Think “outcome before output”

The first time I used the expression on my blog:

Think “input before output”

It was in October 2017 in "it took a holistic approach towards how to play". Since then I have used it here dozens and dozens of times, for example in:

• Privileging inputs over outputs (partt XII) (a serie of 12 blogposts in Portuguese)
• Focus from output to input (in Portuguese)

This week I started to think that the expression is not the best for what I intend to convey. In this blogpost, "Beyond product versus service", I put these two definitions of ISO 9000: 2015:

• 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

When an organization focuses on its output, it thinks about product. You do not need interactions:

At the limit, the organization vomits as much as possible, wants to increase the pace at which produces in order to lower unit costs and be more competitive.

What do I mean by focusing on input?

Assume that what is the output of the organization is actually the customer's input. Something that the client will use to process in his life, in his own way.

However, now I realize that there is another word and another position for what I want to communicate ...

Think “outcome before output”

When thinking about the client's outcome there must be interaction with the client. Customers are all different and look for and value different things. Only by interacting with them is it possible to understand what each one values. Outcome is not a physical result, it is not a noun. Outcome is not the bottle and the wine that you drank, the outcome is the party is the good mood between friends.

Of course, if we are in a B2B relationship, our client, in addition to his outcome, will also have his output:

And if it is a B2B relationship, the organization should also consider their client's client and their outcomes:

And here we start to get into another classic theme of my blog: ecosystems. In an ecosystem, the objective is no longer to maximize value for the customer, but to maximize value for the ecosystem. Therefore, we can reach an ecosystem in which the customer is a prisoner of the relationship that the organization has developed with the customer's customer:

And I return to a blogpost from March 2007 (in Portuguese)

Correcção, correctiva e preventiva

Quem trabalha na área da qualidade usa ou já usou termos como:

• correcção;
• acção correctiva; e
• acção preventiva

Ao continuar a minha leitura de “The Lean Strategy” de Michael Ballé, Daniel Jones, Jacques Chaize, e Orest Fiume, encontro:

"The Lean approach is a type of action learning. The basic premise is that learning is the result of (1) instruction in existing knowledge and (2) questioning to trigger personal insights. Both instruction and inquiry occur through problem solving with three broad types of problems:

1. We know what we should do, but something happens to stop that, so problem solving is correcting the situation by getting back to how we already know it should work. [Moi ici: Correcção - eliminar a não-conformidade, eliminar o sintoma]
2. We don’t know what we should do, or we have found out that what we know is not appropriate, so we have to figure out what we should do and then bring the situation in line. [Moi ici: Acção correctiva - eliminar a causa da não-conformidade. Mudar a forma de trabalhar]
3. We know what we should do, and actually, we are doing it, but we can think of a way to do it better (add more value, generate less waste), and we’ll try different ways to make it so. [Moi ici: Acção preventiva - melhorar o desempenho do sistema]"

"We will be different. We’ll make different product choices … Our hard wiring changes."

É claro que os Estados Unidos não são a Europa e não são Portugal. É claro que isto é chinês para quem tem direitos adquiridos. No entanto, para os outros, para os saxões que trabalham para saxões talvez faça sentido ter em conta isto:

"LONG-TERM “SCARS” FOR CONSUMERS.
For the moment that’s unknowable. But we can say with some confidence how this already traumatic experience will change the behavior of shaken consumers. In the near term, those who have income will save more of it if they possibly can. The dominant feeling of consumers in an economic meltdown is loss of control, and having money put away, even just a little, gives them a feeling of more control. Of the money they spend, they’ll spend more of it on necessities, again because they feel more control when their necessities are on hand.
...
“wrestling with necessities vs. discretionary products will play a huge role” in how retailers adjust through the pandemic. In the longer term, the pandemic experience will change consumers for decades. “We will be different,”
...
“We’ll make different product choices, consumption choices, human capital choices.” This is beyond economics; it’s neuroscience. A crisis experience is deeply emotional, and “stronger emotions get anchored more strongly in our memories,” she says. “Our hard wiring changes.”
.
We will buy differently. “Macroeconomic crises appear to leave long-term ‘scars’ on consumer behavior
...
They found, for example, that regardless of income, households that experience high unemployment personally or in the macroeconomy consume less, including less food, than other households. They use significantly more coupons when they shop and buy more sale items and products of lower quality, again regardless of their income. Such households also save more. Those effects fade over time but are still measurable years later.
...
households’ financial risk-taking is strongly related to how well or poorly markets have performed during their lives, and again, the effects are long-lasting. “Even returns experienced decades earlier still have some impact,” they report.
...
If past trends from serious recessions hold true, the pandemic might alter the economy’s structure, diminishing the earning power of the labor force—potentially for years."

Trechos retirados de "Has the Coronavirus Crisis Changed Business? You Bet It Has" publicado na revista Fortune de Maio de 2020

Assegurar a competência no desempenho de uma função (parte II)

Em Dezembro de 2006 publiquei "Assegurar a competência no desempenho de uma função". 

Já lá vão quase 14 anos...

O postal começa com uma pergunta: 

"O que faz um operador de laboratório?"

A resposta começa com um exemplo incompleto:

Porque me lembrei disto?
Ontem, ao fazer uma caminhada matinal de 8 km, para uma sessão de shinrin-yoku, às 7h11 já com 3 km estava aqui:

Shinrin-yoku pic.twitter.com/uO08fBMuwD

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) April 19, 2020

Continuei a minha leitura de “The Lean Strategy” de Michael Ballé, Daniel Jones, Jacques Chaize, e Orest Fiume.

"Managers are expected to check and develop each person’s understanding of the following:
.
1. Right and wrong from the customers’ point of view: What makes work meaningful is helping customers achieve what they want with our product or service. Therefore, the first step in knowing the job well is to clearly understand what the final customer considers to be a good or bad job and how this translates for one’s own immediate customer, the next person in the value chain.[Moi ici: Antes de "o quê", perceber e interiorizar o "porquê". Muito bom!!!]
.
2. Seamless progression through a sequence of tasks: If you want to cook pasta with confidence, you have to know to first boil the water before putting the spaghetti in rather than dumping the pasta in water and then heating it—and you need to know this without having to ask the chef. Autonomy also means knowing what to do next once the pasta is cooked: should we add tomato sauce or basil and oil? Should Parmesan be added on the dish or brought separately to the table? Mastering work means understanding the breakdown of any task into separate work elements and knowing the right sequence." [Moi ici: OK, de certa forma esta é a resposta ao "O que faz?" e o que precisa de saber para o fazer]

Ou, de uma outra perspectiva:

"3. Knowing OK from not OK for each job element: The next part of being autonomous in any job is knowing the OK/not-OK judgment criteria for every task. This applies not only to making products but also to any creative work. For instance, with writing, one can ask: How compelling is the argument line? How clear is each paragraph? How simple is each sentence? Criteria should be shared without having to go and refer to a manager or inspector at every step. How long should you let the pasta cook? Cooking time won’t be the same for linguine and spaghetti. And does the customer prefer al dente or softer? [Moi ici: Isto é mais do que saber distinguir resultado OK de resultado NOK, é também saber quais as boas e más práticas em cada tarefa de um ensaio ou condições de um equipamento]

4. Understanding good or poor conditions of their work environment: Does everyone have all the information they need to do a good job? Are the tools working properly? Is the work environment uncluttered and functional? [Moi ici: Aqui recordo os meus tempos de estudar reologia no meu primeiro trabalho e o impacte da temperatura e humidade nos resultados] Is the work method clear? What are the good and bad safety habits at this station? And so on. Close work with employees in the work environment feeds into discussions on how to improve manufacturing engineering or software design to make work easier, and then on how to put together the product or service so that it is easier to get right the first time. Teaching employees to take control and ownership of their environment is also a mainstay of motivation and job satisfaction—as long as management helps them to do so.
.
5. Being confident in addressing problems: Problems will always arise. That’s a fact of life. Being autonomous means being able to face problems serenely and attack them with confidence where others would freeze, put the problem aside, or try to work around it rather than face it. The first step in addressing a problem is to correct its impact immediately if at all possible—which often requires skill. Then, the next step is to check the necessary conditions for each work element to spot where the problem originated. This, again, requires knowledge as the person needs to know what the proper conditions should be in terms of information, training, quality of the materials, and so on. The basics of problem solving are observing, assessing which conditions are out of joint and how to bring them back to where they should be, . . . and then ask oneself why they went awry. And then why? And why?"

Ou seja:

"Quality issues start by asking the following:
1. Is there a standard at all?
2. Is the standard clear and well understood?
3. Are some aspects of the standard difficult to achieve (for instance, a standard for right-handers might be awkward for lefties)?
4. Is the standard just plain wrong in some situations?
5. Are there ideas to improve the standard?"

Acerca do novo normal

Alguns temas a ter em consideração no novo normal:

"1. Companies that traffic in digital services and e-commerce will make immediate and lasting gains
...
2. Remote work will become the default...
Remote work technology will improve, enabling the sort of mingling previously thought to require in-person meetings. This will cause a severe downturn for commercial real estate as companies drastically cut the size of their workspaces.
Coupled with stricter travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines for foreigners entering certain countries, this will also put severe strain on industries reliant on business travel. It will also lead to an exodus of white-collar workers from big cities [Moi ici: Tenho algumas dúvidas. Mongo apela à criatividade e isso requer proximidade, cumplicidade, partilha, discussão que poderão não ser tão eficazes quanto o estar na mesma sala, na mesma esplanada, no mesmo espaço] — once companies’ remote work routines have been smoothed out, their newly remote-capable employees will have the flexibility to move out of dense cities and into lower-cost areas.
.
3. Many jobs will be automated, and the rest will be made remote-capableTo survive the crisis, firms will need to lay off their least-productive workers, automate what can be automated, and make the rest remote-capable.
...
In short, jobs will first move from in-person to remote-domestic, and in time they will go from remote-domestic to remote-overseas. [Moi ici: Mais dúvidas acerca disto. Mongo é interacção, é customização, Mongo é arte, Mongo não é vómito, Mongo não é race to the bottom. Outra vez a doença anglo-saxónica]
...
4. Telemedicine will become the new normal, signaling an explosion in med-tech innovationIn a matter of weeks, regulatory barriers to telemedicine in the U.S. have largely fallen. ... Though these measures were announced as temporary, those who have now had firsthand experience with the convenience and cost-effectiveness of telemedicine will not want to forgo it. Once the crisis recedes, health care will begin to be provided remotely by default, not necessity, allowing the best doctors to scale their services to far more patients. [Moi ici: Por cá duvido. A corporação é muito forte... só talvez a necessidade do SNS poupar dinheiro pressione este desenvolvimento]
...
5. The nationwide student debt crisis will finally abate as higher education begins to move online...
Universities will also face pressure to cut costs from the severely cash-strapped state governments that fund them. Many will eventually adopt hybrid models that limit face-to-face learning to project-based assignments and student working groups. These will dramatically cut costs, while allowing the best instructors to scale their insights to more students. They might also make a compelling case for broadening access to elite universities, whose small cohorts have historically been justified on the basis of physical constraints inherent to classrooms and campuses.
.
6. Goods and people will move less often and less freely across national and regional borders...
Even before the pandemic struck, higher wages in China, international trade wars, and the rise of semi-autonomous factories had already prompted firms to reshore manufacturing, bringing it closer to domestic research and development centers. The coronavirus crisis will accelerate this trend: Increasingly, corporations will favor the resiliency of centralized domestic supply chains over the efficiency of globalized ones. Lacking support to protect the shared gains of worldwide economic integration and globalized supply chains, the multilateral institutions of global governance established in the 20th century will, if temporarily, begin to fray."

Trechos retirados de "7 Predictions for a Post-Coronavirus World"

"“People in the past dined out with their colleagues in their lunch hour, now they’re all getting lunchboxes,” he says, sitting in a booth at an empty Sichuan restaurant he operates. “They’re more likely to cook at home than go out.”
...
Xiong’s experience provides a window into the uncertain future facing small-business owners around the globe as they contemplate life after lockdowns. While many hope to pick up where they left off, Wuhan’s cautious emergence shows it likely won’t be that easy. The city, once a bustling hub for steel and auto manufacturing, remains gripped by fear of reinfection. Companies are testing employees before they’re allowed back to work and disinfecting their premises daily. If a customer or worker gets the virus, businesses typically have to shut down again for weeks of quarantine—something even the most painstakingly prepared business plan can’t predict."

Trechos retirados de "Wuhan’s 11 Million People Are Free to Dine Out. Yet They Aren’t"

As relações como a plataforma mais importante

"By the early 1990s, IBM was losing billions every year, running out of cash and close to bankruptcy.
...
Why was IBM able to survive while so many other IT companies didn’t make it?  I’ve thought a lot about this question.  In my opinion, IBM’s survival was made possible by three major factors: talent and R&D investments; trustful relationships; and wise leadership.
...
Trustful relationships.  Another critical survival factor are the trustful collaborations with clients, business partners, research communities, and other stakeholders that take years to build.[Moi ici: O papel de um ecossistema]
...
“From the beginning, as a maker of complex machines IBM had no choice but to explain its products to its customers and thus to develop a strong understanding of their business requirements.  From that followed close relationships between customers and supplier.  Over time these relationships became IBM’s most important platform - and the main reason for its longevity.”
...
Wise leadership.  In April of 1993 Lou Gerstner became IBM Chairman and CEO, the first outsider appointed to the position.  This was, in my opinion, the third major factor in IBM’s survival.
...
He imbued the IBM workforce with a strong sense of urgency, prodding it to address the serious problems the company faced.  He surrounded himself with executives who knew the company well and understood what needed to be done.
...
Early in his tenure he was faced with a few critical decisions.  IBM’s previous leadership had been working on a plan to break up the company into a loose federation of thirteen so-called baby blues.  But, after talking to a number of IBM’s key customer, Gerstner reversed the decision. Customers told him that IBM was much more valuable as an integrated company that could help them solve complex problems and build industry solutions than as a provider of piece parts or components."

Trechos retirados de "Getting Through Highly Uncertain Times - Some Lessons Learned"

"using the body to redirect mind and emotion"

"“Her emotional system intimately knew the saddle as a place where she was in control, was safe, and where the world was predictable. “I felt like I was on top of the world,” she said. “That did more for me emotionally than anything at that time. I felt like everything was going to be all right.” This is another instance of using the body to redirect mind and emotion. She put her body where it had learned to feel good and it obediently felt good.
...
In Agid’s patient, the physical movements and posture of sadness (i.e., the emotion) led to the feeling of sadness, which the baloney generator immediately began to try to explain. (“Everything is useless.”) But now we see that the system can work either way, thoughts leading to emotions or the physical actions of emotions leading to matching thoughts and feelings."

Isto funciona nos dois sentidos. Se só ouvirem estórias sobre desgraças sentir-se-ão e actuarão como desgraçados.
Não vale contar estórias da carochinha cor de rosa, o nosso cérebro de rato, vai topar a fantochada e o tiro sai pela culatra.

Trechos retirados de “Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience” de Laurence Gonzales

Eficiência versus adaptabilidade

O meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras mandou-me este artigo, "6 Critical Lessons in Organisational Agility from the COVID-19 crisis". A introdução está em sintonia com as mensagens do blogue:

"Most businesses are designed for efficiency, not adaptability. [Moi ici: Recordar os marcadores do eficientismo, da eficiência, do numerador versus denominador] The underlying philosophy is to obtain the maximum yield for an acceptable effort and to scale this as effectively as possible. Last century’s Scientific Management is the key influence.  [Moi ici: Recordar o marcador sobre magnitograd, recordar Levitown, recordar o século XX]  Such businesses, by design, are not built to suddenly change course. They are designed to do key activities efficiently."

Há tempos aqui no blogue citei:

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

E:

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

Nos próximos tempos ainda faz mais sentido pensar em adaptabilidade:

"In contrast, a start-up is designed to be incredibly adaptable. It’s structure is fluid as it continually pivots to find the right product-market fit in order to survive. It is fast and nimble and can easy out-manoeuvre larger organisations, but it isn’t efficient and it can’t scale.

...
In a traditional firm (the freighter), intelligence and decision making is centralised. Decisions are made at the “top” of the firm and supporting directives cascade to the people doing the tasks. When decisions need to be made, they must flow back up to the centralised control and then back down again. The delay directly prevents agility.
.
In an adaptive firm, authority is pushed to the people with the information. In other words, the people at the coalface are empowered to make appropriate decisions as required. If the decision requires others, they find the people required and attempt to make the decision as quickly as possible." 

Think “outcome before output”

A primeira vez que usei aqui no blog a expressão:

Think “input before output”

Foi em Outubro de 2017 em "it took a holistic approach towards how to play". Desde então usei-a aqui dezenas e dezenas de vezes como, por exemplo em:

• Privilegiar os inputs sobre os outputs (parte XII) (uma série de 12 postais)
• Foco do output para o input

Esta semana comecei a pensar que a expressão não é a melhor para o que pretendo transmitir. Há tempos, neste postal, "Beyond product versus service", coloquei estas duas definições da ISO 9000:2015:

• 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

Quando uma organização se concentra no seu output, pensa em produto. Não precisa de interacções:

No limite podemos dizer que vomita o mais possível, quer aumentar o ritmo a que produz por forma a baixar custos unitários e ser mais competitiva.

O que querodizer com focar no input?

Partir do princípio que aquilo que é o output da organização é na verdade o input do cliente. Algo que o cliente vai usar para processar na sua vida, à sua maneira.

No entanto, agora percebo que há outra palavra e outra posição para o que quero comunicar...

Think “outcome before output”

Ao pensar em outcome do cliente tem de haver interacção com o cliente. Os clientes são todos diferentes e procuram e valorizam coisas diferentes. Só interagindo com eles é que é possível perceber o que é que cada um valoriza. Outcome não é um resultado físico, não é um substantivo. Outcome não é a garrafa e ovino que se bebeu, outcome é a festa é a boa disposição entre amigos.

Claro que se estivermos numa relação B2B o nosso cliente além do seu outcome também terá o seu output:

E se é uma relação B2B a nossa organização também deverá considerar o cliente do nosso cliente e os seus outcomes:

E aqui começamos a entrar num outra tema clássico deste blogue: os ecossistemas.

Num ecossistema o objectivo não é mais maximizar o valor para o cliente, mas maximizar o valor para o ecossistema. Por isso, podemos chegar a um ecossistema em que o cliente é prisioneiro da relação que a organização desenvolveu com o cliente do cliente:

E volto a Março de 2007.

Peak globalization?

Por um lado:

"It's almost impossible for Partow [Moi ici: A designer] to work remotely. Fashion is a tactile pursuit. She can't do proper fittings by video conference. Patternmakers can't function."(1)

Por outro:

"This is serious business. When Jetro polled 552 of its company members in Thailand last month about their chief coronavirus-related concerns, “the loss of opportunity to attend business meetings” in Thailand and abroad, and new measures affecting travellers such as quarantine came near the top, right after slower sales but above supply challenges.
.
Some futurologists are describing the pandemic as the peak of globalisation, while consultants predict companies will need to shorten and localise their supply chains post-pandemic.
.
McKinsey recently said the “next normal” would spur “a massive restructuring of supply chains” as production and sourcing moved closer to markets."(2)

Veremos marcas europeias e americanas de moda a regressar à produção de proximidade nos países europeus? Ou para a Turquia e Norte de África?

Fonte 1 - Fashion will survive, but many of the designers at the heart of the industry might not
Fonte 2 - Coronavirus threatens to shake up the expat supply chain

A cidade governada pelos filósofos

"New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has hired high-powered consultants to develop a science-based plan for the safe economic reopening of the region"

Esta crença tecnocrática top-down não pára de me surpreender.

Recordar a abordagem que preconizo, o oposto exactamente, em "Covid-19 - Direcção e iteração colaborativa".

• Recordar von Moltke - "Specifying too much detail actually shakes confidence and creates uncertainty"
• "The problem is getting the right things done"
• "absolute clarity of purpose"
• "a willingness to show independence of mind and challenge authority"
• Tudo a conjugar-se para asneira da grossa

Trecho inicial retirado de "Exclusive: New York taps McKinsey to develop 'Trump-proof' economic reopening plan"

Devo ser muito burro mesmo! (parte II)

Parte I.

Continuo muito burro, mas sou só eu

No Financial Times de ontem, Martin Wolf em "The world economy is nowcollapsing" escreveu:

"For what any forecast is worth, the IMF now suggests that global output per head will contract by 4.2 per cent this year, vastly more than the 1.6 per cent recorded in 2009, during the global financial crisis. Ninety per cent of all countries will experience negative growth in real gross domestic product per head this year, against 62 per cent in 2009, when China’s robust expansion helped cushion the blow.
.
In January, the IMF forecast smooth growth this year. It now forecasts a plunge of 12 per cent between the last quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020 in advanced economies and a fall of 5 per cent in emerging and developing countries. But, optimistically, the second quarter is forecast to be the nadir. Thereafter, it expects a recovery, though output in advanced economies is forecast to remain below fourth quarter 2019 levels until 2022."

Um país que depende de ajuda externa, pedinte profissional, não vai praticar austeridade, ao mesmo tempo que os que vão emprestar dinheiro vão praticar austeridade.

Acabo de ler, na minha caminha matinal este trecho:

“In 1950 Toyota went nearly bankrupt and was bailed out by banks, who forced it to lay off workers and restructure (separating sales from production). Toyota leaders swore they would never be reliant on banks again.”

Trecho retirado de “The Lean Strategy” de Michael Ballé, Daniel Jones, Jacques Chaize, e Orest Fiume.

Devo ser muito burro mesmo!

Leio "António Costa afasta cenário de austeridade pós-coronavírus", penso nesta figura:

Daqui.

E concluo: devo ser muito burro mesmo. Não estou a ver como é que a afirmação e o cenário se conciliam.

Alargar a zona de conforto

Comecei a ler mais um livro de Laurence Gonzales, "Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience". Gosto do estilo e mensagem de Gonzales desde que li "Deep Survival".

Nestes tempos de quarentena teremos, mais tarde ou mais cedo, de aportar a uma nova realidade e os sobreviventes terão de criar um novo normal onde terão de viver:

"Even before birth, we begin adapting to the environment in which we find ourselves. We learn its rules. We unconsciously take actions that help us avoid danger. But a catastrophic experience can undermine all that learning. Once we’re safely beyond the shipwreck, the husband, the crocodile, we try to return to normal life. But there is no normal anymore.
...
The amygdala is not in the Rational Department. It doesn’t care that, at times, its responses might make no sense. The emotional system can’t allow you to think about your reactions. That takes too much time. If you stop to think, you’ll be eaten. So it’s tuned for instant reaction.
...
The system is driven by natural selection. If it gets you to survive long enough to reproduce, it gets passed on. It doesn’t care that it might make you miserable in certain circumstances.
...
in dealing with the aftermath of trauma, it’s important to realize that we don’t get over it. We get on with it.
...
It is well known that what you do with the body deeply influences the way you think and feel. If you act strong, you feel stronger. If you act happy, you feel happier. If you move your facial muscles into an imitation of a smile for a time (say, by biting on a pencil), you gradually start to feel better.
...
How well a person does after a crisis has a lot to do with the attitude and personality she has developed over a lifetime. Eileen was lucky. Her focus, optimism, and capacity for hard work combined with her inborn tendencies and created a person who could take something really bad and turn it to her advantage. Several years later, looking back at the events of her life, Eileen reflected on how the experience had helped her reinvent herself.
...
Rather than letting her experience define her life, she came to regard it as "a platform for growth."
...
Survival is a vision quest. At first your emotions may be all over the place—panic, denial, anger. If you exhaust the rage pathway, you may fall into despair. But if you’re going to survive, the rational brain must take over. Yet logic alone won’t work: Reason and emotion must cooperate for correct decisions to emerge. For emotion is the realm of intuition and inspiration, essential helpmates in surviving. Survival requires entering what might be called a state of grace.
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Those who survive waste little time whining. We’ve all met people who are constantly blaming others or outside forces for their troubles. They do not make good survivors.
...
The survivor also does not stop trying; he always does the next thing.
...
The survivor faces the requirement of monumental, sometimes superhuman, efforts. Trying to fathom them could arouse strong emotions that could disrupt thinking. So he breaks those tasks down into manageable steps and completes them one by one. He has the future in mind, but he doesn’t think too far ahead. He concentrates his efforts in the moment. In doing the things he must do, he is organized and meticulous.
...
those who do survive often go through a dramatic transformation. Many survivors have said the same thing: They suffered horribly, but they wouldn’t give up the experience they had for anything in the world."

E este pormaior:

"How well a person does after a crisis has a lot to do with the attitude and personality she has developed over a lifetime. Eileen was lucky. Her focus, optimism, and capacity for hard work combined with her inborn tendencies and created a person who could take something really bad and turn it to her advantage. Several years later, looking back at the events of her life, Eileen reflected on how the experience had helped her reinvent herself." 

Curiosidade do dia

A estória da Xylella neste blogue:

2015 - Curiosidade do dia
2017 - Preocupação séria
2019 - Preocupação séria mesmo!
2020 - Quando a Xylella lá chegar vai ser rápido (parte II)

Ontem, via um site recomendado pelo amigo Nuno, "New Treatment for Xylella-Infected Trees Is Working, Researchers Say", um sinal de esperança.

Ainda há coisas boas em 2020.

Acerca do impacte da pandemia na economia privada em Portugal

"Os resultados da 1ª semana de inquirição (semana de 6 a 10 de abril de 2020), indicam que 82% das empresas se mantinham em produção ou em funcionamento, mesmo que parcialmente, 16% encontravam-se temporariamente encerradas, enquanto 2% assinalaram que tinham encerrado definitivamente. 37% das empresas em funcionamento ou temporariamente encerradas reportaram uma redução superior a 50% do volume de negócios e 26% reportaram uma redução superior a 50% do número de pessoas ao serviço efetivamente a trabalhar. 

Figura 9 • Permanência em atividade sem medidas adicionais de apoio à liquidez, em % do total de empresas em funcionamento ou temporariamente encerradas:

Fonte.

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.
...
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.
.
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.
...
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
...
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.”

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)."
...
"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.
...
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.
...
As much as economists might like to think that they have knowledge and experience in kickstarting economies, we are less sanguine.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.
.
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.
.
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.
...
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.
.
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.
...
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]
.
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.
...
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.
...
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.
.
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.
.
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.
...
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.
...
Change your value capture constantly. Change your value creation slowly.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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."