sábado, setembro 04, 2021

- Drop your tools!!! Ou porque não era o verdadeiro socialismo

No Twitter volta e meia aparece um tweet sobre o tema "não era o verdadeiro socialismo".

Por exemplo:

Por cá, a erosão mais ou menos rápida que nos coloca a caminho de ser a Sildávia do Ocidente continua:

 c
Por que não se muda?
Por que é que apesar de resultados trágicos as pessoas não mudam?

Há dias comecei a ler um livro de poesia que já aqui citei, "Making Sense of the Organization, Volume 2 - The Impermanent Organization" de Karl E. Weick. Poesia porque tem textos de uma beleza impressionante. Ontem li um capítulo muito interessante: "Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies"

Weick há anos escreveu sobre dois acidentes com bombeiros, aliás foi assim que o conheci no início deste século. Em 1949, e em 1994, um total de 27 bombeiros morreram ao fugir de dois fogos (14 num e 13 no outro). Muitos desses bombeiros morreram a correr a fugir do fogo. No entanto, apesar da fuga desesperada e da sua vida depender da velocidade alcançada, esses bombeiros não largavam as ferramentas, corriam com kg de material, alguns morreram com as pesadas motoserras agarradas às mãos. Por que é que apesar dos chefes e colegas gritarem:

- Drop your tools!!!

Eles foram incapazes de as largar?

Julgo que é a mesma incapacidade de largar "o socialismo" apesar das tragédias e pobreza que gera.
"dropping one’s tools to gain speed in life - threatening conditions is tougher than it looks.
...
Suffering occurs when people become attached to impermanent things that disappear in a changing world. In a world of ceaseless change, no tool, including the tool of an organized form, is indispensable. To take impermanence seriously is to recognize that, ‘In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is acquired; In pursuit of wisdom, every day something is dropped.’ (Lao Tzu). Wisdom is the acceptance that things of the world go away.
If we do drop our tools, then what are we left with? Why is wisdom a possible byproduct of dropping? Consider the tools of traditional rationality as expressed in the rational actor model. Those tools presume that the world is stable, knowable, and predictable. To set aside some of those tools is not to give up complete reliance on the tools that are ill-suited to the impermanent, the unknowable, and the unpredictable. To drop some tools of rationality is to gain access to lightness and wisdom in the form of intuitions, feelings, stories, improvisation, experience, imagination, active listening, awareness in the moment, and empathy.
...
tools preclude ways of acting. If you preclude ways of acting, then you preclude ways of seeing. If you drop tools, then ideas have more free play. 
...
The reluctance to drop one’s tools when threat intensifies is not just a problem for firefighters.
...
Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility, in short, for many of the dramas that engage organizational scholars. It is the very unwillingness of people to drop their tools that turns some of these dramas into tragedies.
...
Explanations for the Failure to Drop Tools
There are at least ten reasons why firefighters in both incidents may have failed to drop their tools:
1. Listening. There is some evidence that the sheer roar of the fire precluded people from hearing the order to drop their tools and run.
...
2. Justification. People persist when they are given no clear reasons to change.
...
3. Trust. People persist when they don’t trust the person who tells them to change.
...
4. Control. ... knowledge of cause-effect relations
...
5. Skill at dropping. People may keep their tools because they don’t know how to drop them. I know how absurd that sounds. But think again.
...
6. Skill with replacement activity. People may keep their familiar tools in a frightening situation because an unfamiliar alternative, such as deploying a fire shelter, is even more frightening.
...
7. Failure. To drop one’s tools may be to admit failure. To retain one’s tools is to postpone this admission and to feel that one is still in it and still winning.
...
8. Social dynamics. People in a line may hold onto their tools as a result of social dynamics such as pluralistic ignorance.
...
9. Consequences. People will not drop their tools if they believe that doing so won’t make much difference.
...
10. Identity. Finally, implicit in the idea that people can drop their tools is the assumption that tools and people are distinct, separable, and dissimilar. But fires are not fought with bodies and bare hands, they are fought with tools that are often distinctive trademarks of firefighters and central to their identity. Firefighting tools define the firefighter’s group membership, they are the firefighter’s reason for being deployed in the first place, they create capability, they are given the same care that the firefighters themselves get (e.g., tools are collected and sharpened after every shift), and they are meaningful artifacts that define the culture. Given the central role of tools in defining the essence of a firefighter, it is not surprising that dropping one’s tools creates an existential crisis. Without my tools, who am I? A coward? A fool? The fusion of tools with identities means that under conditions of threat, it makes no more sense to drop one’s tools than to drop one’s pride. Tools and identities form a unity without seams or separable elements."
Daí que seja mais fácil interpretar os factos como:
  • não era verdadeiro socialismo;
  • é por causa do embargo americano;
  • a causa da terceira vinda do FMI foi externa; 
  • a culpa foi do Passos
Joaquim Aguiar costuma escrever que não se pode seguir em frente sem primeiro reconhecer os erros do passado. Por isso, ele usa a metáfora das rotundas. O país está numa rotunda há mais de 20 anos, focado na distribuição de riqueza que é gerada por outros povos e que se transforma em dívida para as gerações de escravos no futuro.

E eu, que ferramentas tenho largado?
Ao longo da minha vida acredito ter feito uma transição pessoal importante, embora ainda não completa, para apreciar e até abraçar a impermanência e a incerteza. Daí que alguns no Twitter me vejam como negacionista, quando na verdade o que tento ser é não crente em verdades absolutas. Por exemplo, duvido da validade real, na prevenção de infecções, de algo como um certificado de vacinação. Duvido, até que fique convencido, que realmente um vacinado transmite menos que um não vacinado.  
Outra transição em curso na minha vida? Cada vez me convenço mais que a União Europeia é mais perniciosa para Portugal do que benéfica, os políticos deste país montaram um "modelo de negócio" em que o país vive à custa de esmola, atrás de esmola. É como se a União Europeia fosse o novo ouro do Brasil, gerando toda uma mentalidade e comportamentos doentios.
Outra transição em curso na minha vida? Esta é mais recente e ainda está a dar os primeiros passos. A leitura de "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War" realmente abriu uma brecha na minha crença na bondade das economias abertas. Não falo a nível do país, mas do bloco económico em que se insere. Perceber porque é que Ricardo defendeu as ideias que defendeu, quando a Inglaterra era o único país industrializado. Perceber como é que os americanos passaram de um estado agrícola para um estado industrial... sim, o senhor Reinert pôs cá uma semente.

sexta-feira, setembro 03, 2021

A sério?! Não percebe?!

Ontem, no comentário matinal, Camilo Lourenço disse que não percebia esta reacção da hotelaria, "Hotéis em Portugal sobem preços em 20% na pandemia. 5 estrelas têm o maior aumento".

A sério?! Não percebe?!

Primeiro, não é uma reacção portuguesa:

"Mas a tendência de aumento generalizados dos custos por noite não se ficou por Portugal. O estudo da Mabrian Technologies comparou os preços de 73 mil quartos, anunciado no Booking, Expedia e TripAdvisor, em cinco destinos no Mediterrâneo (Grécia, Itália, Espanha, Portugal e Turquia) e concluiu que a maioria dos países aumentaram os custos face aos valores pré-covid."

Segundo, os custos unitários da oferta aumentaram:

  • novas actividades tiveram de ser realizadas (segurança Covid);
  • os custos fixos tiveram de ser distribuídos por um menor número de clientes.
Terceiro, talvez o ponto mais importante, a elasticidade da procura durante a pandemia:
  • durante a pandemia quem recorria a hotéis não o fazia de ânimo leve, precisava mesmo de o fazer.

quinta-feira, setembro 02, 2021

"impermanent organization"

Uns falam em direitos adquiridos. 

Quem os suporta?

Ontem comecei a ler um texto que alguns considerarão subversivo, "Making Sense of the Organization, Volume 2 - The Impermanent Organization" de Karl E. Weick.

"Suppose we took seriously the idea that ‘Organization is a temporarily stabilized event cluster’.

...

The shorthand for this transient social order with a slower rate of change is the ‘impermanent organization.

...

people build recurrence into portions of ongoing experience by means of texts, conversations, and interdependent activity. The result is that the rate of change in these more organized portions is slowed and therefore feels relatively stable. Change is slowed but it does not stop completely. Recurrent patterns can lose their shape, they can become obsolete, and the pattern can shift each time it is redone.

...

Organization resides between smoke and crystal just as it resides between conversation and text. Organization is talked into existence when portions of smoke - like conversation are preserved in crystal - like texts that are then articulated by agents speaking on behalf of an emerging collectivity. Repetitive cycles of texts, conversations, and agents define and modify one another and jointly organize everyday life.

...

If we reinvoke the image of smoke and crystal, attempted anchoring by means of organizing is a move away from the impermanence of smoke toward the permanence of crystal. That movement, however, is slowed and counteracted by conditions such as continuing change, reorganizing, forgetting, and adaptation. All of these limit efforts to establish permanence. Organization, therefore, embodies continuing tension in the form of simultaneous pulls toward smoke and crystal. Under such dynamic conditions of continuous rise and fall, it makes sense to study processes of organizing and to treat organization as a reification in the service of stabilizing an event cluster.

Organizations struggle to preserve the illusion of permanence and to keep surprise at a minimum. People create fictions of permanence by means of practices such as long - term planning, strategy, reification of temporary structures, justification, investments in buildings and technology, and acting as if formal reporting relationships are stable."

E pensei o quanto tanta gente está afastada desta realidade... o quanto tanta gente não percebe que "A estabilidade é uma ilusão!":


"a growing emphasis in organizational theory on ‘the acquired ability to create viable realities from equivocal circumstances and to use informed judgment to negotiate prudent courses of action through the realities created’. The ‘creation of viable realities ’ is a continuing activity which means that no one reality is permanent. The ‘wisdom’ of impermanence lies in not clinging to that which will vanish anyway. It also lies in accepting the necessity to reaccomplish realities that seemed to be stable and in action that reflects an awareness of incomplete information, action that blends knowledge with ignorance.

...

Impermanence forces people to redo patterns that keep falling apart. To organize is to reaccomplish a sequence of acts and get them to recur. Recurrence is the source of order and redoing is the means to preserve that order. Labeling imposes order, but often at a cost. When organizations generalize and compound their abstractions, they put increasing distance between direct perceptions of continuous flow and indirect recasting of those perceptions into discrete conceptions. The benefits of compounded abstractions are that they facilitate shared images and allow collective coping. The cost of compounded abstractions is that people lose sight of differences that make a difference. Discarding is about the practice of dropping one’s tools in order to adapt to changed circumstances. Discarding reverses the compounding of abstractions and moves closer to mindful perception of change. Enacting reiterates the basic notion that people organize and create the environments that provide many of their constraints and opportunities. Enacting resembles improvisation, albeit ‘wary improvisation’ lest the order already achieved be entirely abandoned. Believing recapitulates many of the dynamics already suggested by our quick gloss of the word ‘faith.’ However, believing is more than faith. In the face of ceaseless change, people who organize strive for simultaneous belief and doubt since change is not total. Today’s truth may be partially false tomorrow. [Moi ici: Pimenta Machado sorriu] Finally, substantiating points to organizing as ongoing efforts to hold collective action together despite a relentless flurry of interruption and recovery."

Recordo um texto escrito algures no blogue sobre os terramotos na Indonésia e sobre o impacte que terão no mindset cultural sobre a estabilidade. Vou procurá-lo...

Ui! Não imaginava que fosse de Agosto de 2007:

"Acredito que temos de encarar o futuro como algo a construir e não como algo pelo qual se aguarda. No entanto, a realidade é uma corrente muito poderosa, por vezes imprevisível. Às vezes penso na mente das pessoas que vivem em regiões, como a Indonésia, frequentemente assoladas por terramotos, essas pessoas terão certamente uma visão do mundo bem diferente da nossa independentemente da cultura. Tudo nos leva, tudo nos encaminha para uma enganadora confiança na linearidade dos acontecimentos, e depois, quando menos se espera "PUM"." 

Espera... há outro texto, este de Fevereiro de 2007... engraçado, já na altura falava sobre direitos adquiridos:

"Num mundo instável, incerto, com intervenientes a entrar e a sair do campo de jogo, com várias balizas espalhadas, com n equipas, cada uma seguindo regras, mais ou menos iguais, ou mais ou menos diferentes, até que aparece outra com novas regras, verdadeiros cortes epistemológicos. umas equipas a jogar à defesa, outras ao ataque, ainda outras só em certas partes do terreno,...

... ou seja, uma verdadeira confusão. E é imersos nessa confusão que nós humanos arrogantes, criamos as nossas sociedades e instituições.

Vivemos, no dia-a-dia, convictos da estabilidade do mundo, da perenidade dos direitos garantidos, como se o mundo nos devesse tudo. Ainda hoje, as ilhas Molucas, na Indonésia, foram sacudidas por um terramoto. Um terramoto é uma força da natureza que arrasa a nossa crença na ilusão da segurança e estabilidade, e como não podemos culpar, nem os deuses, nem o Outro, o terramoto remete-nos para a afirmação mais famosa do ex-primeiro ministro Guterres "É a vida". É a vida, e a vida não é justa nem injusta, é a vida.

Ao reconhecer cada vez mais que o mundo é uma confusão, é uma "mess" (como dizem os ingleses), há duas opções: ou ir ao sabor da corrente, experimentar uns palpites, deixar-se conduzir pelos acontecimentos, o mundo é que manda; ou, tal como um castor, construir umas barragens, umas ilhotas de estabilidade pontual, construir e voltar a construir, para voltar a construir novamente (ou porque são destruídas pela corrente, ou porque a experiência nos ensinou uma nova técnica de construção, mais robusta).[Moi ici: Pareço Weick]

Daí que quando ouço alguém falar de direitos adquiridos, compreendo cada vez melhor o quão diferentes somos, não só geneticamente mas também quando comparamos cosmovisões."

quarta-feira, setembro 01, 2021

"Lives of quiet desperation" (parte II)

Parte I.

Tweet publicado na sequência da leitura de "Da EFACEC". 

Não escrevo estas coisas porque tenho mau feitio, mas porque tenho um blogue desde 2004. Comecei a escrever o blogue com o propósito de funcionar como um auxiliar de memória (depois a criação tomou vida própria, mas isso é outra estória). E ter memória é um castigo dos Deuses (diziam os gregos antigos).

Nas notícias:

Ao mesmo tempo no blogue:
BTW, gastar dinheiro em inovação não é o mesmo que ter retorno em vantagens competitivas decorrentes de factores inovadores. Recordar de Dezembro de 2015 nas notícias, "Inovação. Efacec. Duplo ataque em I&D". Ainda uma última questão, qual terá sido a rentabilidade deste negócio "Efacec exporta transformadores recorde para os Estados Unidos"?

Antes da compra da Efacec por Isabel dos Santos a empresa tinha uma orientação estratégica mais virada para os Estados Unidos. Depois da compra, como refiro nos textos do blogue, mudou de orientação estratégica e virou-se para África. Escrevi que era uma decisão legítima, mas representava uma decisão virada para o preço e para produtos maduros, não novidades tecnológicas. É por aí que começam os cortes. A verdade é que antes de Isabel dos Santos, a Efacec dava prejuízo, e com ela começou a dar lucro. Por causa da empresa? Ou por causa da sua nova dona? Recordar de Maio de 2017, "Angola torna-se o maior mercado externo da Efacec". O que fazia o pai de Isabel dos Santos até Setembro de 2017? Ouso parafrasear o ainda CEO da Efacec, que em Julho de 2016 afirmava "Ângelo Ramalho: “Notoriedade de Isabel dos Santos é uma mais-valia”". 

Talvez a mais-valia da Efacec, antes de Setembro de 2017, fosse mesmo a sua proprietária. You know what I mean...

E volto à citação e à estupefacção de há um ano:
"Lives of quiet desperation. 
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation" 

"os comentadores do regime alinhavam com o governo e diziam amém a duas nacionalizações. Nem uma voz contra, nem uma voz a desdizer a narrativa oficial sobre a EFACEC ou sobre a TAP.

Mais dinheiro impostado aos contribuintes torrado em delírios da corte lisboeta. Mais pedras no saco às costas das empresas que têm de fazer corridas com empresas de outros países com governos menos atreitos a orgias socialistas.

Isto nunca vai ter fim, este país nem com 5 troikas vai mudar. Ingenuidade pensar que a UE nos ia proteger...

A 1 de Setembro de 2007 no Expresso, Daniel Bessa escreveu:

"... faltou sempre o dinheiro que o "Portugal profundo" preferiu gastar na "ajuda" a "empresas em situação económica difícil"..."

Estão a ver como se caminha para ser a Sildávia do Ocidente sob o aplauso e beneplácito do comentariado nacional?


Reparem no salto da Roménia, da Polónia, da Lituânia e da Letónia...



Clientes versus concorrentes

Há dias citei aqui e comentei:

It is axiomatic that a first step in a firm's formulation of competitive strategy is the identification of its major competitors (e.g., Porter, 1980). [Moi ici: Não penso assim, não sigo este axioma. Tenho receio dos Dick Dastardly desta vida, e dos motards. Prefiro imaginar uma paisagem competitiva cheia de picos. Prefiro começar por determinar quem são os clientes-alvo e qual o ecossistema que deve ser mobilizado para os seduzir, satisfazer e desenvolver]

Entretanto, ontem li "Research in Cognition and Strategy: Reflections on Two Decades of Progress and a Look to the Future" de Sarah Kaplan e publicado no Journal of Management Studies 48:3 May 2011, e voltei a pensar no mesmo tema. A autora faz um trabalho muito interessante a descrever a evolução da investigação sobre as categorias de conhecimento. Outra vez um foco na categorização dos concorrentes. Por exemplo:

"Firms from other parts of the UK and other countries, even if they produced fully-fashioned knitwear at similar price points, were seen as being in different businesses or only ‘somewhat’ competitors

...

‘Cognitive oligopolies’ exist because competitors define each other as such.

...

They showed that managers based their categorization of competitors on a hierarchical understanding of the product offerings

...

Managers of larger hotels categorized competitors over a wider range of prices than did those of small hotels

...

The Scottish knitwear study showed how the categorization of different competitors as direct rivals affected the strategic choices and actions of firms."

Enquanto lia isto pensava em como seria se os autores citados tivesse optado por trabalhar com base na categorização dos clientes. À noite fui à minha biblioteca e saquei o meu velho "Managing for Results" de Peter Drucker, publicado em 1986 e fui ao capítulo 6, "The Customer Is the Business" ... continua tão actual e tão fresco:

"Business is a process which converts a resource, distinct knowledge, into a contribution of economic value in the marketplace. The purpose of a business is to create a customer. [Moi ici: O propósito não é o de ganhar aos concorrentes] The purpose is to provide something for which an independent outsider, who can choose not to buy, is willing to exchange his purchasing power. And knowledge alone  (excepting only the case of the complete monopoly) gives the products of any business that leadership position on which success and survival ultimately depend.

...

1. What the people in the business think they know about customer and market is more likely to be wrong than right. There is only one person who really knows: the customer. Only by asking the customer, by watching him, by trying to understand his behavior can one find out who he is, what he does, how he buys, how he uses what he buys, what he expects, what he values, and so on.

2. The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a “product.” What is paid for is satisfactions. But nobody can make or supply satisfactions as such—at best, only the means to attaining them can be sold and delivered.

...

3. A corollary is that the goods or services which the manufacturer sees as direct competitors rarely adequately define what and whom he is really competing with. They cover both too much and too little.

...

Because the customer buys satisfaction, all goods and services compete intensively with goods and services that look quite different, seem to serve entirely different functions, are made, distributed, sold differently—but are alternative means for the customer to obtain the same satisfaction.

...

5. The customers have to be assumed to be rational. But their rationality is not necessarily that of the manufacturer; it is that of their own situation."

terça-feira, agosto 31, 2021

Curiosidade do dia

Comecei em 2008 a utilizar esta metáfora - A caminho da Sildávia.

Impressionante:




Assimetria e dizer uma coisa e fazer outra

 

Como exilado do mundo da Engenharia para o mundo da Gestão, não passo de um autodidacta. Por isso, muitas vezes ao longo dos anos, dei conta aqui no blogue do meu desconserto entre o que lia e ouvia nos media e não só, e a realidade que encontrava no meu trabalho.


Recordo, a título de exemplo:

Ainda ontem, ao ler “Research in Cognition and Strategy: Reflections on Two Decades of Progress and a Look to the Future” de Sarah Kaplan e publicado em Journal of Management Studies 48:3 May 2011 sublinhei as seguintes passagens:

“The cognitive perspective suggested that the environment is not purely exogenous and therefore organizational response to the environment is mediated by the interpretations made of that environment by managers. Cognitive researchers pointed out that this is particularly true because of the uncertainties and complexities of the environment that decision-makers faced. … cognitive frames are the means by which managers could make sense of the environment, and such sensemaking shapes strategic choice and action.

to address a challenge in the strategic management literature posed by asymmetries within industries. [Moi ici: Outro tema recorrente aqui no blogue, existe mais variabilidade dentro de um sector de actividade do que entre sectores de actividade] There was an emerging critique of the tendency (escalated by the publication of Michael Porter’s 1980 book on competitive strategy and industry analysis) to focus strategic analysis at the industry level. Thomas and others suggested that such a high-level grouping omitted asymmetries within industries that could explain outcomes”

O artigo de Sarah Kaplan parte dos 20 anos da publicação do artigo "Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities: The Case of Scottish Knitwear Manufacturers" publicado no Journal of Management Studies em Julho de 1989”, e que citei recentemente.

 

O artigo de 1989 refere 17 empresas escolhidas numa zona da Escócia onde se produziam peças de lã clássicas e de elevada qualidade. Sorri ao ler o artigo pois via retratada uma hipótese competitiva que me é muito querida. Estes fabricantes escoceses de malhas definiram seu negócio como a produção de pulôveres de cashmere e casacos de lã de alta qualidade. Elegeram como consumidores-alvo a nata dos consumidores endinheirados e, criaram um modelo de negócio onde lidavam com agentes e lojas focadas nesse tipo de cliente.

 

Entretanto, em Maio de 2011, no mesmo volume onde Sarah Kaplan publicou o seu artigo, os autores do artigo de 1989 publicaram uma revisitação ao seu artigo de 1989. Nele pode-se ler:

“The question, of course, was whether this focused strategy and definition of the market was a source of competitive advantage or disadvantage. Strategy and organizational theories could no doubt support either conclusion, and our own observations in Hawick provided good grist for considering both possibilities. The Hawick producers were financially successful during the 1980s, and, indeed, we had chosen to study them because of their success. However, a third outcome from our research was the nascent empirical intuition that most of these firms were on borrowed time, and that some had already entered the downward spiral of self-reinforcing decline that Baden-Fuller and Stopford (1992) argued is a central dynamic of a ‘mature’ business. We worked hard in writing the 1989 paper to be as neutral as possible in telling the Hawick story, and thus did not take a stand on the liabilities or advantages of the sector's strong business identity. But, it was pretty clear to us back then that the ‘Hawick Mind’, as we called it, had become more of a liability than a source of spirited innovation in the industry.

The cues were all around us. Hawick Managing Directors spoke proudly about their firms' skill in providing retail customers with flexible small lot production runs. But, when we spoke with these very same customers, they said just the opposite, and remarked that they often had to bargain hard to get their preferred garments delivered on time. And, the production flexibility that managers said existed in the industry was betrayed by the large work-in-process inventories that we observed in many Hawick factories.

Unfortunately, our quiet intuition in 1989 has largely been borne out in subsequent industry developments during the past twenty years. The Gross Value Added of output from the Scottish textile sector decreased by half from 1995 to 2005 (Scottish Executive, 2005), with clothing output declining even more. The Borders knitwear industry, in particular, has significantly shed employment in its ongoing efforts to rationalize production and align with a lower revenue base. Between 1981 and 1998, industry employment declined by over 40 per cent, and has dropped even more in the past decade (Scottish Parliament, 2000). Dawson International, the confident leader of the industry in 1989, has divested many of its operating companies and dismantled the vertically integrated production system that was the hallmark of the company's corporate strategy. Iconic Hawick firms such as Pringles, Peter Scott, and Ballantyne have been sold to Asian and Italian rivals, merged with other brands, or taken into administration. Many smaller producers have permanently closed their doors as well. And, as jobs and tax revenue have disappeared, the community of Hawick has struggled to adapt to the changing economics of the region. A 2004 article in The Scotsman referred to the town as a ‘third world economy’ because of the loss of high paying jobs and the displacement of skilled workers (Chisholm, 2004). To be fair, some firms in Hawick are still doing well, and a recent report on local cashmere production suggests that the worst of the decline may be over and that there is still a viable export business for ‘. . . a flexible, innovative and dynamic cashmere industry which is focused on high quality, niche markets’ (Scottish Enterprise, 2007, p. 37). Then again, the report's recommended actions – i.e. ‘effective brand development’, ‘design creativity and flair’, ‘high quality’, and ‘not competing on price’ (p. 38) – were exactly the same goals of the industry twenty years ago.

This last point, we believe, reinforces our fourth, and perhaps most important, observation coming out of the Scottish study: the cognitive and material aspects of the knitwear industry (indeed, all industries) are thickly interwoven. It seems to us that it is this intermingling that makes strategic imagination, innovation, and new ways of acting so difficult, and the downward spiral of mature businesses so problematic.”

 

E isto faz-me seguir duas linhas de pensamento:

  • O paradoxo de Ícaro, recentemente referido no blogue
  • E, sobretudo uma linha desencadeada por:

“The cues were all around us. Hawick Managing Directors spoke proudly about their firms' skill in providing retail customers with flexible small lot production runs. But, when we spoke with these very same customers, they said just the opposite, and remarked that they often had to bargain hard to get their preferred garments delivered on time. And, the production flexibility that managers said existed in the industry was betrayed by the large work-in-process inventories that we observed in many Hawick factories”

 

Esta é uma linha de pensamento triste... a realidade não existe, a realidade é o que seleccionamos, vêmos e pensamos dela, nada mais. Quantas vezes um empresário adopta uma estratégia e, de boa-fé ilude-se porque só tem acesso ao feedback que reforça o seu pensamento. Por outro lado, quantas vezes um empresário adopta uma estratégia facialmente, mas por trás toma decisões deliberadas que a minam, porque se acha mais esperto que os outros, porque acha que pode vender gato por lebre. Há dias estava a pensar num empresário que está a seguir este caminho e pensei nos anfíbios que andam por terra, mas quando sentem perigo fogem para a água a toda a velocidade. Aqui a água é a recordação de um tempo anterior onde se sentia à vontade e tinha bons resultados. O que é interessante, é a falta de coragem para assumir abertamente as escolhas feitas. Parece que aguarda, estilo governo com a TAP quando começou a pandemia, que a evolução dos acontecimentos torne inevitável as escolhas que já fez, mas não tem coragem de verbalizar.

segunda-feira, agosto 30, 2021

Qual o impacte disto?

Há dias citei:

"the word ‘strategy’ derives from the Ancient Greek position of ‘strategos’. The image that the Greeks liked to use to convey the skill of a great strategos was that of the kubernetes – the helmsperson on an inshore fighting ship. The kubernetes’ skill lay in his recognizing that because he could not make waves he had to passively accept the currents, but at the same time he was active working the rudders so as to change direction within the parameters of what was possible."

Ontem publiquei um relato sobre a disrupção nas cadeias de fornecimento.

Hoje, durante a caminhada matinal, li "Shipping chaos gives top importers ‘massive competitive edge’":

"The largest importers are paying far lower freight rates than smaller importers, the playing field is becoming increasingly uneven, and foreign ocean carriers are in position to pick the American import sector’s winners and losers.

“We’re seeing a price differential of $15,000 [per forty-foot equivalent unit or FEU] between the lowest short-term price in the [trans-Pacific] market and the top price,”

...

“That implies a huge competitive advantage for established players, which has consequences across the economy and for everyday life, and also, from a point of view of lowering competition and increasing barriers to entry for future competitors.”

Patrik Berglund, CEO of Xeneta, added, “Everybody’s seeing price increases but … being really big is really a massive competitive edge in this market.”

...

“To put this price differential of $15,000 into context, last year, it was $500.”"

Qual o impacte disto no próximo Natal? 

Qual o impacte disto nos preços para os consumidores? 

Qual o impacte disto no campo de possibilidades para os produtores na proximidade dos centros de consumo?

Como minimizar, ou como aproveitar o dominó de situações gerado por este evento? 

Que realidades podem ser criadas?

domingo, agosto 29, 2021

"ou passará a ser uma doce recordação de um passado que não volta?"

"The vision for the future of organization studies created for me by La Condition PoMo is contained in the aphorism that 'it is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable'. [Moi ici: Interessante frase... nestes tempos em que dizemos que as empresas não fornecem nem produtos nem serviços, mas recursos que as as pessoas empregam para atingir um resultado nas suas vidas] To date, our field has largely assumed itself to be a supplier of reality. This has produced twin problems. First, the bloody stuff was devilishly difficult to obtain; we have far less inventory than the optimistic prediction of theorists up to about 1970 would have led us to expect. Second, it appears that reality is a highly perishable commodity, at least when the reality pertains to the constructed web of interpersonal, institutional and discursive threads with which organizing is accomplished. In a rapidly changing world, what little reality we have stockpiled will do more good if we are asked to consult to Cadbury's or Ford in 1930 than if we are asked to 'predict and control' the interactions of a Japanese firm engaged in a virtual relationship with Indonesian manufacturers using smart technologies to produce intangible goods for African-Americans living in Montreal in the year 2000."

BTW, o WSJ de sexta-feira passada trazia um artigo, "Your Hot Tub and the Snarled Supply Chain", sobre uma empresa que fabrica banheiras de hidromassagens:

"The global supply chain is an intricate ballet of container ships, airplanes, trucks and trains. The coronavirus pandemic threw it out of whack. This is why you often can’t buy the goods you want.

Hot-tub maker Bullfrog Spas saw demand soar as homebound consumers upgraded their backyards. Yet its supply chain spans thousands of miles across continents and oceans. On a typical day, its Herriman, Utah, factory takes delivery of 40,000 gallons of chemicals, 400 sheets of plastic and up to 60,000 additional components."

 É impressionante, o artigo descreve ao pormenor a origem de toda uma série de componentes e subpartes do todo. É mesmo um bailado a convidar uma catadupa de riscos para também participarem. Por exemplo:

"WATER PUMP - Electric motors from China are assembled into water pumps in Tijuana, Mexico, and trucked to Utah. The pandemic has snarled both container shipping and trucking. Bullfrog and its suppliers now have meetings as much as daily, instead of monthly, to figure out solutions."

Ao fim dos primeiros parágrafos o que me veio à cabeça foi a primeira descrição que recordo, talvez de Peter Drucker, sobre o que era a NASA nos gloriosos anos 60, uma organização de reuniões, aqui sem conotação negativa, para alinhar milhares de fornecedores e subcontratados, a NASA se bem me lembro não construia os foguetões, subcontratava a sua construção.

Há cerca de um mês um empresário de calçado contou-me que um cliente na África do Sul optou por transportar a nova colecção de avião e não arriscar com os habituais contentores marítimos.

"CABINET - Material for the exterior cabinets is made near Shanghai, China, moved on container ships to the ports of Long Beach or Oakland in California, and then trucked to Utah.

Port slowdowns in China have stalled the exit of goods, and in California, shortages of staff and equipment have held up unloading. More recently, the crush of catch-up and pre-holiday orders has overwhelmed shippers.

Early this year, a ship carrying the cabinet pieces was held up off the West Coast waiting to unload-often dozens of ships at a time had to wait for port space. Bullfrog paid to transport cabinet materials from China by plane to Utah."

O que é a realidade, o que é concebível? Em que condições o inconcebível se torna realidade? Que implicações terão a vivência destas experiências? Voltaremos a um estado de "aparente equilibrio" ou passará a ser uma doce recordação de um passado que não volta. [Não tem nada a ver com o que escrevi neste postal, mas fica o registo, a propósito de recordações. Na primeira auditoria que fiz a uma empresa de calçado, durante a auditoria à gestão de topo, dou com um dos sócios a contar-me como era bela a vida para eles no tempo do escudo e da desvalorização programada, ("crawling peg" se bem me lembro), a certa altura o sócio ficou com os olhos humedecidos] 

Trecho retirado de "Classic Review The Empire Strikes Out: Lyotard's Postmodern Condition and the Need for a Necrology of Knowledge'" de Roy Jacques.

sábado, agosto 28, 2021

Vivemos neste fluido de percepções

Atrai-me esta percepção que vivemos num mundo assente neste fluido de percepções resultantes de interpretações subjectivas que se objectificam através de acções e comportamentos. Abre muito mais alternativas, aliás, há sempre alternativas. Nós é que podemos não querer tentar algumas delas, mesmo quando as outras falham. No caso das empresas, o dinheiro pode acabar antes de termos tentado a que ia transitoriamente resultar. Já não sei se foi com Kahneman ou Gigerenzer que li sobre como dois adeptos de clubes diferentes, de boa-fé, conseguem olhar para a mesma realidade e ver coisas diferentes. Por isso, um deles escreveu: a realidade é o que vemos, nada mais! 

E o que vemos é o que o nosso trajecto de vida nos permite ver. Se estivermos abertos e atentos, podemos intuir novas possibilidades de interpretar a realidade e reformular a actuação.

"In this article we argue that one important link between group-level and firm-level competitive phenomena are the mental models used by key decision makers to interpret the task environment of their organization.

...

material decisions ultimately reflect the intuition and cognitive constructions of decision-makers. At a cognitive level, business competition must be analysed in terms of the mental models of decision-makers and how such mental models lead to a particular interpretation of the competitive milieu.

...

The interpretive approach rests upon four long-standing assumptions. First, activities and structures of organizations are assumed to be determined in part by the micro-momentary actions of their members. Second, such actions are assumed to be based upon an information-processing sequence in which individuals attend to cues in the environment, interpret the meaning of such cues, and then externalize these interpretations via concrete activities. Third, it is assumed that 'meaning' is problematic, and that individuals must construct actively an interpretation by linking received cues with well-learned and/or developing cognitive structures. Finally, individuals are assumed to possess a reflective capability such that they are able to verbalize at least the contents of their interpretations if not the processes through which such interpretations were generated. Taken together, these four assumptions portray human activity as an ongoing input-output cycle in which subjective interpretations of externally situated information become themselves objectified via behaviour.

...

Through processes of induction, problem-solving, and reasoning, decision-makers construct a mental model of the competitive environment which consists minimally of two types of beliefs; beliefs about the identity of the firm, its competitors, suppliers and customers, and causal beliefs about what it takes to compete successfully within the environment which has been identified. 

...

Just as mental models are determined by cues from transactions within the value chain, such transactions are themselves partially determined by the cognitive constructions of organizational decision-makers. Beliefs about the identity of competitors, suppliers, and customers focus the limited attentional resources of decision-makers on some transactional partners to the exclusion of others.

...

the strategic choices of individual firms take place within the context of many shared beliefs about how and with whom to engage in transactions in the marketplace.

...

It is axiomatic that a first step in a firm's formulation of competitive strategy is the identification of its major competitors (e.g., Porter, 1980). [Moi ici: Não penso assim, não sigo este axioma. Tenho receio dos Dick Dastardly desta vida, e dos motards. Prefiro imaginar uma paisagem competitiva cheia de picos. Prefiro começar por determinar quem são os clientes-alvo e qual o ecossistema que deve ser mobilizado para os seduzir, satisfazer e desenvolver]

Trechos retirados de "Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities: The Case of Scottish Knitwear Manufacturers" publicado no Journal of Management Studies em Julho de 1989.



sexta-feira, agosto 27, 2021

Nichos, problemas e ofertas

Interessante ter apanhado este artigo de Seth Godin, "Which problem are we solving?":
"Solving a problem puts value creation first.

Who’s it for?

What problem does it solve?

Would we miss it if you didn’t build it?"

Quando ainda tenho este outro no bornal, "Steve Blank Your Product is Not Their Problem": 

"“So why should anybody in the concrete industry care? Do you really think they’re looking for bacteria made in fluidized bed reactors? Do you think there are a significant number whose number one issue is to buy bacteria? Do you know what if any of the features you mentioned actually matter to a potential customer?” There was silence for a moment. And then he said, “I don’t know.”

I wasn’t completely surprised because as a young marketeer, I made this mistake all the time – thinking that my product was a solution to someone’s problem  – without ever understanding what problems the customers really had. And that I needed to have all the answers when in fact I didn’t even understand the questions."

Este outro também relevante para o tema, "Niching Down For Success": 

"Talk about niching down! She’s found a lot of success focusing on this slice of the wedding market and recommends you get just as granular. 

...

niching down allows you to get really good at the details. ... When you master your niche, you will naturally get really good at recognizing the small but impactful details that make you stand out."

A diferença entre "Think “outcome before output”"



quinta-feira, agosto 26, 2021

A realidade não existe

Apanhei um capítulo interessante, mais um, em “Images of Strategy”, o capítulo 12, “Strategy as Numbers”.

Já escrevi aqui muitas vezes que gosto de olhar para o lucro não como um objectivo, mas como uma consequência, para minimizar a tomada de decisões orientadas para o curto-prazo. Esta abordagem, no limite, escreve o autor, pode fazer crer que o motor é a estratégia quando o motor tem de ser o lucro. Sem lucro uma empresa não existe, não tem futuro, não é viável, depende de terceiros além dos clientes, depende de Pedros Nunos e Sizas Vieiras.

A verdade é que gosto de começar os projectos relacionados com a estratégia pela tal visão concreta, em detrimento da abstracta, "Do concreto para o abstracto e não o contrário".

O que significa começar pela vantagem competitiva? Responder à pergunta: como é que esta organização pode ter lucro? Em que teoria podemos visualizar esta organização a ter lucro?

Confesso que não me recordo de já ter pensado assim, desta forma estratégia é organizar, é concatenar esforços e prioridades alinhadas com a teoria inicial sobre como a empresa pode dar lucro.

BTW, no capítulo 9, “Strategy as Systems Thinking”, os autores citam tanto os textos de Humberto Maturana que resolvi ir à fonte e ler alguns. O que  me pôs a divagar para algo como: se a realidade existe ou não é irrelevante, nunca o saberemos e nunca a vamos conhecer, estamos condenados a viver com as representações da realidade que conseguimos criar. 

Diferentes observadores da realidade captam coisas diferentes e, por isso, fazem diferentes interpretações da realidade. Desta forma, ainda que exista uma realidade, diferentes observadores terão sempre a sua própria representação da realidade. Basta imaginar como um portista ou um benfiquista interpretam uma queda do Conceição, ou um fora de jogo do Yaremchuk. Cada um, de boa-fé, vê o que aconteceu de forma diferente ponto.

Assim, um consultor não deve chegar para apresentar “a estratégia” que vai dar a volta à organização. Só pode aspirar a tentar co-construir com a empresa uma teoria na qual se revejam e que permita aspirar a ter lucro. Entregar numa bandeja uma estratégia que as pessoas não conseguem interpretar é crime! 

quarta-feira, agosto 25, 2021

"sales rank among the less efficient and less effective functions in most companies"

"More Effective Sales Activities
My decades-long experience tells me that sales rank among the less efficient and less effective functions in most companies. Perhaps that is inevitable because there is a participant in the sales process that cannot be controlled like a machine: the customer. Sales efficiency means that the best possible sales result is achieved with the available resources. Effectiveness means that sales do the right thing. The “right thing” is ultimately the achievement of profit, which depends on sales volume and price. Sales also influence costs, directly through its own expenses and also through obligations that sales agree to in the negotiations.
In our projects, we see over and over that sales teams have many levers they can pull to achieve higher volumes and generate higher profits. That long list starts with increasing the effective time that the salespeople spend with customers. That often accounts only for 15% of their time. The list also includes administrative tasks that are often done by hand instead of with modern information technology. Another bottleneck is improving the skills of the salespeople so that they can sell on the basis of value communication, not through price concessions. Many companies, if not most, incentivize their sales teams to achieve revenue, not profit. When this incentive structure applies to teams with price negotiation authority, one can assume that the team will maximize revenue, and probably sales volume, but will almost certainly not achieve the highest possible profit.
Profit-oriented leadership of the sales function brings complex challenges with respect to talent selection, training, motivation, incentives, and organization. In general, sales departments have considerable latent profit potential, but admittedly it is difficult to tap that potential quickly."

Trecho retirado de “No Company Ever Went Broke Turning a Profit” de Hermann Simon.

terça-feira, agosto 24, 2021

"Companies are people too?"

"there is growing evidence to suggest that people do not conceive of companies as lists of objective stakeholder responsibilities, mission statements or lists of values. It appears that they tend to make sense of them as if they were like other people. Hence, while they are increasingly concerned with a corporation’s efforts to be ethical in a deontic sense, people are at once happy to accept that different companies will, and should, have a ‘face’ that is unique. They do not expect a corporation, any more than an individual, to be able to be all things to all people, and do not seem to trust them when they attempt to.

For example, market research carried out into terrestrial television channels in the United Kingdom has revealed that people attributed particular characters and, correspondingly, different standards to each channel. Perhaps, this highlights a postmodern paradox, that in a poly-dimensional world it is better to have a particularly clear sense of one’s different ‘personality’ so that people can make well-informed choices as to who they want to connect or relate to, rather than attempting to represent all things or try to dutifully be all things to all people?"

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

segunda-feira, agosto 23, 2021

the decline of 'best practice'

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

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

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

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

...

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

...

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

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

domingo, agosto 22, 2021

Atenção ao preço

Primeiro, recordar os números de Marn e Rosiello sobre o impacte do preço no lucro:


Depois ler estes trechos retirados de “No Company Ever Went Broke Turning a Profit” de Hermann Simon:

"Given its extraordinary role as a profit driver and its unusual effectiveness as a marketing instrument, one would expect that entrepreneurs and top managers pay a lot of attention to price. But in practice, that is often not the case. Instead, cost is what preoccupies managers’ thinking and consumes most of their energy. Volume—driven by marketing instruments such as advertising and sales—also tends to attract more management attention than price. Many companies do not treat price with the professionalism and seriousness it warrants.

...

A price increase of 1% is relatively small, but its effects on profits vary dramatically.

...

In one project for an industrial supplier we recommended an “anti-discount” incentive. When salespeople granted smaller discounts, their commissions would rise. The new system worked quickly and effectively. Within three months, the average discount granted by salespeople declined by 2% points, without any losses in volume or customers. That is the equivalent of a price increase of 2% with no volume decline. The resulting profit increase was 16%, which corresponds to a profit elasticity of price of 8. In absolute terms the profit increase was more than $100 million. Price is an extremely effective profit driver. That makes optimizing price worthwhile."

sábado, agosto 21, 2021

Risco e foco e passividade

Em Julho de 2008 desenhei este esquema:

Que chama a atenção para um dilema que algumas organizações podem viver. As exigências de rentabilidade, por exemplo pagar o custo do capital (algo pouco relevante nos dias de hoje), podem impor uma pureza estratégica, um grau de foco, que também aumenta o grau de risco. Mais risco mais rentabilidade. E uma organização pode ter muito sucesso aplicando uma estratégia pura até ao dia em que o mundo muda. Quando o mundo muda, a especialização anterior serve de barreira para a transformação necessária.

Entretanto, ontem li este trecho em "Images of Strategy" de Stephen Cummings e David Wilson:
"SWOT lists are also not particularly good at dealing with a complex and often paradoxical world. For example, once you have listed something as a strength then you can not really use it in another category; right? Looking at the mesh of self-referential arrows again one can recognize the problem with this sort of listing in terms of general classifications.
A company's greatest strength is paradoxically also its greatest weakness, and potentially its greatest threat. Its system of competitive advantage is so connected, such a tangled web, that it is ‘closed’. It knows very well what it does and how it does it, but does this come at the expense of not questioning this system as the environment in the ‘wider world’ changes? Being the best acquirer of low-tech mature manufacturing companies is a sustainable route to growth, so long as the environment remains constant and that market keeps expanding. What does a company do if it does not? Its strength is a clear vision of what it does. Its weakness is that this clarity of vision can, over time, diminish its ability to see other opportunities or develop other strengths. A company's greatest threat is that the environment will change without this being recognized, and without its strengths being questioned. Rather than discrete categories of separate points, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are very interrelated.

This double-edged sword of strengths potentially being weaknesses is often referred to as the Icarus Paradox. This is named after a character in Greek mythology who was so pleased with the wax wings that he had made that he kept flying up and up, increasing in confidence and proficiency – until he got so close to the sun that his wings melted and he fell to earth.

...

This suggests that there is a need for companies to be very active in questioning their observations and conversations, their institutionalized frames and their traditional ways of thinking. When we combine this insight with the need to recognize that strategic management requires a relatively passive, tilting, pruning and trellising approach, we can see that strategists require quite a deft touch, one that is both active and passive. Within the boundaries of what is structurally possible, companies have to find ways of reinventing themselves as the world changes. Existing identities need to provide a springboard for developing new identities, while not acting as a set of unquestioned blinkers that blind people to radically changed external circumstances that might threaten the viability of the firm."




sexta-feira, agosto 20, 2021

"because he could not make waves he had to passively accept the currents"

Em Novembro de 2008 escrevia aqui:

"Uma empresa é como uma casca de noz no meio do oceano… uma casca de noz não pode ter a veleidade de mudar o mar, mas se conhecer as correntes, se perceber as marés e se percepcionar os ventos, pode posicionar-se e procurar aproveitar activamente em seu benefício as circunstâncias do meio envolvente, em vez de esperar passivamente que lhe caia a sorte grande em cima… por acaso."

Ontem em "Images of Strategy" de Stephen Cummings e David Wilson encontrei este trecho:

"the word ‘strategy’ derives from the Ancient Greek position of ‘strategos’. The image that the Greeks liked to use to convey the skill of a great strategos was that of the kubernetes – the helmsperson on an inshore fighting ship. The kubernetes’ skill lay in his recognizing that because he could not make waves he had to passively accept the currents, but at the same time he was active working the rudders so as to change direction within the parameters of what was possible."

"to think that strategic opportunities and threats just exist 'out there'"

"It follows that it is oversimplistic, for example, to think that strategic opportunities and threats just exist 'out there'. The opportunities and threats that do exist depend on who is doing the looking' and on the various processes through which this is done. To the extent that there is a 'world outside', we characterize it on the basis of ourselves, on the basis of the language that we use and - by implication  - on the basis of our actions and daily practices. In this sense the firm's strategic environment which people seek to know, to understand, to predict and control, is not something in which they exist. Rather it is something that exists through them."

Trecho retirado de "Images of Strategy" de Stephen Cummings e David Wilson