"The best history, Foster told me, is written when we understand the past in the light of a future that never happened. But it’s much harder to write that way, because the narrative is so complex and contingent.
What was difficult but thrilling about Foster’s history was that it seemed to be saying: at any moment, it could have been, could be, different. Outcomes weren’t inevitable; history wasn’t about manifest destinies but unexpected and unforeseen futures. What happened next took place because of choices people made, people without the information we have today and with information perhaps now lost. History wasn’t the runaway train on which we all sat like helpless, terrified children. This different view of history quivered with possibilities—some good, some bad, some seized, others overlooked—but all alive and human.
Think about what happens when you apply that mind-set to the future: at any moment, it could be different. Outcomes aren’t inevitable. What happens next is a choice.
...
Knowing that history doesn’t repeat itself is what makes it useful. We may glean what appear to be themes—humiliation provokes tyranny, for example—that make us pay attention to new information we might otherwise ignore or marginalize.
...
History doesn’t repeat itself because we keep changing and it keeps changing us. It can’t offer recipes but it can provide raw material with which to construct fresh combinations, drawn from where we have been, where we are today, and where we wish to be tomorrow. That it offers neither inevitability nor guarantees isn’t its weakness but its greatest power."
Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan.
Um artigo sobre o problema de ter demasiado dinheiro, de não ter constrangimentos, "What We Can Learn From The Failure Of Quibi":
"I’ve launched countless businesses in my career and one thing I’ve learned is that you need to keep capital scarce in the early days. Limiting the amount of money you have around forces people to face up to problems and solve them. You can’t ignore warning signs when you’re close to broke.
Quibi, on the other hand, failed because it did ignore signals."
Outro excelente ponto é:
"Conventional marketing strategy dictates that you identify the largest addressable market for your product. That, after all, is where you can reach the most people, scale your business and earn the most money. So it made sense for Quibi to target Millennials in search of “quick bites” to watch while on line at Starbucks.
Yet when you’re launching something new and different, you don’t want the largest addressable market which, almost by definition, already has a lot of companies serving it. Instead, you want to identify a hair-on-fire use case—a problem that somebody needs solved so badly that they almost literally have their hair on fire. That’s where you’ll find customers to put up with the inevitable bugs and glitches that always come up."
"Have you noticed the definition of a management system?
I know that a lot of people don't care about this definition thing, but if you work with management systems, I invite you to read the definition of the ISO 9000 standard.
Management system - System to establish a policy, an orientation, a set of priorities. Then, translate these priorities into objectives, into concrete challenges. Then work, transform the organization to meet those objectives.
While writing the management system’s policy one must include in the text a commitment to continuous improvement. Thus, a management system must aspire to continuously improve its performance.
Today's organization generates today's performance. Today's performance is a perfectly normal product of the current organization. The commitment to improvement means aspiring to a desired future performance better than the current one. Aspiring for future performance better than the present means transforming the current organization into the organization of the desired future, the only one capable of generating the desired future results in a perfectly normal and sustainable way.
In this way, maintaining a management system means continuously investing in transforming the current organization into the organization of the desired future. However, in many audits conducted in 2020 I found the same non-conformity:
Organizations should seek to continuously improve the suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness of the management system to improve its performance. The organization did not demonstrate the establishment of improvement objectives for its management system. All the objectives foreseen for 2020, associated with the system indicators, refer to the same objectives of 2019.
From my initiation to systemic thinking, I remember this image:
O título tirei-o deste postal de Outubro último, "Tamanho, produtividade e a receita irlandesa".
Se há coisa que não gosto é de gente que não analisa os números. Gente que fala de cor e constrói explicações assentes em areia.
Em Junho último em "that model died this year" escrevi:
"México = Marrocos, Turquia, Roménia e Bulgária."
Em Agosto passado em "A caminho da Sildávia, portanto" escrevi:
"No final da conversa João Duque brinda-nos com uma ilustração da ligeireza com que o mundo académico segue a micro-economia. Segundo João Duque o sucesso do calçado nos últimos anos foi baseado no desenvolvimento de marcas... de marcas? Come on! Quantas marcas ganham dinheiro? Quantas marcas ao fim de 5 anos ainda estão vivas? Desenvolver marca é uma forma de sacar dinheiro de projectos europeus, mesmo que bem intencionada, mas que morre quando acaba o financiamento. O que foi desenvolvido e bem foi a marca "Made in Portugal" para que marcas estrangeiras viessem para Portugal aproveitar a sua "uniqueness" da proximidade produção-consumo (rapidez, flexibilidade, qualidade). BTW, mas é outra conversa, esta uniqueness já se foi graças à Turquia, Roménia, Marrocos, Argélia, Tunísia, Bulgária, ..."
Pelos vistos também estava a incorrer num erro, porque não tinha olhado para os números com olhos de ver. Assim, aproveitei o empréstimo que a colega Rita me fez do World Footwear 2020 Yearbook, publicado pela APICCAPS, e olhei para os números.
Primeiro, na tabela que se segue não vamos encontrar a Argélia porque as exportações são residuais, não chegaram a um milhão de pares em 2019.
O que ressalta é a evolução turca e albanesa. Em 2010 a Turquia exportava cerca de 75 milhões de pares de sapatos, em 2019 exportou 275 milhões de pares a um preço médio de 3.29 USD. A Albânia em 10 anos duplicou as suas exportações. Presumo, pelo preço médio de cada par, que há ali mão de know-how italiano.
Assim, temos dois países próximos do centro da Europa com custos de produção muito baixos.
Lá em cima fala-se de uniqueness, no postal anterior falava-se, metaforicamente, em superpoderes. O factor proximidade ... foi-se. Como li há dias no livro SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
"finding a sustainable competitive advantage may not be that important. What is important, however, is that companies have a contingency plan to deal with the upcoming prospects for an expansion of available resources or possible constraints created by other actors in the market."
Tudo é transiente, tudo é temporário.
Qual é o superpoder da sua empresa?
"You wouldn’t hire FedEx to safely transport a fragile large item across the country. Their superpower is speed, not avoiding jostling. On the other hand, an art transport company might take a bit longer to get the vase to your new home, but their white-glove treatment (with actual white gloves) would make them an obvious alternative to FedEx.
“You can choose anyone and we’re anyone” is not a useful way to earn customers, patrons, or supporters. Because if you’re anyone, it’s worth mentioning that a search engine is happy to point people to plenty of other people who are as anyone as you are.
In order to deliver speed at a low price, FedEx had to commit. They made a significant number of choices all focused on that one metric. If you try to ship a very large (but very light) box via FedEx, you’ll discover that instead of costing $30, it costs $450. That’s because it breaks their system, and their system is their superpower.
When we think of an artist we admire, we’re naming someone who stands for something. And to stand for something is to commit."
Trecho retirado de "The practice: shipping creative work" de Seth Godin.
Três ideias fundamentais retiradas do primeiro capítulo do livro SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
Os mercados são mais do que para trocar valor, também servem para co-criar valor:
"The Function of a Market System Is Exchange, for the Purpose of Value Creation
Specifically, markets are CASs of exchange, for the creation of value. And we do need to be very specific about that. Common definitions which include exchange but omit use-value and the value creation aspect sound curiously zero-sum, as though the same resource is simply being shuffled around the system in a grand version of the children’s birthday game pass-the-parcel.
...
Just as markets divide into supply and demand, so does value divide into exchange value to the supplier and use value to the customer/user. In a firm-focused, production-centric view such as the traditional business strategy approach, value too easily comes to mean what is really only exchange value - the value to the producer or seller - or, worse still, the price.
…
A user will willingly pay a higher price if she can get more use value out of the product. So use value should be integral to the firm’s market view, and any way to increase use value offers potential gains in exchange value right back. This is where co-creation comes in. The firm’s product is only one component in the customer’s use value."
Os mercados não são um dado, são uma variável:
"Markets Are Socially Constructed, so You Can Reconstruct Them, too
Markets are social systems.
…
The key point for us is that, being socially constructed, markets can be consciously reconstructed. Because humans can be persuaded, incentivized or, where laws or sheer market power are involved, coerced by other humans, the firm has a means of influencing the human agents and their creations. This is how you can turn social reconstruction to your advantage. Fundamentally, viewing markets as shapeable systems suggests that opportunities are not precursors of strategy; rather they are outcomes of deliberate efforts to shape markets. ... We should not make strategy for a company - we should make strategy for the system. [Moi ici: Isto é tão bom!!! Urdir um ecossistema. Daqui: "
Uma empresa que trabalha com o BSC começa por determinar quem são os clientes-alvo! Uma empresa que trabalha com o BSC e comigo, para além dos clientes-alvo tem também de determinar qual é o ecossistema da procura."] Furthermore, strategy ought not to be viewed as winning a zero-sum game; nor ought the focus to be on competing. On the contrary, it should clarify how the company can engage in collaborative activities with market actors (suppliers, customers, and partners) in order to improve the creation of the use value. Companies that can promise improved value creation for several actors simultaneously are the ones most likely to be successful in shaping their respective markets.The job of the market leader is not to increase own market share at the expense of others, but rather about creating a positive sum game where many market actors grow the market together.[Moi ici: Maximizar o valor para todos os que estão no ecossistema]
…
The pay-off to all the theory above is that it enables you to become a market shaper.
...
“What is this market shaping that you are so worked up about?”
…
Changing the definition of markets from mere exchange mechanisms to a system fostering value creation is not just semantics or purely academic debate. Think about the implications. We’re claiming that, like any other human-made systems, market systems can be changed by companies, governments, and even singular individuals"
Os mercados podem ser trabalhados e manuseados:
"Building on the theoretical insight that, unlike poets, markets are not only born but also made, this strategy takes a new product or service and aims to consciously attract or build the elements of a fully functioning market around it.
…
What are the main ingredients for shaping markets? This is a question that it takes the rest of the book to answer fully. There is no single formula and no linear progression of steps. It’s about a continuous cycle. And there’s a degree of art to it as well as science. Broadly though, market shaping begins with re-focusing your business definition, which also acts as your frame on the market, so that you can see the rich reality of your market system and training it on the slice of the universe of possible markets which you want to start with. You then need to envisage a new shape for that market system that would benefit your firm more, by capturing a share of extra use value you’ll help create (in other words, co-create) for customers. Whichever other players it requires to effect the change, you’ll need to appeal to them by offering a share in the value creation as well. This involves pitching a win-win-win “story” or narrative about your proposed new shape. [Moi ici: Há anos que prego isto. Por exemplo: "Ganhar-ganhar-ganhar porque passa por orquestrar uma relação que traga vantagens não só à clássica interacção diádica, cliente-fornecedor, mas também a outras combinações"] And you’ll need to time the whole intervention to strike when the market is “hot” and malleable.
…
Which firms could practice market shaping? … You don’t need market power in the traditional sense of monopolies and oligopolies. In fact, being big can hinder creative thinking of the kind a new strategy requires if the great idea gets tangled up in the red tape of internal processes. However, you need a good idea _ a vision about how to shape your market into a better re-incarnation of that market - because market shaping works only if you are truly able to improve the market. And remember, “improving” means improvement to others as well, not just to you."
Há tempos criei um site para começar a alimentar o que dentro de anos poderá ser um mercado mais relevante para a minha actividade profissional. Chamei a esse site "Value From Imperfection".
Muitos perguntam-me o porquê deste nome.
Há minutos encontrei no Twitter uma boa introdução à explicação do nome:
Commodify is the shift from social to economic value (i.e. the first commercial instance of something)
— Simon Wardley (@swardley) December 5, 2020
Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition (i.e. creation of a commodity or a utility market)
The two are very different. Don't mix them.
Reparem naquele "Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition".
Quem são os meus clientes-alvo? PMEs industriais que procuram servir clientes com bens e serviços transaccionáveis. Estamos a falar de empresas que não podem competir pelo preço mais baixo, empresas que têm de arranjar outra vantagem competitiva que não o preço. Empresas que têm de subir na escala de valor, empresas que têm de fugir da comoditização: um mercado comoditizado é um mercado em que o que conta é o preço mais baixo.
O que aprendi há anos e está ali ao lado na coluna das citações é:
"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"
Quando um mercado fica comoditizado entra a competência perfeita, reina a eficiência pura e dura, o sucesso é para quem é maior e consegue economias de escala. Recordo o maluco académico americano que até queria acabar com as marcas para promover a concorrência perfeita. Segundo ele, Camberlin, o valor de marcas como a Apple acontece por causa de ""ignorance" or the "imperfect knowledge" that results from "the reprehensible creation by businessmen of purely fictitious differences between products which are by nature fundamentally uniform"."
Qualquer PME deve fugir da concorrência perfeita como o diabo da Cruz, daí a minha assinatura de anos: promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais.
As PMEs devem estar sempre à procura das imperfeições no mercado, é delas que se pode retirar mais valor. Até porque é inevitável. A imperfeição de hoje mais tarde ou mais cedo deixa de ser mistério e transforma-se em algoritmo e reina a comoditização:
"Ogilvy met with the CEO of an unnamed client. “I said I’ve come to resign your business. He asked why. I said because your Executive Vice President is a shit… He’s treating your people atrociously and he’s treating my people atrociously. Now what he does to your people—that’s your business. But I’m not going to allow this man to go on demoralizing the people of Ogilvy & Mather.” He also resigned the Rolls Royce account. “The last 600 cars you sent to the United States don’t work. And I will no longer be a party to recommending that people buy them.”
...
Ogilvy was irritated by package goods manufacturers who spent more money on sales promotions than on advertising. “They are spending twice as much on price-cutting as on building brands… they are training consumers to buy on price instead of brand.” He concluded that “the men who employ them are more interested in next quarter’s earnings than in building their brands.” This relates to his repulsion for “the jackasses on Wall Street.”
Trechos retirados de "The Unpublished David Ogilvy"
"Markets are a classic case of a complex adaptive system (CAS). Mathematicians developed CASs as a distinct category between systems that are ordered but very complicated, like the flight deck of a modern airliner, and outright chaotic systems, like weather, which is subject to the famous “butterfly effect.
...
Because CASs don’t obey ordinary laws of cause and effect, we have to throw out the simplistic view of markets as supply-and-demand curves. Also heading for the trash can is the old, linear view of strategy as a detailed master plan drawn up in phase one and executed in phase two.
...
The firm is one of the agents or actors, inside the market system. Although CASs don’t follow ordinary cause and effect in a way that even an expert consultant can predict, they are amenable to a degree of influence by their parts, and those include the firm.
...
CAS tells us that markets will continually evolve and that we’ll have to deal with it! ... They do not pre-exist as eternal givens. Neither do they pop magically into and out of existence, nor are they fixed while they’re around."
Trechos retirados de SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
“The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device but developers, applications, e-commerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications, and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyze or join an ecosystem.”
A mensagem inicial dos autores é sobre as visões erradas sobre o que é o mercado e sobre as implicações dessas visões. Por exemplo, a ideia de que o mercado é um dado (o mercado pode ser uma variável).
Outro erro, que costumo sublinhar quando uso a expressão "live and let live":
"Competing for market share when everyone defines their market by product is zero-sum. By definition, a theory that tells you to compete for market share reduces your strategy to a zero-sum game. That limitation is built into not only the words “share” and “compete” but also the poor market view itself."
"The obsession with exchange value misses the opportunities of growing use-value. The exchange value focus overlooks the goldmine of business opportunities that resides precisely in use-value over on the demand side of the market which the industry view omits and the product view misunderstands."
"What the patterns of an artist’s progress show are the human capacity to find meaning and to make lasting work not by planning it but by remaining open to the possibilities they see inside and around themselves. This argues against forcing predetermined expectations and goals onto our experience of life and for an alert way of being, open to noticing and responding to the future as it emerges.
...
prescribed rules can’t give individuals, companies, or countries the alertness they need to evolve and adapt.
...
In an age of uncertainty and change, being able to sense what to do in advance of reliable prediction can make businesses or nonprofits smarter, more inventive, and more relevant. The intuition for change and the capacity to pursue it energetically is what markets applauded in Steve Jobs, a man who wasn’t an artist but thought like one.
...
When it comes to the future, it matters more to invigorate the search than to try to determine the outcome.
...
Allowing people at work to think like artists takes more than colorful walls, toys, murals, and open spaces. To have insights that are relevant to life requires having a life, one rich in experiences and the time to internalize them."
Este é o tipo de mensagem que encontro no livro de Margaret Heffernan, “Uncharted”, e que tanto aprecio. Perante a incerteza, deixar o engenho humano dar a volta através da "arte". As mentes eficientistas agarram-se às leis do século XX, (a tríade do tempo da troika) ou ao pré-histórico socialismo, mas a União Europeia também não é melhor ao propor abordagens homogéneas independentemente do estado de desenvolvimento de cada país e da sua cultura.
Só esta liberdade e criatividade pode dar a volta a previsões pessimistas.
"A Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Económico (OCDE) prevê que o produto interno bruto (PIB) de Portugal aumente apenas 1,7% em 2021 e 1,9% em 2022, depois de uma descida de 8,4% neste ano."
Let that sink in silently, quietly...
Espero que esta perspectiva pessimista acabe por não se concretizar. É mau, muito mau, demasiado mau para ser verdade.
A economia portuguesa é como um corredor que tem de correr com um saco carregado de pesos às costas.
Trecho retirado de "OCDE prevê que economia portuguesa cresça apenas 1,7% em 2021 e 1,9% em 2022"
"performance on a given metric increases when it is pursued as an objective but decreases with the number of other objectives pursued simultaneously. We find overall support for this hypothesis, which holds for most, but not all, objectives. We further unpack the link between a multiplicity of objectives and performance, investigating the moderating effects of organization design choices. This study suggests that multiple objectives impose a cost on organizations, but also provide a benefit of alleviating tradeoffs in achieving higher performance in multiple dimensions.
...
We show that explicitly setting objectives plays an important role in driving performance improvements. We also show that performance on any given dimension decreases with the number of other, simultaneously, followed goals. This regularity holds across different types of organizations, from simple to complex. Finally, we show that setting goals in multiple dimensions can play a beneficial role in forcing firms to actively manage trade-offs inherent in their strategic choices. Our findings point to how managers could balance the costs and benefits of multiple objectives."
E ainda:
"Most organizations simultaneously follow multiple goals, rather than focus on a single, well-defined objective. For example, manufacturing firms often concurrently strive to decrease costs, increase revenues, and enhance margins. We study the consequences of such pursuit for firm performance. We show that explicitly setting objectives plays an important role in driving performance improvements. We also show that performance on any given dimension decreases with the number of other, simultaneously, followed goals. This regularity holds across different types of organizations, from simple to complex. Finally, we show that setting goals in multiple dimensions can play a beneficial role in forcing firms to actively manage trade-offs inherent in their strategic choices. Our findings point to how managers could balance the costs and benefits of multiple objectives."
Como não recuar a Julho de 2008 e aos almoços grátis:
Trechos retirados de "What Do Multiple Objectives Really Mean For Performance? Empirical Evidence From the French Manufacturing Sector"
Consideremos uma empresa que elege como objectivos para o negócio:
Um grande postal de Seth Godin!!! Mesmo na mouche!!! Há tempos tive um diálogo parecido com o tema do postal. Uma organização encomendou-me um texto para o seu site, deu-me o tema, deu-me uma lista de palavras-chave a usar para optimizar a pesquisa SEO e deu-me um número de palavras a atingir.
Indiferente, escrevi o meu texto. Depois, começaram-me a chatear com as palavras-chave que tinham de ser repetidas e que não tinha atingido o target de número de palavras. a partir daí senti-me que entrava no reino do plástico artificial.
"It’s tempting to race to the bottom. The problem is that you might win, and then you’ll have to stay there. Worse, you might try and come in second, accomplishing not much of anything.
Linkbait is a trap, because it brings you attention you actually don’t want.
The alternative is to be idiosyncratic, specific and worth the effort and expense. What would happen if you made something important, breathtaking or wonderful? The race to the top is not only more satisfying, it’s also more likely to work.
And then you get to live there. Doing work you’re proud of, without excuses."
Trecho retirado de "More popular (and cheap, too)"
Um excelente conselho de Seth Godin. Como é que a sua empresa o pode pôr em prática?
"Choose Your Clients, Choose Your Future
The masses aren’t the point. They might be a welcome side effect of your work, but to please the masses, you must pander to average.
Because mass means average.
When we decide that the change we seek to make is dependent on mass popularity, when we chase a hit, we end up sacrificing our point of view.
On average, every population is dull. The slide toward average sands off all the interesting edges, destroying energy, interest, and possibility.
What’s the difference between Chip Kidd, the extraordinarily successful book cover designer, and someone with the same tools and skills that Chip has?
Chip has better clients.
Better clients demand better work. Better clients want you to push the envelope, win awards, and challenge their expectations. Better clients pay on time. Better clients talk about you and your work.
But finding better clients isn’t easy, partly because we don’t trust ourselves enough to imagine that we deserve them. [Moi ici: E isto requer foco, requer concentração. Pior, requer rejeitar outros potenciais clientes]
Every gig-economy hustler who’s listed on Fiverr or Upwork or 99designs is looking for easy clients. Easy in and easy out, but they’re not better clients than they have now.
Years ago, I produced a record for a very skilled duo. They were incredibly hardworking and committed to their art. In order to survive, they performed three hundred days a year, and they lived in a van, driving each day to a new town, playing at a local coffeehouse, sleeping in the van, then repeating it all the next day.
In most towns, there are a few places like this—if you’ve issued a few CDs and are willing to work for cheap, you can get booked without too much trouble.
These cafés are not good clients. Easy in, easy out, next!
What I helped these musicians understand is that going from town to town and working with easy gigs was wasting their effort and hiding their art. What they needed to do was stay in one town, earn fans, play again, earn fans, move to a better venue, and do it again. And again.
Working their way up by claiming what they’d earned: fans."
Como fugir da mediania? Como fugir da comoditização? Servir quem?
Trecho retirado de "The practice: shipping creative work" de Seth Godin.
"In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, companies will face a heightened degree of competition as customer demand is depressed due to a reduction of income, persistent unemployment, and looming uncertainties. While everyone desires a V-shaped economic rebound, it will be difficult for companies to overcome the current financial distress once they are locked into a hopeless game of dividing a shrinking pie. More than ever, firms need to create blue oceans of new demand in order to generate revenue, profit, and new growth. It is far more urgent for managers to think like a blue ocean strategist.
...
The pandemic has had a shock effect on economies and businesses and is bound to trigger more changes and disruptions in many industries. Will you go down as a victim of change and disruption? Or are you going to rise above the challenges and reshape the business environment in your favor? [Moi ici: O que deve ser alterado para fazer face às alterações do contexto?]
...
Most organisations are stuck in the trap of competition. Having accepted their industry structure as a given, executives benchmark rivals and focus on outperforming them to achieve a competitive advantage. The irony is that the more you focus on benchmarking and outpacing the competition, the more your strategy will look like your competitors. [Moi ici: Não esquecer a lição da biologia e das toutinegras de McArthur]
A blue ocean strategist, instead, focuses on how to make the competition irrelevant....What are the factors that you and your industry thought were important but don’t seem to matter so much to your customers in terms of serving their essential needs? What are the factors that they fundamentally value and don’t want to compromise on even during this difficult time? Are these temporary shifts under extreme conditions or do they provide insight into reconfiguring your offerings in a post-pandemic world? Think through these questions and ask yourself, “What would it take to win over the mass of buyers, even with no marketing?” ... Stop looking at what industries are competing on and start looking at what most buyers really value....In a time of sluggish and contracting demand in many industries, fighting for a bigger share of existing customers does not often lead to profitable growth. You need to expand the pie. Again, the pandemic may have exposed and amplified some of the pain points previously assumed by your industry. It is up to you to find creative ways to address them to unlock and attract the mass of noncustomers."
"it is characteristic of complex systems that small actions can make a disproportionate impact. You just don’t know, won’t know, until you try. And try again.
...
What makes people and institutions abandon old bad habits and acquire new, better ones? Some argue that pressure eventually produces a tipping point, while others maintain it’s all about the cogency or timing of the message. When large corporations and institutions require strategic change, investors and participants demand a theory of change that promises to contain or define their risk. But the test of a good theory is that it can predict—and what we know about complex systems is that, while aspects of them may repeat, they are inherently unpredictable. So theories of change in highly dynamic systems might purport to offer certainty, where it often proves most illusory. The value of experiments is that they disrupt apathy, acknowledge ambiguity, and give people hope."
Trechos retirados de "Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future" de Margaret Heffernan.
"it is characteristic of complex systems that small actions can make a disproportionate impact. You just don’t know, won’t know, until you try. And try again.
...
What makes people and institutions abandon old bad habits and acquire new, better ones? Some argue that pressure eventually produces a tipping point, while others maintain it’s all about the cogency or timing of the message. When large corporations and institutions require strategic change, investors and participants demand a theory of change that promises to contain or define their risk. But the test of a good theory is that it can predict—and what we know about complex systems is that, while aspects of them may repeat, they are inherently unpredictable. So theories of change in highly dynamic systems might purport to offer certainty, where it often proves most illusory. The value of experiments is that they disrupt apathy, acknowledge ambiguity, and give people hope.
...
Experiments are pragmatic ways to test out the future, but to have real impact requires that other people contribute.
...
traditional management is addicted to grand plans. However much executives claim to want, and to support, innovation and so-called transformation, much of their enthusiasm runs tepid to cold. They want safety and certainty, not the creativity and risk that come with experimentation. The irony is lost on no one: the more they demand certainty, the more they constrain their chance to discover a safer future.
...
Nowhere has this constraint been more obvious than amid the bloodbath of retail, where companies seem to have taken to heart Hilaire Belloc’s line: “always keep ahold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse.” So afraid are they of failure that they plan shop closures and layoffs with meticulous efficiency—while failing to be inventive enough to keep those businesses alive. Market analysts may call this creative destruction but it’s hard to find much that’s creative about it. Experiments and innovation are almost nowhere to be seen."
Trechos retirados de "Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future" de Margaret Heffernan.
Ontem o JdN publicou um artigo, "Produção de azeite afunda e há lagares fechados" que ilustra um padrão comum a todos os ramos da economia.
Existe um status-quo (produção tradicional de azeite).
Aparece um outsider com custos de produção muito mais baixos (produção intensiva e super-intensiva de azeite).
“o preço do azeite a granel está tão baixo que “o que se gasta com a apanha e a transformação é o que se recebe pela venda” do produto acabado.
...
A quebra de produtividade fará com que “áreas significativas de olivais tradicionais” não sejam colhidas nos próximos meses, porque “os custos de colheita superariam a valorização da produção”.
...
“Quando o preço está como agora, nos dois ou 2,50 euros (por quilo de azeite virgem extra a granel), os olivais tradicionais, que requerem muita mão de obra, têm muita dificuldade em fazer a colheita, transformar em azeite e ainda ter margem para vender”, ressalva."
"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"[Moi ici: Li algures e fixei para sempre]
"Há outros casos, de pequenos olivicultores, “que se transformaram em produtores de nicho”, e que têm prémio porque conseguem pôr no mercado edições pequenas com marcas próprias, explica o proprietário da Herdade Maria da Guarda. “Mas os que trabalham sem marca têm tido muita dificuldade, porque os preços estão em mínimos de mais de 10 anos”. Os stocks acumulados de campanhas anteriores em grandes produtores como Itália ou Grécia explicam a inundação que vive o mercado.”"
Recordar a antologia "Azeite e Trás-os-Montes"
Aquela mensagem de que o coronavirus não mudou nada, apenas acelerou o que já estava em marcha...
"Challenging the location of production
The global economy is highly dependent on China. China’s share of global trade in some industries exceeds 50%—in the global trade of telecommunications equipment, for example, China’s share (by volume) was 59% in 2018. China’s importance in global trade and supply chains has grown ever since it was accepted into the World Trade Organisation in 2001. This led to the latest wave of globalisation as multinationals took advantage of the trading opportunities that China offered, both in terms of production and as a source of demand for their products. However, as a result of Covid-19, it is likely that this period of globalisation will not only come to a halt, it will reverse.
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Covid-19 will push more companies in other sectors to relocate parts of their supply chains. By building quasi-independent regional supply chains in the Americas and Europe, a global company will provide a hedge against future shocks to their network. [Moi ici: Uma tendência em curso já já alguns anos]
For those companies that have this luxury already, they have been able to shift production of key components from one region to another as lockdowns and factory closures resulting from coronavirus have unfolded. Supply chains are difficult to set up and even more difficult to move, especially in the automotive sector. As more firms make this decision, therefore, the shift to regionalised supply chains will be an enduring outcome of this crisis.
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For the sake of efficiency, multinationals tend to optimise the logistics process of their supply chains to minimise storage costs. However, in a world of increasing uncertainty and ongoing risk, a sole focus on the efficiency of transportation and production will leave firms vulnerable to shocks. In the current crisis, companies are seeing greater value in storing inventory in strategic locations from where it can be easily accessed and delivered to customers."
Trechos retirados de "The Great Unwinding - Covid-19 and the regionalisation of global supply chains" do The Economist.
As oportunidades multiplicam-se à medida que são aproveitadas.
A mensagem de Seth Godin que aprecio anda à volta disto: esquecer as desculpas e começar, e experimentar e experimentar e experimentar. Quando era miúdo, talvez com 6 ou 7 anos, vi um filme na televisão que me impressionou. No Japão do tempo dos samurais um oleiro fazia as suas peças e cozia-as num forno. Depois, avaliava cada peça cozida e partia quase todas, e eu não percebia porquê. Só muitos anos depois é que concluí que era por causa da sua reputação, porque cada peça levava a sua marca pessoal.
"Start Where You Are
Identity fuels action, and action creates habits, and habits are part of a practice, and a practice is the single best way to get to where you seek to go.
Before you are a “bestselling author,” you’re an author, and authors write. Before you are an “acclaimed entrepreneur,” you’re simply someone who is building something.
“I am _______ but they just don’t realize it yet” is totally different from “I’m not _______ because they didn’t tell me I was.”
The only choice we have is to begin. And the only place to begin is where we are.
Simply begin.
But begin.
Imogen Roy helps us understand that effective goals aren’t based on the end result: they are commitments to the process. That commitment is completely under your control, even if the end result can’t be.
But the only way to have a commitment is to begin.
....
Because creative people create.
Do the work, become the artist. Instead of planning, simply become. Acting as if is how we acquire identity"
Trechos retirados de "The Practice" de Seth Godin
Ando a ler um livro perigoso para muitos, "Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future" de Margaret Heffernan.
O livro desmonta todas as crenças no determinismo... seja ele histórico ou do ADN:
"the truth about complex systems is that trying to simplify them doesn’t guarantee that they become more effective; it risks making them less effective. They function best when they are robust, throwing off a vast array of insights and understanding whose value may be realized over time. That means they can look wasteful, producing more than what is needed. But when you don’t know what’s needed, you’re safer with more.
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Robustness, not efficiency, is ... protection against the unpredictable. In a complex system like science, the fundamental robustness of the ecosystem is variety, [Moi ici: Como não recuar a 2007 e a Hamel e Valikangas] because it facilitates a rich range of insights and discoveries—like penicillin—whose value can emerge even when unplanned. The big danger in confusing a complex system (like science) for a complicated process (like loading bags on planes) is that, in striving for efficiency and predictability, the robustness of the system, its creativity and ability to withstand adversity, is killed off.
...
The thought that you’ve captured all the data is what leads to error. No single, efficient process, profile, or narrative will prove robust enough for an environment characterized by change.
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The temptation to try to simplify complex systems is how you get them wrong; just like profiling, just like any kind of model, what gets left out or what changes can turn out to be vital. This is why intelligence organizations frequently use multiple teams to examine and analyze the same data in real time: because doing so can tell more than one story. That variety might look inefficient but it imparts adaptability and responsiveness, essential qualities when you know you can’t predict what the future holds."
Pesquisei o link de Hamel e Valikangas em busca do seu conteúdo poético, mas também encontrei:
"No jornal Público de ontem, encontrámos um texto assinado pelo Gestor do Programa Operacional Sociedade do Conhecimento, do que retirámos alguns trechos:
"Portugal tem pela frente a batalha da mudança estrutural."
"Tudo tem que ser diferente. A aposta nos factores dinâmicos de competitividade, numa lógica territorialmente equilibrada e com opções estratégicas claramente assumidas, é um contributo central para a correcção das graves assimetrias sociais e regionais. Falta por isso em Portugal um verdadeiro "choque operacional" capaz de produzir efeitos sistémicos ao nível do funcionamento das organizações empresariais."
Um Costa e Silva em 2007...
Engraçado porque comecei a escrever este texto motivado por um texto que li no JdN de ontem, "A matriz tecnologias/sectores no processo de reindustrialização", de Luís Todo Bom.
"No caso dos sectores tradicionais, em particular, no têxtil e no calçado, esta nova imersão tecnológica deve ocorrer, com prudência, por passos, em particular no processo de robotização, para que não se verifique, no curto prazo, uma redução substancial do emprego nestes sectores que são, ainda, de mão-de-obra intensiva.
Estranhei que o meu amigo António Costa Silva, engenheiro como eu, com sensibilidade para as novas tecnologias, não tenha proposto esta matriz, no seu estudo prospectivo, no capítulo da reindustrialização.
Espero que as organizações da sociedade civil, em particular as associações empresariais horizontais – AIP e AEP, e o Fórum para a Competitividade –, em articulação com as empresas líderes de cada sector, possam aceitar este desafio, iniciando-se, assim, um processo de reindustrialização que permita aumentar significativamente a competitividade e o valor acrescentado dos nossos produtos industriais."
Comecei a ouvir o último livro de Seth Godin durante as viagens de carro para fora de Gaia. Seth Godin é um autor que escreve para os humanos de Mongo, os humanos que fogem do século XX e abraçam a arte em todas as suas facetas.
BTW, recordar o que escrevemos aqui ao longo dos anos sobre a arte e o eficientismo. Por isso, apelar à arte fere o mindset assente no século XX.
"For the important work, the instructions are always insufficient. For the work we’d like to do, the reward comes from the fact that there is no guarantee, that the path isn’t well lit, that we cannot possibly be sure it’s going to work.
It’s about throwing, not catching. Starting, not finishing. Improving, not being perfect.
No one learns to ride a bike from a manual.
...
Art is what we call it when we’re able to create something new that changes someone.
No change, no art.
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It’s a form of leadership, not management. A process without regard for today’s outcome, a commitment to the journey.
You were born ready to make art. But you’ve been brainwashed into believing that you can’t trust yourself enough to do so.
You’ve been told you don’t have enough talent (but that’s okay, because you can learn the skill instead).
You’ve been told you’re not entitled to speak up (but now you can see how many others have taken their turns).
And you’ve been told that if you can’t win, you shouldn’t even try (but now you see that the journey is the entire point).
Art is the generous act of making things better by doing something that might not work.
...
“If we believe that it’s not our turn, that we’re not talented enough, we’ll do whatever we can to make that story true. We’ll sit back and wait to be chosen instead. [Moi ici: Algo que li recentemente como sendo o efeito Forer]
That’s backward.
Most of the time, the story we live by came from somewhere. It might be the way we were raised, or it could be the outcome of a series of events. Burn yourself on the stove and you might persuade yourself that you should go nowhere near a stove. Grow up in a home with low expectations and it’s possible you’ll begin to believe them. The story we tell ourselves leads to the actions we take.
If you want to change your story, change your actions first. When we choose to act a certain way, our mind can’t help but rework our narrative to make those actions become coherent.
We become what we do.”
Trechos retirados de "The Practice" de Seth Godin.
“Or consider the Forer effect. This is the strong tendency that subjects show to believe feedback from personality tests, regardless of whether those results are bogus.”
Trecho retirado de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan.
O meu amigo Trevor manteve uma conversa com um dos meus gurus profissionais, Tom Peters. A certa altura Tom aborda o tema “giving a shit”.
Giving a shit é quando a chefia se relaciona com os subordinados como seres humanos, não porque seja bom ou mau para o negócio, mas porque ambos são seres humanos. Depois, discorre sobre algo que já tenho lido em várias fontes: as pessoas despedem-se, ou pior, demitem-se de estarem presentes mais do que de corpo, mais por causa das chefias do que por causa de outras condições.
Vem isto a propósito deste título "Covid-19: Centro Hospitalar Médio Tejo suspende férias a todos os profissionais". O título fez-me recordar uma conversa telefónica que tive com o Aranha no final de Setembro ou princípio de Outubro acerca da chefia da mulher, que é enfermeira na zona Centro do país, ter cortado as férias ao pessoal, mas mantido intactas as suas santas férias de Natal, aproveitando mesmo para fazer uma ponte entre o Natal e o Ano Novo.
Este é, para mim, um dos testes da liderança. Julgo que já escrevi aqui sobre ele por causa de um livro de Simon Sinek, “Leaders eat last”.
O que se pode esperar de alguém que é incapaz de perceber o impacte das suas decisões na moral dos trabalhadores?
Não estou a alinhar com aquela postura de catequese em que se diz que a função A é tão importante quanto a função B. Não acredito que todas as funções sejam igualmente importantes. Todas podem ser necessárias, mas algumas são mais importantes que outras, mas não estou a falar de funções, estou a falar de pessoas.
"The heart of strategy is a matched pair — a place to compete where a company designs an approach that enables it to win. Sadly, most strategic plans do not do so. Rather, they make lists of initiatives which the company will pursue. You’ve seen the lists: improve cost structure, increase innovation, get closer to customers, rationalize IT systems, etc. Because strategy is seen as a collection of initiatives, often these get referred to as ‘strategies.’ I.e., “We have five strategies. They are a, b, c, d, and e.” No. A company doesn’t have five strategies: it has one. A strategy is an integrated set of choices that positions a company to win.
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Lots of people (bless them!) read Playing to Win and find the five-box strategy cascade compelling. But for many, the instinctive reaction is to simply put their list of initiatives into the How-to-Win (HTW) box and call it a Playing to Win Strategy. In general, the items on the list are truly laudable.[Moi ici: Quantas vezes vejo isto...]
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When you see your strategy development effort producing a list of laudable initiatives, keep pushing the thinking until you have a plausible theory of competitive advantage. Your goal should be loftier than just improving. The goal should be to be become better than anybody else: that is, to win — in your chosen space. And when you get to the point of a plausible theory of winning, do a thorough reality check on your Capabilities and Management Systems so that you can move forward with confidence that your strategy is real and actionable, not just a hope, because hope is not a strategy!"
Trechos retirados de "From Laudable List to How to Really Win"
Ontem, guardei este tweet:
Se há coisa que me preocupa desde o início da declaração da pandemia é a pressão para que não haja espírito crítico ou dúvida metódica sobre nada do que se escreve ou diz sobre o vírus, medidas de contenção ou profilaxia.
— Miguel E. (@PilotInComm) November 17, 2020
As certezas não eram bem-vindas na ciência que conhecia.
Um outro tweet mandou-me para aqui:
"Feynman says we learn from science that you must doubt the experts: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says ‘science teaches such and such’, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it”"
Também li isto logo pela manhã:
"If this pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s that experts disagree, nobody has all the answers, and we are mostly making things up as we go. In a crisis it is important to act but even more importantly to learn as we take action. Add in the human factor that some people are always trying to take advantage of any situation and we start to float in a liquid surround of misinformation, propaganda, half-truths, and sometimes utter crap of the post-truth machines.
...
As of yesterday our government started to promote the wearing of non-medical masks in public. Last week our public health experts said that people did not know how to wear masks properly so they should not wear them. Overnight we have become professional mask wearers, as we are all expert hand-washers.
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I am not saying that we should ignore all expert advice. However, we have to think for ourselves every day and help make our networked society smarter. An expert is merely one node in an entangled knowledge network."
Trechos retirados de "entangled thinking"
"I’m haunted by the headline about 47 percent of jobs vanishing by 2035, not just because nobody can make reliable forecasts that far out. Not just because it feels more like PR than anything else. But because it was so quickly absorbed as fact. Instead of appearing unknown, debatable, and uncertain, suddenly the future looked foreclosed. In that guise, it becomes propaganda. When we trade the effort of doubt and debate for the ease of blind faith, we become gullible and exposed, passive and irresponsible observers of our own lives. Worse still, we leave ourselves wide open to those who profit by influencing our behavior, our thinking, and our choices. At that moment, our agency in our own lives is in jeopardy."
Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan.
