- como castelos de cartas
- acima das suas possibilidades
- BMW's
- oh tio! ... oh tio!...
- as brincadeiras dos meninos
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Já à muito que escrevo e prego a máxima “concentrar uma organização no que é essencial”. Deitar fora, eliminar, vender tudo o que não é essencial para chegar ao futuro desejado.
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“First, reexamine your portfolio of businesses and shed the marginal ones.“
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“For each business, ask: Is it core to your company’s future value? Can you envision it as the basis for a sustaining stream of attractive rowth opportunities? Does it offer a path to building financial performance that is greater than what investors can earn elsewhere in their equity portfolios?
Concentrate your corporate strategy on the businesses for which you can answer “yes” to all three questions— and monetize the rest. There will be too many good opportunities for you to build on this core to bother with anything else.“
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Como Portugal vive em crise há oito anos, as receitas que tenho pregado neste blogue e junto das empresas são as mesmas que os autores propõem agora para as empresas neste ambiente de crise global. Reparem bem na linguagem…
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“Also answer this question: Who are your most important customers? Focusing on your most valuable customers will be just as important as focusing on your most valuable businesses.
On the demand side, these are the customers whose missions will grow the fastest and who reward you with loyalty and respect. If you are a business-to-business producer, seek out customers who recognize your product or service as the one that delivers the greatest surplus value relative to their next best alternative—regardless of its price or your profits.
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On the supply side, your most valuable customers are those with critical needs for the products that offer you the greatest ability to compete not just on price but on value. Forget about your also-ran, me-too offerings.
Bet your business on the products and services in which you have a competitive advantage through your capabilities: your technology, your cost position, your design and manufacturing skills, and your ability to reach and serve customers effectively.
If you are strong, you will always see opportunities to better serve your most valuable customers and to gain more market share. You only have to be willing to challenge yourself to look. Spare extra cash for the customers that matter. Stay focused on your best businesses, your best products, and your best customers.”
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Convém analisar as outras 4 propostas de acção.
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“Prepare to Weather the Storm”: “We are and will continue to be in a recession. Consumer demand is not coming back to superheated levels anytime soon, and pressure on prices and margins will only increase (Não tenham ilusões!!! Não vão voltar!!!). So don’t wait. Reduce your breakeven now—by a lot. (E os bancos não têm razão ao serem prudentes sobre emprestar dinheiro neste momento?)
If at all possible, you should make your company profitable even in the worst-case scenario, if for no other reason than to demonstrate its staying power. This means lowering your break-even volume, your break-even volume as a percentage of capacity, and your capacity, all at the same time.”
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“Anticipate the Future Industry Structure”: (Esta proposta devia ser enviada a muito boa gente. Gente que fala muito e reflecte pouco ou, apesar da pouca experiência que tem no terreno, não se coíbe de mandar postas-de-pescada). “do your economic homework and decide how your industry should be structured as it moves into recovery.
Anticipate that major changes may now be possible whereas before you may only have thought incrementally.
This downturn is a once-in-a-century opportunity to redefine your competitive position.
(Atenção a este pormaior) “Voices arguing for simple, rapid solutions should be suppressed. The situation you are in is unique and you probably do not yet know enough. Most likely, you do not already have an established process within your business for rigorously constructing fact-based industry perspectives. You need to direct your company to create such a process.” (Pois, recorrer a empréstimos sem qualquer reflexão estratégica, para suster a respiração debaixo de água faz-me lembrar esta estória, infelizmente verdadeira À espera da retoma).
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“Resolve Your Game Plan”: “The key for these expenditures is prioritization. In good times, companies are known to become sloppy with some investments. R&D, new product development, and capital expenditures are the places where your priorities should play out most clearly.
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Within your core businesses, you will want to be strategically aggressive— to fight for increased market share and the conversion to your brands of the most valuable product and customer segments. But avoid using pricing to secure the volume you need to cover fixed costs you shouldn’t have in the first place. Maintaining both the value you deliver to customers and your ability to get customers to recognize and pay for that value will be particularly critical in the quarters ahead. Required rates of return have gone up (Está escrito nas estrelas… crédito mais caro implica que o dinheiro investido no negócio tem de render mais do que era o padrão no universo económico anterior onde vivíamos). Market demand is going down.
Quanto às conclusões:
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“… Understand and plan for the worst-case scenario (atenção spin-doctors estão a seguir a opção errada nesta estórias da gestão das expectivas), and manage your balance sheet tightly.
• Concentrate on your core businesses and on your most strategically valuable customers. These are your only priorities. (Agora ainda mais importante do que nunca)
• Rethink your growth and investment strategy for those core businesses, anticipating the opportunities that will come to you. Seek out opportunities to restructure the industries around these businesses.”
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Se um banco pedir evidências deste tipo de reflexão estratégica a uma empresa que lhe peça dinheiro emprestado o que é que vai receber?
Por tudo isto não creio que este seja um bom título, ou um bom tema "Conferência “Como Crescer em Tempo de Crise”".
Adenda das 08:08 - "Fresh credit strains in Europe as Deutsche Bank shocks markets"
"Standard & Poor's warned that a fifth of all lower-rated companies in Western Europe and the UK are likely to default over the next two years, greatly exceeding the scale of bankruptcies after the dotcom bust." ...
"The European Central Bank warned in its Financial Stability Report this week that lenders are at risk from a deeper slowdown than expected. "Banks need to be especially vigilant in ensuring that they have adequate capital and liquidity buffers to cushion the risks that lie ahead," it said."
Não, não é por masoquismo!!! Os consumidores descobrem que estão a consumir em excesso!!! E acentua-se a incerteza e o medo do que o futuro reserva.
Com a derrocada na procura, sobretudo daquela que exige capital, e uma vez que não há poupança prévia...
... os negócios descobrem que têm excesso de capacidade produtiva instalada, excesso de inventário, excesso de dívidas e ...
... os consumidores e clientes deixaram de consumir ao nível a que tinham consumido e os bancos cortaram a torneira do crédito
Para fazer face à nova realidade as empresas ou fecham, ou reduzem a capacidade ou reduzem custos, quase tudo leva a despedimentos e mais despedimentos.
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Isto começa a preocupar os governos (G da figura) ...
"It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Mas, e como isto é profundo:"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação.
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"Lovaglia’s Law: The more important the outcome of a decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it."
"If an organisation is too stable it can ossify, but if it is too unstable it can disintegrate. Successful organisations work between these two conditions or states, in what Stacey called ‘the chaos zone’."
"If the customer doesn't care about the price, then the retailer shouldn't care about the cost,"
“It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required”.
"Das Leben, das uns gegeben ist, ist uns nicht als etwas Fertiges gegeben, sondern wir müssen es uns gestalten, und zwar jeder sein eigenes."
"Eine Regierung, die nichts wert ist, kostet am meisten."
"Forget trying to persuade them; light their pants on fire."
"O futuro é o que importa. O futuro é a base do significado, é de onde vem o projecto que alguém tem para si próprio"
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
"o Marketing só existe a partir do pensamento estratégico, caso contrário "não resulta""
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
"Perder diversidade é como arrancar páginas de um livro. Quantas páginas poderemos arrancar até deixar de compreender o enredo?"
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
"By strategy, I mean a cohesive response to a challenge. A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge. The most important element of a strategy is a coherent viewpoint about the forces at work, not a plan."
"Un desastre està punt de succeir a Espanya. El malentès de la gravetat de la crisi costarà car als inversors, ja que tindrà profundes conseqüències per a tot el sistema bancari europeu", afirma.
Entre d'altres coses, Mauldin diu que "els inversors estan fumant crack si creuen que els bancs espanyols són entre els més forts d'Europa, ja que estan amagant les seves pèrdues".
“… there are no “sunset” industries condemned to disappear in high wage economies, although there are certainly sunset and condemned strategies, among them building a business on the advantages to be gained by cheap labor”
"o vencedor da vida, o optimista que vive em incesto com o próprio ego, é o traço mais frágil do líder"
"We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much
that we have done was very foolish."
You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race.
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."
“Trust your guts. But not too much!”
"Customers will try 'low-cost providers,' because the majors have not given them any clear reason not to." "
"Natal é quando as Crianças pedem e os Pais pagam. Défices é quando os Pais pedem e as Crianças pagam."
"A imprevidência dos povos é infinita, a dos governos é legal"
"What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see"
“The leaders first task is to be the trumpet that sounds a clear sound”
"lamented the lack of any systematic data on the scale of unfunded IOUs that care-free politicians have handed out like confetti."
"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul..."
O problema não é o consumo. O problema é o consumo assente em endividamento."
"There are designations, like "economist", "prostitute", or "consultant" for which additional characterization doesn't add information."
When it becomes more difficult to suffer than change, you will change"
"Hope is not a strategy and a crisis is a terrible thing to waste"
The more you can see of the present, the more you can see of the future"
Yes, You can change the future, but only changing the present"
"Entrepreneurship is 'Having aspirations greater than your resources'"
“The single biggest reason companies fail is they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be."
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that"
"A estabilidade é uma ilusão"
"When we create the conditions of possibility, the universe becomes our co-conspirator"
Thinking about doing is not doing. Talking about doing is not doing. Doing is doing."
"'God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another'.
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"Each of us has a mission, each of us is called to change the world, to work for a culture of life, a culture forged by love and respect for the dignity of each human person.
"As our Lord tells us in the Gospel we have just heard, our light must shine in the sight of all, so that, seeing our good works, they may give praise to our heavenly Father."
"The future is not there waiting for us. We create it by the power of imagination."
"confusing testosterone with strategy is a bad idea"
"Much consulting involves the application of models to a system, as opposed to getting involved in the system as a positive change agent""
"O Portugal que pára sem orçamento é precisamente aquele que vive dele e que há todo o interesse em parar."
"credibilidade da política financeira e dos seus executores está ao nível da credibilidade de uma barraca das farturas"
"The role of the manager is thought to be reduction of uncertainty rather than the capacity to live creatively in it"
"today an entrepreneur is closer to artists than managers"
"A business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it’s a hobby"
"If no one’s upset by what you’re saying, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. (And you’re probably boring, too.)"
"Storytelling isn’t just how we construct our identities, stories are our identities"
"'He who has a why to live can bear almost any how' "
"They can because they think they can"
"Se há coisa que não suporto é misturar catequese com negócios, é a incapacidade para calçar os sapatos do outro e só pensar na nossa posição de coitadinhos, pobres vítimas indefesas dos maus e que por isso precisamos do Estado todo poderoso para nos proteger e, nem percebem na volta, os juros que o Estado cobra por esse serviço mafioso de protecção que, ainda por cima não resolve nada."
"Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble."
"In victory, do not brag; in defeat, do not weep"
"Value it's a feeling not a calculation"
"An economist is someone who has had a human being described to him, but has never actually seen one."
"Don't finish first--it's not about running a rat race. Start with a better ending in mind."
"If you sit in on a poker game and don’t see a sucker, get up. You’re the sucker.”
"The 'value added' for most any company, tiny or enormous, comes from the Quality of Experience provided."
"Crediting government with the success of entrepreneurs is like crediting the guy who built Bill Gates’ garage with the success of Microsoft."
"I have found that assuming social scientists understand the difference between correlation and causality is not generally a good one."
"Promising never to raise taxes, without reaching a deal on spending, really means a high and rising commitment to future taxes."
"Some things are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool"
"os bancos não financiam a economia, a poupança sim"
"I do not know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody"
"Never be afraid to try, remember... Amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic."
"terms such as 'experiment' and 'observation' cover complex processes containing many strands. 'Facts' come from negotiations between different parties and the final product - the published report - is influenced by physical events, dataprocessors, compromises, exhaustion, lack of money, national pride and so on."
"'science in the making' is 'the consequence of [a] settlement' of 'controversies'."
"If the state wishes to spend more, it can do so only by borrowing your savings or taxing you more. And it's no good thinking someone else will pay, that someone else is you."
"All failures of strategy are rooted in the assumption that outcomes are predictable."
"Doing things like your bigger competitors is how to get killed in the wars out there"
“Uma moeda boa e forte é como a saúde. Só lhe damos verdadeiramente valor quando não a temos.”
"Life’s tough. It’s tougher if you’re stupid"
"O homem de bem exige tudo de si próprio; o homem medíocre espera tudo dos outros"
"Change is a threat when done to me, but an opportunity when done by me."
"As elites foram deixando de falar das exportações à medida que se foi percebendo que o país consegue exportar sem elas"
"Your toughest competition is the little voice inside your head telling you to stop"
"Pain is just weakness leaving your body"
"Built to last" is bad economics. Built to do something great" is the better idea. Think: "Creative destruction."
"the world is an uncertain place no matter how many Greek letter equations you affix to a problem."
"You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change s.th., build a new model making the existing model obsolete"
“No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.”
"Success is not a destination. It's the trail you leave behind you."
"Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event."
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around”
"Strategy as the "smallest set of - intended or actual - choices and decisions sufficient to guide all other choices and decisions sufficient to guide all other choices and decisions."
"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"
"nature evolves away from constraints, not toward goals"
"There aren't any textbooks on what to stop doing!"
"With great power comes great irresponsibility "
"Weird things happen when you take price out of the equation for consumers"
"‘It’s so damn complex. If you ever think you have the solution to this, you’re wrong and you’re dangerous.’"
"Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."
"Increasing stuff that doesn't add value dilutes existing value."
"O federalismo não é a alternativa à troika, é a troika para sempre."
"Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts"
"Stressors are information"
“If you hear a “prominent” economist using the word ‘equilibrium,’ or ‘normal distribution,’ do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.”
"The advantage of experiences over things for most of us is that we can make them seem unique, which = scarce, which = value"
"Pedras no caminho?
Guardo todas, um dia vou construir um castelo"
"Without risk, faith is an impossibility."
"Não posso com quem vive a achar que os outros lhe devem sempre alguma coisa."
"In a world of increasing automation, our ability to perform tasks is not nearly as important as our ability to dream. The questions we need to ask are not ones of action, but ones of meaning"
"Me arrancam tudo a força e depois me chamam de contribuinte."
"Letting people vote for expensive programs that “somebody else” will finance is a good recipe for getting people to vote irresponsibly"
"what's fairness gotta do with pricing based in value?"
"The epic battle of our generation is between the status quo of mass and the never-ceasing tide of weird."
“Price is emotional”
"There will always be a reason why you can't pursue it, until competitors create a reason why you must."
"The most important thing to study is opening theory"
"The greater the contrast, the greater the potential"
“Customers don't care about your solution, they care about their problems.”
"Todos querem conhecer a verdade, mas o que desejam é que lhes contem uma mentira em que não sejam protagonistas."
"Execution efficiency strangles innovation in the crib, but not with malice, by default.”
"Our obsession with scalability is getting in the way of unleashing the potential of the 21st century."
"The system is optimized to mitigate risk, not create value"
"Champions are made when no one is looking"
"Don't bargain on value. Half as expensive is often twice as cheap."
"Customers care about outcomes, not effort, technology, or originality."
"
"You don't have to pick between 1) playing the game and 2) not playing the game. You can *change* the game."
""The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." "