tema da paixão é recorrente aqui no blogue:

• Passion is everything (Agosto de 2010)
• Estratégia, locus de controlo, experiência, paixão (Novembro de 2010)
• Paixão e relações amorosas (Fevereiro de 2011)
• Acerca da paixão nas PME (Março de 2015)
• Na sua empresa também há um problema de falta de paixão? (Janeiro de 2016)
• Acerca da paixão (Dezembro de 2016)
• "Passion doesn’t precede mastery, but follows it" (Julho de 2019)

Regresso agora ao capítulo 2 “The Rules of the Passion Economy":

 

"RULE #1: PURSUE INTIMACY AT SCALE.
...
Identify the set of things that you love to do and that you do well. You don’t need to be the best in the world at something. People often succeed because they have a set of various skills that don’t normally go together.
...
Match your passion to the people who most want it. When you have identified that specific passion and set of skills you can offer, you can easily find the people who most want it. They are already self-identified in groups.
...
once you put your passions and abilities together with the right kind of customers, you’ll be amazed by how easy it can be to carve out a profitable niche in this economy.
Once you have those customers (or colleagues), the next step is to listen very closely to their feedback—as well as feedback from those who choose not to be your customers. We no longer live in a “one size fits all” economy. It’s imperative that you constantly hone your products and your skills in response to your customers’ needs.
Listening and matching are both closely related and also sometimes at odds. If you find yourself listening to customers who aren’t right for you and trying desperately to adjust your offering to fit their needs, you are wasting your time and skills. Instead, you should seek other customers, those who are far better matches and whose feedback will help move your business forward or strengthen it."

E o day-after? (parte II)

Parte I.

Números dos Estados Unidos:

"The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits likely shot to a record high for a second week in a row as more jurisdictions enforced stay-at-home measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic, which economists say has pushed the economy into recession.
...
More than 80% of Americans are under some form of lockdown, up from less than 50% a couple of weeks ago, leaving state employment offices overwhelmed by an avalanche of applications.
...
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits probably raced to a seasonally adjusted 3.50 million for the week ended March 28, according to a Reuters survey of economists. Estimates in the survey were as high as 5.25 million.
.
Claims data for the week ended March 21 is likely to be revised higher as many state employment offices reported challenges processing applications."

Outra fonte:

"The torrent of Americans filing for unemployment insurance continued last week as more than 6.6 million new claims were filed, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That brings to 10 million the total Americans who filed over the past two weeks." 

Números de Espanha:

"Ya tenemos los datos oficiales, y a finales de marzo, tras desatarse la crisis, el paro ha subido en 302.265 personas, y, lo que es más preocupante aún, la Seguridad Social cuenta con 846.000 afiliados, perdidos casi todos en la segunda mitad del mes. Solo en un día, el 16 de marzo, se perdieron 178.000 afiliaciones. El segundo peor día fue el 31, con 120.000 afiliados menos."

Para reflexão

"El coronavirus actúa como acelerador de cambios que ya estaban en marcha...
los riesgos sociales, políticos, económicos e industriales tienden cada vez más a escapar de las instituciones de control y protección de la sociedad industrial.
...
Igual que algunas guerras fueron un acelerador del progreso tecnológico e industrial de países como Estados Unidos, Reino Unido o Alemania, por no hablar de su efecto en antiguas civilizaciones, el crack del Covid-19 puede acelerar transformaciones que ya estaban en marcha."

Desglobalização ou reshoring, teletrabalho e e-commerce são algumas das tendências que já estavam em curso.

Trechos retirados de "Cisnes negros, rinocerontes grises y otros animales de la jungla: las incógnitas de la moda después del coronavirus"

E o day-after? (parte I)

Até que ponto o que se passa na Ásia agora pode ajudar-nos a prever o que nos espera no final da quarentena?

• Muitas PMEs portuguesas viram as suas encomendas canceladas - exemplo. Quantas não conseguirão reabrir as portas com mais dívida às costas?
• Quantas marcas que colocavam as suas encomendas em Portugal continuarão vivas depois deste evento? - exemplo.
• E os consumidores, como vão estar depois deste evento? Muitos estarão desempregados e endividados. - exemplo. (BTW, momento de ironia e sei lá que mais).
• Todos os países europeus acordarão, depois deste evento, mais pobres e endividados e os governos terão de aplicar austeridade.

Outras leituras:

• Understanding the Economic Shock of Coronavirus
• COVID-19 Consumer Sentiment Snapshot #3: Turning the Tide
• Virus impact on fashion and luxury to be ‘worse than recession’ 

"Revenues are expected to plunge between 25% and 35% this year as a direct result of store closures owing to coronavirus lockdowns, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
.
The impact on fashion and luxury — a category that includes apparel and accessories, watches and jewellery, and perfumes and cosmetics — is expected be more severe this year than the recession a decade ago, with total sales dropping between $450 billion to $650 billion from 2019 levels.
.
The outlook is far bleaker than the firm suggested in late February, when it estimated sales for the year would decline by about 15%. That was before the virus took hold in Europe and the US and was declared a pandemic. “This is worse than 2008,” "

• Fashion and luxury face $600 billion decline in sales

"According to the report, industry sales have declined up to 85 per cent in China in the space of two months, during the country’s lockdown period. In countries like Italy, France and Spain, the decline has reached 95 per cent. This drastic drop represents an existential danger for fashion companies, which are traditionally poor in cash, are often dependent on private equity and can have high debt levels. “Many companies in the industry will default in the next 12 weeks,” says Seara. He advises companies to prioritise employees and cash flow now, before starting to plan for a post-outbreak recovery, which, in any case, is a long way away."

• How coronavirus will change fashion’s supply chains 

"Coronavirus likely to spur reshoring in fashion
...
Analysts say the impact to fashion and luxury will be worse than the recession a decade ago, and has already resulted in millions of employee furloughs and lay-offs, early spring discounting from brands and department stores, and cancelled autumn/winter orders that have sent shockwaves throughout fashion’s supply chain. According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, $2.87bn in orders have already been cancelled or suspended, affecting 2.1m workers.
...
Executives and designers say they have already begun to re-evaluate their supply chains in light of the pandemic. Movements to revive local manufacturing have been under way in countries such as the US, which as of 2015 imports 97 per cent of its clothes
...
In 2018, one-third of US chief purchasing officers surveyed in a McKinsey report said they expected to increase reshoring."

"nature evolves away from constraints, not toward goals"

Ao trocar uma série de mensagens com o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras veio-me à cabeça uma frase que guardo ali em baixo na coluna das citações:

"nature evolves away from constraints, not toward goals"

Cada vez ouvimos mais relatos de empresas que estão a mudar, ou já adoptaram novos modelos de negócio alternativos. Não por causa de planeamento estratégico, mas por pura necessidade básica. Se tenho um contrangimento à esquerda, sigo pela direita.

E se isto demorar?

If you only see one solution to a problem, you don't understand the problem. — @johnmaeda pic.twitter.com/JHp4bIzamx

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) March 31, 2020

Dedicado a todos aqueles que acham que a única solução é manter os portugueses que actuam na economia privada fechados como cordeiros durante mais três meses.

Não pedi autorização ao autor, mas faço minhas as suas palavras neste texto publicado no Facebook:

"Do que precisamos para voltar ao "normal"?
2ª Sugestão: Aproveitar o Potencial das Pessoas, que é o maior desperdício da actualidade

Para voltarmos ao "normal", seja este o que formato que tiver, vamos ter que contar com todo o potencial humano que neste momento é desperdiçado.
Precisamos de desenvolver novas competências adaptadas aos novos tempos.

Qual o plano que nos é proposto?
1- Esperar em casa no, necessário, isolamento social.
2- Esperar pelo surgimento do, necessário, milagre tecnológico, sobre a forma de vacinas ou remédios, tarefa que cabe, à ciência e à classe dos cientistas.
3- Esperar que alguém resolva este assunto e o que nós, a comunidade, temos a fazer é ficar em casa, na certeza que temos alguém a tratar do assunto.

Neste modelo de participação os cidadãos são incentivados a esperar o desenrolar dos acontecimentos, como espectadores a assistir a um "jogo da pandemia".
A maioria de nós tem a esperança, e bem, que isto vai passar rápido.
E se isto demorar?
Neste caso, este modelo da participação baseado "em esperar por algo", que não apela ao envolvimento directo dos cidadãos nas soluções, só pode ser implementado numa lógica de vigilância policiada ou de cercos sanitários radicais.

Este modelo radical, no final originará danos irreparáveis para a nossa vida em sociedade e apenas funciona em "shutdowns" consecutivos como resposta a potencias epidemias.

Este modelo não é compatível com uma vida sustentável em sociedade a médio prazo.
Ou, mudamos para um modelo de participação activa dos cidadãos que aposte na "tecnologia humana" nutrida pelo potencial humano, que permita o desenvolvimento de uma vida sustentável em sociedade.

Precisamos de competências treinadas em comunidade orientadas para a resolução colaborativa e de auto-responsabilização esclarecida de problemas complexos que nos dizem directamente respeito.
As mesmas competências colaborativas serão as mesmas que iremos precisar para resolver outros desafios futuros, que irão surgir de seguida como prioritários, como seja a sempre adiada protecção ao meio ambiente.
Nunca como agora, foi tão necessária uma verdadeira participação de todos."

Aproveitar o "reset" para reflectir sobre o futuro

Este período de quarentena vai acabar por encostar as PMEs às cordas, muitas acabarão por não abrir.

No entanto, algumas conseguirão reabrir. Depois, o desespero de quem não sabe fazer mais nada e não está disposto a viver da caridade há-de levar alguns a tentar a sua sorte e a abrir novas empresas.

Talvez este momento de quase “reset” económico possa ser usado pelos empresários actuais e futuros para reflectir sobre as vulnerabilidades das PMEs:

Acerca da concorrência – muitas PMEs limitam-se a existir, não fazendo qualquer esforço de diferenciação. Assim, operam em mercados sobrelotados em que estão condenadas a competir pelo preço. Os empresários deviam pensar não no que fazem, mas no que os clientes procuram e valorizam. Ao desviarem a atenção para os clientes, deviam reconhecer que os clientes não são todos iguais e que diferentes tipo de clientes procuram e valorizam coisas diferentes. Ao desviarem a atenção para os clientes, deviam reconhecer que os clientes não compram o que uma PME produz, mas aquilo pode ser atingido por eles ao processar o que uma PME produz. Dessa forma, fujam da competição pelo preço, fujam do tudo a monte e fé em Deus, fujam de clientes que só valorizam o preço, procurem algo que possa servir de vantagem competitiva, procurem algo que ajude a empresa a diferenciar-se.

Acerca das margens – Actuar em mercados sobrelotados, actuar sem fazer uso de uma vantagem competitiva, leva a produtos e serviços vendidos pelo preço mais baixo, o que não permite margens de lucro suficientes para remunerar o negócio. Margens baixas acabam por colocar as empresas a correrem sempre atrás do prejuízo. Margens baixas acabam por colocar as empresas a pagarem as contas da encomenda anterior com o dinheiro recebido na encomenda seguinte, numa espécie de esquema Ponzi.

Acerca da dimensão do mercado – As PMEs que focam a sua atenção num segmento de clientes-alvo não podem partir do princípio que o seu mercado tenha de continuar a ser local. Por isso, devem alargar o seu campo de actuação e tirar partido da internet para eliminar a barreira geográfica. Não tenha pressa em crescer a facturação, sejam sim impacientes com o lucro de as margens.

Apparatchiks em todo o lado

A ISO 9001:2015 convida as organizações a determinarem os riscos e oportunidades e a actuarem com base nos mais relevantes. Por isso, o meu amigo @Peliteiro, experiente auditor ISO 9001 na área da saúde e, nos dias de hoje, verdadeiro combatente na primeira linha, lançou-me a questão:

Boa pergunta! No entanto, o que já aprendi é que melhor do que prever, é a velocidade de resposta, é a velocidade de aprendizagem das organizações perante o evento em si

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) March 28, 2020

Acerca da velocidade de aprendizagem e resposta deixem-me contar esta história:
Conheço empresário que depois de ver o estado em que um seu trabalhador ficou depois da feira de calçado em Milão, contactou a Protecção Civil da sua cidade a pedir para serem tomadas medidas. Começou por um contacto telefónico no dia 25 de Fevereiro. Responderam-lhe que tivesse juízo, que era um alarmista.

No dia 26 de Fevereiro enviou comunicação formal para Protecção Civil da sua cidade. Protecção Civil que reuniu a 6 de Março para concluir que não havia problema.

Entretanto, acabo de ler na primeira página do NYT de hoje:

"The alarm system was ready. Scarred by the SARS epidemic that erupted in 2002, China had created an infectious disease reporting system that officials said was world-class: fast, thorough and, just as important, immune from meddling.
.
Hospitals could input patients’ details into a computer and instantly notify government health authorities in Beijing, where officers are trained to spot and smother contagious outbreaks before they spread.
.
It didn’t work.
.
After doctors in Wuhan began treating clusters of patients stricken with a mysterious pneumonia in December, the reporting was supposed to have been automatic. Instead, hospitals deferred to local health officials who, over a political aversion to sharing bad news, withheld information about cases from the national reporting system — keeping Beijing in the dark and delaying the response.
.
The central health authorities first learned about the outbreak not from the reporting system but after unknown whistle-blowers leaked two internal documents online.
.
Even after Beijing got involved, local officials set narrow criteria for confirming cases, leaving out information that could have provided clues that the virus was spreading among humans. Hospitals were ordered to count only patients with a known connection to the source of the outbreak, the seafood market. Doctors also had to have their cases confirmed by bureaucrats before they were reported to higher-ups.

Trecho retirado de "China Had a Fail-Safe Way to Track Contagions. Officials Failed to Use It."