A realidade irrompe sempre, mais tarde ou mais cedo

"Provavelmente, porque se comprou a tese de que uma crise cuja existência não se admite, é uma crise que não existe. Mais tarde ou mais cedo, a realidade havia de demonstrar ser mais teimosa do que as cautelas técnicas ou o ilusionismo político. Tão fatal como o destino."
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João Cândido da Silva no artigo de opinião "As reticências de Constâncio" publicado no Jornal de Negócios de ontem.

Animador hem...

"In that sense I’m saying that debt is the actual cause of the disease and and the cause in the American case is pretty close to 1.5 to 2 times as bad as the Great Depression. So, I think it’s going to be… we’ll be lucky to come out of things as well as the Great Depression. We’ll certainly come out worse than 1990. People who believe we’re going to stop at less than double digit rates of unemployment are, I think, deluding themselves. And that’s unfortunately what economists normally do."
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Trecho retirado do obrigatório "Debtdeflation"

Para reflexão

"The beauty of recycling China's surplus into metals instead of US bonds is that it kills so many birds with one stone: it stops the yuan rising, without provoking complaints of currency manipulation by Washington; metals are easily stored in warehouses, unlike oil; the holdings are likely to rise in value over time since the earth's crust is gradually depleting its accessible ores. Above all, such a policy safeguards China's industrial revolution, while the West may one day face a supply crisis. "

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"Trecho extraído de "A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?"

Acerca dos clientes-alvo em tempos de crise.

Uma vez mais 'back to the basics'. Agora ainda é mais urgente fazer o que sempre foi o básico:
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"A key part of your comprehensive plan is the determination of which customers to keep. Even in a downturn, not every customer is worth having. It will be easy to eliminate the marginal ones but much more difficult to decide that a large customer simply isn't providing good enough margins or cash return. Customers can put demands on your cash when, for instance, they require you to carry a lot of inventory. You may decide cash is more important to you than a revenue gain.
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The biggest danger is that one of your large customers will go belly-up." (Como estarão os fornecedores da Qimonda?)
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"Although keeping a close eye on weak customers is important, you cannot afford to ignore your best ones. Stressful times present an opportunity to talk with your counterparts at those companies and figure out ways to cement the relationship. More than ever before you have to take the initiative and be proactive toward your best customers."
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Trechos retirados de Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty de Ram Charan

Qual a diferença entre Portugal e a Irlanda? (parte II)

Neste postal Qual a diferença entre Portugal e a Irlanda? fizemos a pergunta.
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Hoje, algumas notícias ajudam a compor a resposta. O que diz Constâncio? "Economia portuguesa vai recuar 3,5 por cento em 2009". (Apesar do que prometia o ministro Pinho. BTW, procurem as afirmações dos políticos por esta altura em 2008).
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O que vão fazer os húngaros? "Novo governo húngaro vai suspender o décimo terceiro mês aos funcionários públicos"
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Por que é que em Portugal os políticos da situação não querem Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XII) ?
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Qual é a diferença entre Portugal e a Irlanda?
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O governo irlandês está na primeira metade do mandato, o governo português está em final de mandato.
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Qual é a diferença entre Portugal e a Irlanda? Eleições em 2009!
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Que cavalos vão ser lançados após essas eleições?

"Andam-se a meter com a construção"

Dizia há dias o presidente de uma construtora.
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Andam-se a meter com o contribuinte "Podem parar de construir auto-estradas?" artigo de opinião de Nicolau Santos no Expresso:
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"Ora de acordo com contas feitas pelo Expresso (4.4.09), nove das actuais auto-estradas não têm razão de existir porque ficam abaixo daquele limite de tráfego: três no Norte (A11, A7 e A24), duas no Centro (A14 e A17) e quatro a Sul (A10, A15, A13 e A6)."

Goals gone wild

A propósito do artigo "Goals Gone Wild" na revista Business Week, e na senda do ditado "Volume is Vanity, Profit is Sanity" este trecho deveria entrar na cabeça de muito boa gente:
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"it wasn’t too long ago that GM executives wore buttons with the number “29” as a constant reminder of the company’s lofty goal of reaching U.S. market share of that level. Six years later, the researchers comment, GM’s U.S. market share is below 20%, and the company faces bankruptcy at least in part due to too much emphasis on that goal. “In GM’s case the relentless pursuit of market share came at the expense of profitability,” Schweitzer noted."
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No entanto, o que me ficou mesmo na mente foi um comentário de um leitor, eis o excerto que me interessa:
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"Dr. Lloyd Nelson in Edwards Deming book "Out of the Crisis" stated that "If you can improve productivity, or sales, or quality, or anything else, by (e.g.,) five percent next year without a rational plan for improvement, then why were you not doing it last year?" (esta postura mental é tão comum... estabelecer objectivos de desempenho superiores sem querer mudar nada na realidade. Esquecendo que o desempenho é sempre um produto natural do funcionamento de uma organização, e que se queremos desempenhos futuros diferentes teremos de ter uma organização diferente)
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If we consider how executives and others are very often given recognition and rewarded on meeting "Y" response output goals without consideration that improvements need to be made to the overall system in order to achieve long-lasting healthy improved performance. A management style of variance to goals can be considered "management by hope," and can lead to playing games with the numbers that result in very destructive behaviors to meet short-term objectives (i.e., Enron effect). "

O primeiro destino das nossas exportações

"Consumo privado deverá sofrer a maior queda da história da Espanha"

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Perante esta migração de valor:

• repensar clientes-alvo;
• repensar produtos;
• reduzir o break-even;
• deixar-se de referenciais ultrapassados;
• reforçar a proposta de valor;
• recalibrar;

Tudo coisas a fazer com urgência. Tudo coisas que os subsídios e apoios tornam menos urgente...

Set themselves up for destructive competition...

"Bad strategy often stems from the way managers think about competition, he noted. Many companies set out to be the best in their industry, and then the best in every aspect of business, from marketing to supply chain to product development. The problem with that way of thinking is there is no best company in any industry. "What is the best car?" he asked. "It depends on who is using it. It depends on what it's being used for. It depends on the budget."

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"Managers who think there is one best company and one best set of processes set themselves up for destructive competition. (Voltar atrás e reler este trecho) "The worst error is to compete with your competition on the same things," Porter said. "That only leads to escalation, which leads to lower prices or higher costs unless the competitor is inept." Companies should strive to be unique, he added. Managers should be asking, "How can you deliver a unique value to meet an important set of needs for an important set of customers?"

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One more mistake managers make is confusing operational effectiveness with strategy. Operational effectiveness is, in essence, extending best practices. Good operations can drive performance, Porter said, but added: "The trouble with that is it's hard to sustain. If it's a best practice, everybody will do it, too."

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"None of this is easy, he conceded. "The real challenge of management is you have to do these things together at the same time. You have to keep up with best practices while solidifying, clarifying and enhancing your unique positions."

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"Managers often tend to let incremental improvements in operations crowd out the larger strategy of building a unique business that will retain its competitive advantage", (melhorias incrementais... despachar a responsabilidade pelo aumento da produtividade dos gestores para os operacionais) Porter noted. To bypass this problem, managers must keep the competitive strategy in mind at all times. "Every day, every meeting, every decision, has to be clear.... Is this an operational best practice or is this something that's improving on my strategic distinction?"

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"He went on to describe key principles of strategic positioning, including a unique value proposition, a tailored value chain, clear tradeoffs in choosing what not to do, and strategic continuation, or ongoing improvement. The underpinnings of strategy are "activities that fit together and reinvigorate each other." (disciplina de valor assente em trade-offs que obrigam a escolhas).

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Trechos retirados de "Michael Porter Asks, and Answers: Why Do Good Managers Set Bad Strategies?"

Produtividade (parte VIII)

Na sequência de: Produtividade (parte I); parte II; parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI e parte VII.
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Este trecho retirado do livro de Thomassen e Lincoln "How to Succeed at Retail: Winning Case Studies and Strategies for Retailers and Brands" ilustra bem o que contámos sobre o poder da originação de valor na parte VI.
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"Steve Feniger, a manufacturing expert in Hong Kong who has spent 27 years obtaining goods from China, says the threefold mark-up by the US retailer that buys all the Tianjin factory’s work boots is rather low, compared with that for products that carry well-known brand names.
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‘If you took Calvin Klein jeans it would be more like four or five times’, said Feniger, who is managing director of SSPartners, a trading company, and who previously ran factories making products for Warnaco Group, which owns such brands as Calvin Klein, Nautica and Chaps. A Ralph Lauren polo shirt, Feniger said, is made in China for about $3.50 and then sold in the United States for $30. ‘The power is very much with the buyer rather than the seller’, he said.
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‘It’s a hard and lonely job being at the manufacturing end of the industry.’
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A decade ago the typical profit margin for Chinese shoe and garment factories was about 10 per cent. Now they are very lucky to get 5 per cent, factory owners and economists say.

Qual a diferença entre Portugal e a Irlanda?

A resposta correcta é uma única palavra. Um única palavra que explica tudo.
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"Ireland is ECB's sacrifical lamb to satisfy German inflation demands"
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Reparem bem:
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"It would not be tossing away its low-tax Celtic model to scrape together a few tax farthings – supposedly to stop the budget deficit exploding to 13pc of GDP this year, or 18pc says Barclays Capital. If the tax raises were designed to placate rating agencies, they made no difference. Fitch promptly booted Ireland from the AAA club anyway.
Above all, Ireland would not be the lone member of the OECD club to compound its disaster by slashing child benefit and youth unemployment along with everything else in last week's "budget from Hell"."
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"Brian Lenihan, Ireland's finance minister, said the economy would contract 8pc this year on top of the terrifying 7.1pc drop in the final quarter of last year.
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But what caught my ear was his throw-away comment that prices would fall 4pc, which is to admit that Ireland is spiralling into the most extreme deflation in any country since the early 1930s. Or put another way, "real" interest rates are rocketing.
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This is torture for a debtors' economy. You can survive deflation; you can survive debt; but Irving Fisher taught us in his 1933 treatise "Debt Deflation causes of Great Depressions" that the two together will eat you alive."
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Qual é a resposta qual é?

Wireless???

O peso da dívida

"aggregate demand is the sum of GDP plus the change in debt. Now that our economy is utterly debt-dependent, the debt-financed asset-price bubbles have burst, and debt de-leveraging has begun in earnest, the economy will tank and unemployment will explode as debt-financed spending evaporates."
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"With the debt contribution to demand now plummeting, unemployment will rise to levels that are unprecedented in the post WWII period–and they may even rival the Great Depression.
Attempts to inflate our way out of this via either government spending or quantitative easing will also fail.
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The sheer scale of private debt de-leveraging swamps the government’s pump priming, while there is so much debt relative to government created money that the latter will have to be increased by astronomical amounts–and given to those in debt, rather than to the banks–to counter the collapse in demand caused by private deleveraging."
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"even if governments maintained the scale of fiscal stimulus they are now imparting, there would still be the reality (for the USA, the UK and Australia, and some European nations) that, courtesy of the globalisation of production, they no longer have the productive capacity to employ those who are going to be thrown into unemployment via this debt-driven collapse"
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Trechos lúcidos de Steve Keen no seu blogue Who’d a thought it? Unemployment leaps 0.5% in a month

Estarão a preparar o futuro? (parte II)

A propósito de Estarão a preparar o futuro? o Público de hoje traz um artigo que ilustra o que eu entendo por preparação do futuro.
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Trechos retirados de "Pirelli reorientou o negócio para contornar os efeitos da crise no sector automóvel":
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""início de 2008, o grupo teve a percepção de que a crise ia ser má". "Para suavizar o impacto, tomámos logo medidas para reduzir o orçamento e destinámos cem milhões de euros dos lucros para reestruturações e indemnizações, num processo faseado de acordos de cessação de postos de trabalho na Europa (a região onde temos o maior volume de negócios e uma das mais afectadas)."" (início de 2008... os políticos só em Setembro de 2008 é que o descobriram ... quer dizer, alguns ainda escreveram orçamentos para 2009, em Outubro de 2008, que pertenciam a um mundo que desapareceu em Agosto de 2007)
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""Face ao excesso actual de capacidade produtiva, para conseguir lucros num mercado mais reduzido, decidimos cessar a produção de pneus em finais de 2009. Mas não a vamos fechar e sim reorientar as suas actividades para o sector fotovoltaico, fabrico de filtro de partículas para motores diesel e para a área de serviços. Isso permitirá a manutenção de grande parte dos postos de trabalho." "
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"Questionado sobre se a Pirelli Tyre, face à crise, está a pensar deslocalizar a produção, Francesco Gori explicou: "O problema é o excesso de capacidade. Cada unidade fabril produz gamas específicas de pneus para a região onde está inserida. A solução não é deslocalizar mas reduzir - mesmo as fábricas da China estão a produzir menos que o planeado. "
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"Não se trata de ser um grande ou um pequeno produtor - quem tomou medidas a tempo pode resistir melhor. Temos de conceber produtos melhores e mais baratos. As pessoas estão mais conscientes da relação qualidade/preço", acentuou Francesco Gori." (Acham que os subsídios e apoios vão ajudar os apoiados a sentirem a urgência em mudarem?)

Tikrit (parte II)

Os de Coimbra só costumam estar maduros no final de Agosto, estes, de certeza que o estarão mais cedo... muito mais cedo. As minhas primeiras flores de estêva do ano:

E alfazema, alfazema por todo o lado ...

Tikrit (parte I)

Fomos recebidos por uma Galerida cristata (cotovia de poupa): E, ao final da tarde vimos algo que já não víamos há mais de dez anos:

Dois gigantes, dois Aegypius monachus (abutres negros) a pairar sobre nós.

Também já vi uns Lanius senator (picanços de barrete vermelho)...

e uns Cyanopica cyana (pega azul) que estão por aqui a fazer ninhoe ...

Fotos roubadas na net.

Back to basics

"To Drucker, one of the most important things that any organization can do is to adopt what he called a "rifle approach," eschewing "product clutter." "Economic results," he wrote, "require that managers concentrate their efforts on the smallest number of products, product lines, services, customers, markets, distribution channels, end users, and so on which will produce the largest amount of revenue." "
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E dolorosamente verdadeiro o que se segue, como tantas vezes encontro nas empresas:
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"And yet as fundamental as this seems, Drucker added, many businesses foolishly "pride themselves on being willing and able to supply any specialty, to satisfy any demand for variety, even to stimulate such demands in the first place. And many businesses boast that they never, of their own free will, abandon a product." Thanks to this attitude, plenty of companies "end up with thousands of products in their product line—and all too frequently fewer than 20 really 'sell.'" "
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"Drucker's basic message—"focus, focus, focus"—extended beyond the organization as a whole, right down to the individual. "
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Trechos retirados de "How Lack of Focus Hurt Detroit"

A realidade é ainda muito mais complexa do que parece

Sou um leitor compulsivo, acho que dá para perceber.
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Além disso, gosto de sublinhar e comentar as passagens principais de um texto, ou até mesmo de registar pensamentos laterais que um dado parágrafo me proporciona.
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Por isto, sou um grande consumidor, e exigente, de marcadores sublinhadores...
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Experimento muita coisa, os melhores que encontrei são os que pontualmente estão à venda nas lojas Lidl. Como o meu inventário está a acabar... e como os marcadores não têm marca... será que alguém conhece alguém que possa influenciar a rede Lidl a voltar a ter os referidos marcadores nas prateleiras?
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Agradecido!

If they are to big to fail...

... they should not be allowed to grow so much.
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Nassim Taleb diverte-se "Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world".
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Cada um dos princípios é tão desrespeitado pelos políticos que ...

Um conselho

Mais uma pérola de Steve Yastrow "Rethinking the way you communicate with customers".
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Um trecho:
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"You cannot move customers' minds, feet, and wallets unless your create Brand Harmony through the entire course of your interactions with them. You have to be more careful about your marketing investments, especially in the midst of this economic mayhem, as your customers are more careful with their purchase decisions.
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Here's an easy way to improve the sense of Brand Harmony you create for your customers: Block off a conference room at your office for the next week. Cover the walls in paper. Next, grab your colleagues and a bunch of markers, and map out the touchpoints customers have with your company throughout the course of their relationships with you (ainda há dias estive a almoçar num restaurante italiano onde me disseram que os funcionários da cozinha estiveram seis meses em Itália a estudar e a aprender a cozinhar. No entanto, a moça que vinha às mesas apresentar o menu e recolher as escolhas, fazia-o enquanto mascava uma volumosa massa esverdeada de pastilha elástica... come on). Look for pockets of dissonance. Look for places where the story doesn't flow, or where it contradicts itself. Look for places to improve the way you communicate your story, with a focus on improved Brand Harmony."
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E isto, não é fazer batota? A batota, ainda e sempre a batota