Também tive um

Um quadro de lousa na minha primeira classe... quando era preciso limpar o quadro... cuspia-se e limpava-se com a manga da camisola.
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Ainda guardo uma aqui no escritório.
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"Ardósia de Valongo em escolas francesas"

O papel das pequenas empresas (parte III)

Pela calada, longe dos holofotes, longes das carpetes e corredores ministeriais... empresas pequenas com casos amorosos com clientes, fornecedores e produtos, podem concentrar-se em servir nichos que as grandes, pesadas e lentas empresas ou não servem, ou servem mal.
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Volto a uns recortes do livro "BEATING THE GLOBAL CONSOLIDATION ENDGAME - Nine Strategies for Winning in Niches" de Fritz Kroeger, Andrej Vizjak e Michael Moriarty para alimentar a reflexão:
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"What are the foundations of a stable, defendable, and profitable niche? How can businesses create a successful niche strategy (or at least know when one is found)? And what can businesses do to keep running as long as possible? The three elements that make up an Endgame niche are ...
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1. Segmentation. Specialty market segments allow niche companies to play in the global business arena. Global leaders cannot both pursue a juggernaut strategy and address the specialized needs of every customer segment. The market leaders all give lip service to providing customized products and services, catering to geographic and market differences, and addressing the needs of different buying behaviors; however, the truth is, their main priority is their own bottom line.
This is not an editorial comment, but economic reality. If companies did not take this approach, shareholders would not buy their stock, their weighted average cost of capital would rise, and they would lose their competitiveness and fall victim to another industry leader that was more than happy to take the business. There is an upside in all this for niche fighters, however. Since the consolidators are almost exclusively fixated on the bottom line, this opens opportunities for smaller companies to come in and sweep up unserved needs that fall behind in the process—as long as they make the right moves."
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O próximo elemento a analisar é o foco, a concentração na criação de valor.
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"2. Value-added focus. The second element of an Endgame niche is that niche players must focus on an area of the value chain different from that addressed by the market leader.
This allows the niche fighter to win by capitalizing on a business opportunity in which the scale leader not only has little interest, but also has less capability to exploit the scale advantages it enjoys elsewhere. Here, the difference between the mainstream market and the niche market is particularly relevant and becomes an obvious Endgame niche market opportunity. If we differentiate between basic costs and segment costs in the value chain and compare an Endgame
niche fighter with a scale leader, it is clear that the niche fighter has a higher share of segment costs. These costs must be proportionately high, so as to provide a barrier to scale leaders that seek to arbitrage their lower basic costs."
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Por fim, algo relacionado com a discussão sobre o dilema da produtividade:
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"3. Complexity. The third element of an Endgame niche is that fighters must be dynamic and innovative. This requires not only mastering the skills of specialization and market focus,
but also finally (in the context of the Merger Endgame Theory) being able to differentiate themselves from the scale leaders, which leads to more complexity."
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Adoro esta história dos nichos, permite que empresas pequenas, com as movimentações adequadas, flexíveis e rápidas repitam a lição da batalha de Canas.
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Associado a este tema dos nichos temos o tema da criação de valor. Esse é o TEMA!!!

Comparar os números e reflectir

"Ryanair flew 5.8 million passengers in June, up a cool 13% on their June 2008 figures. A stunning performance in what we all hope is the bottom of this miserable recession! Meanwhile "the world's favourite airline" British Airways has struggled to attract 2.9 million passengers in June, down 5% over the same period.
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The performance difference between these two benchmark airlines could not be clearer, and yet their media treatment belies this. Ryanair gets regularly pilloried for its relentless efforts to cut its operating costs, simplify its processes, and find novel ways to charge passengers for "extras"—like using the toilet in flight! BA, on the other hand, continues to get a largely sympathetic press as it tries to persuade its staff to take less pay, in one form or another, to offset their declining numbers and mounting losses.
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So, which airline is setting the better example of contemporary business excellence? Which is doing the best overall job for its customers? Which of them gives the best indication of the way forward when it comes to leading businesses out of the current economic mire?"
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Trecho de Richard King no sítio de Tom Peters.

O dilema da produtividade (parte II)

Just for the record:
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"Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited" (Mary Benner e Michael Tushman, Academy of Management Review, 2003)
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"The Organizational Tension Between Static and Dynamic Efficiency" (Pankaj Ghemawat e Joan Ricart, Research Paper nº 255, 1993, IESE)

Como relacionar estratégia e processos

Em Janeiro de 2008 escrevi:
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"A revista Harvard Business Review deste mês de Janeiro de 2008 traz um artigo assinado por Kaplan e Norton “Mastering the Management System”.
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Reparo que Kaplan e Norton, ainda não descobriram a importância dos processos de contexto, para libertar recursos, para aplicação nos processos críticos ou nucleares. Mas andam lá perto.
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Em Setembro de 2008 escrevi:
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"Kaplan e Norton, no seu mais recente livro "The Execution Premium - Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage", escreveram:
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“Strategy execution requires alignment and execution of both strategic initiatives and process improvement programs…"
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Esta afirmação faz-me alguma incomodidade... por que distinguir as iniciativas estratégicas dos programas de melhoria dos processos?"
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Neste postal de Outubro de 2008 escrevi:
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"IMHO nem Kaplan nem Norton ainda chegaram aqui, mas andam cada vez mais perto.
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Estou a falar da abordagem por processos para modelar o funcionamento das organizações e fazer a ponte da estratégia até às actividades, às pessoas e às funções."
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Ontem li o artigo "Linking Strategy to Operations: Process Models and Innovation" de David Norton e Randall Russel no número de Julho-Agosto de 2009 do Balanced Scorecard Report.
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Os autores andam cada vez mais perto... estão cada vez mais perto de relacionar processos e execução estratégica. No entanto, julgo que ainda não chegaram ao como passar o conceito para a operacionalização.
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Os autores escrevem no referido artigo:
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"We sometimes use the term "AMO" to describe this phenomenon: if you focus on a problem, apply sound methodologies, and have good people dedicated to the task, sooner or later A Miracle Occurs (AMO). This is the moment when a flash of insight happens and a better way emerges."
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É isso mesmo que andam a fazer, à volta do tema, à procura de como relacionar estratégia e processos, à espera do AMO, but IMHO ainda lhes falta um bocado.
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Foi quando descobri como fazer essa relação que tive uma vontade de escrever o livro "Balanced Scorecard - Concentrar uma Organização no que é essencial"

A crise está mesmo quase a acabar

"Crise é "cruel" para Portugal pois incide sobre os seus pontos vulneráveis" (se calhar é por isso mesmo que são pontos vulneráveis).
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"“Estagnação pode ser mais longa do que esperávamos” (Durão Barroso sublinha a necessidade de “continuar com os planos de relançamento” das economias... com que dinheiro? O dele?)
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"Portugal deverá contrair mais do que 4,1%" (A crise está mesmo, mesmo, mesmo quase a acabar)
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What a big mess!

E continua o meu relato da confusão que se vive na produção leiteira... crianças apanhadas num jogo de adultos.
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"Leite: ministro quer Renoldy a renegociar com «hipers»"
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• Leite: associação de supermercados garante qualidade
• Produtores de leite ficam sem comprador
• Leite: agricultores temem encerramento de explorações
• Preço do leite pode vir a estabilizar com ajuda de Bruxelas
• Produtores de leite protestam em Bruxelas
• Um litro de leite é mais barato que um litro de água
• Produtores temem invasão de leite alemão nos «hipers»

Também sou branco de segunda

Nasci em Angola!
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Estou a ouvir o Engº Segadães Tavares na TSF

Metelismos

Esta manhã ainda me ri sozinho no carro quando o locutor de serviço da TSF, por volta das 7h20, fugiu com a boca para a verdade e apresentou a rubrica diária de Peres Metelo como "comentário político".
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Eheheheheh

Fia-te na Virgem e não corras!

Para quem acredita que a crise está quase a acabar e que a retoma vem já aí, aconselho a ler "Liquidity injections alone are not enough" de Wolfgang Münchau.
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Embora esteja em sintonia com o pensamento de Münchau, não tenho a certeza de que assim seja. Por isso, neste ambiente de incerteza quanto ao futuro desafio quem tem de tomar decisões a equacionar, também, um cenário Münchau.
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Se esse ambiente futuro hipotético se concretizar, quais serão as consequências?
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Como podem ser minimizadas?
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"The European Central Bank has recently pumped €442bn ($620bn, £380bn) in one-year liquidity into the system, but the money is not reaching the real economy. Japanese-style stagnation is no longer possible - it is already here. The only question is how long it will last. .
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Even in an optimistic scenario, global economic growth will be weighed down by a combination of credit squeeze, rising unemployment, rising bankruptcies, rising default rates, and balance sheet adjustment in the household and financial sectors.
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I would expect the US to have something approaching a genuine recovery at some point in the next decade, but probably not in 2010 or 2011. Judging by the co-ordination failure at the level of the European Union, the persistent failure to deal with the continent's 40 or so cross-border banks at European level, and in particular Germany's inability to sort out its toxic-asset contaminated Landesbanken, the economic prospects for the eurozone are infinitely worse."
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Por cá, discutem-se as grandes obras. Alguém discute a queda da receita dos impostos em 20%?
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Alguém discute como vão ser os juros que o governo português vai ter de pagar no futuro?
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Nas costas dos outros podemos ver as nossas, por exemplo a Espanha:
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"Spain's fiscal U-turn may not convince markets" onde se pode ler:
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"But one person with access to public accounts, who asked not to be named, told Reuters the public deficit could more than triple to 12 percent this year from 3.8 percent in 2008."
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"Spain has suffered the worst deterioration in public finances of any EU country, bar Ireland, after stimulus measures equal to 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2008 and 2009."
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"The government, which has long downplayed the seriousness of the recession, has begun to show signs of economic realism."

They don’t get it (parte II)

"Enterprises needed a profoundly new way of understanding business that would respect the dignity of workers and foster the “common good by prioritising ethics and social responsibility over dividend returns”"
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Retirado de "Pope condemns capitalism’s ‘failures’"
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Recordar "They don’t get it"

O dilema da produtividade

Há cerca de um ano reflectia neste blogue sobre estratégias puras e híbridas (O paradoxo da estratégia (parte I: Compromissos); Estratégias puras ou híbridas (parte II); Estratégias puras ou híbridas (parte I)), trata-se de um tema que me atrai e fascina.
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Sou um partidário da concentração das empresas no que é essencial, sou um partidário da aposta no numerador (eficácia) em detrimento do denominador (eficiência), tenho a minha explicação sobre o porquê da incompatibilidade da aposta em simultâneo na eficiência e eficácia (figura 12)
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Por isso, é com gosto que encontro artigos como este "Perspectives on the productivity dillema" publicado em Fevereiro de 2009 pelo Journal of Operations Management. Mais, artigos como este reforçam ainda mais a minha defesa de que o abaixamento administrativo de salários não é uma estratégia sustentável.
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"The capabilities that enable consistent execution can also hinder learning and innovation, leaving organizations rigid and inflexible. Many once-successful organizations collapse when they prove unable to adapt to environmental shifts. By optimizing their processes for maximum efficiency in the short term, organizations become brittle. In the Productivity Dilemma, Abernathy (1978) conjectured that short-term efficiency and longterm adaptability are inherently incompatible."
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"More than 30 years ago, Abernathy (1978) suggested that a firm’s focus on productivity gains inhibited its flexibility and ability to innovate. Abernathy observed that in the automobile industry, a firm’s economic decline was directly related to its efficiency and productivity efforts. He suggested that a firm’s ability to compete over time was rooted not only in increasing efficiency, but also in its ability to be simultaneously innovative (Abernathy, 1978, p. 173).
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"Process management’s success in improving manufacturing efficiency has led to its migration beyond operations to other parts of organizations, for instance, to adjacent processes for selecting and developing technological innovations (Brown and Duguid, 2000; Scott-Young and Samson, 2008). As the efficiency oriented focus of process management spreads to centers of innovation, it increasingly stunts an organization’s dynamic capabilities (Cole and Matsumiya, 2007)."
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"We argue that process management techniques stabilize and rationalize organizational routines, while establishing a focus on relatively easily available efficiency and customer satisfaction measures. While increased efficiency results from these dynamics in the short run, they also trigger internal biases for certainty and predictable results. The diffusion of process management techniques favors exploitative innovation at the expense of exploratory innovation. We argue that while exploitation and inertia may be functional for organizations within a given technological trajectory or for existing customers, these variance reducing dynamics stunt exploratory innovation (see also Christensen, 1997)."

O papel das pequenas empresas (parte II)

Para um pequeno país como Portugal a solução para exportar não passa por reuniões no gabinete do ministro da economia para receber "instruções".
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Um país pequeno com empresas pequenas não pode competir no negócio do preço/custo e da escala, tem de apostar no valor acrescentado, tem de apostar em nichos!
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"a niche market can be defined as a “partial market,” or part of a larger market. A market is defined as a combination of supply and demand for a specific good or service. A partial market in this context is a segment of a market that, in theory, can be served by all suppliers equally.
However, these partial markets make it possible for individual suppliers to focus on specific segments. The following characteristics apply to niche companies:

• The niche is formed or created by the company in relation to the market environment.
• The underlying overall market is a critical reference, and the niche should be considered in connection with it.
• The niche is small in comparison to the market as a whole. However, it still achieves an adequate sales volume to justify its unique approach and enjoys relevant and appropriate
  economies of scale.
• Successful niche suppliers use specialization and focus on the niche to create growth platforms.
• Dissatisfied clients play an important role in the creation and growth of niches. Niches have a protected position in some cases, which creates barriers to entry for other competitors."

No próximo episódio: Quais são os alicerces dos nichos estáveis, defensáveis e lucrativos? Como é que as empresas podem criar uma estratégia de nichos bem sucedida?

Trecho retirado de "BEATING THE GLOBAL CONSOLIDATION ENDGAME - Nine Strategies for Winning in Niches" de Fritz Kroeger, Andrej Vizjak e Michael Moriarty.

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Todas as estratégias bem sucedidas são transientes e duram cada vez menos.

No livro “How we compete” de Suzanne Berger and the MIT Industrial Performance Center, publicado em Janeiro de 2006, pode ler-se:
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Na página 255: “… 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”.
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Todas as estratégias bem sucedidas são transientes e duram cada vez menos.
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Um bom exemplo desta transitoriedade é apresentado neste artigo do The New York Times "For Australian Winemakers, More Turns Out to Be Less"

Que resultados para a inovação (parte III)

Há dias reflectia neste espaço sobre a “Intuição vs Procedimentação” onde, com base nas palavras de Gary Klein:
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“Many organizations attempt to take refuge in procedures. This happens when supervisors play it safe and reduce the task to procedures even if those procedures don’t really capture all of the nuances and tricks of the trade. Turning a job into a set of procedures makes it easier for new workers to carry out their responsibilities, and it also supports accountability by letting managers more easily verify if the procedures were followed.
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Unfortunately, this practice can make it even harder to build up intuitions if the procedures eliminate the need for judgment calls. Clearly, we need procedures to help us react quickly to emergencies, or to orient new workers. Once a set of procedures is in place, however, supervisors may not bother teaching the skills workers need to understand or modify the procedures.This is how the expertise that makes a company great gets lost. There is a strong tendency in our culture to proceduralize almost everything, to reduce all types of work to a series of steps. But you cannot reduce intuition to a procedure.
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Organizations may try to reduce decisions and judgments to procedures by defining metrics (i.e., measurable objectives). Metrics are often seen as a way to replace intuitions. They can be useful as a corrective to relying too heavily on impressions, but if managers try to make decisions based on numbers alone they run the risk of eroding their intuitions.”
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Aquela última frase “but if managers try to make decisions based on numbers alone they run the risk of eroding their intuitions“ está em linha com o artigo de Julho-Agosto da Harvard Business Review “Restoring Competitiveness” de Gary Pisano e Willy Shih.
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“Recognize the limits of financial tools.
Most companies are wedded to highly analytical methods for evaluating investment opportunities. Still, it remains enormously hard to assess long-term R&D programs with quantitative techniques—even sophisticated ones like real-options valuation and Monte Carlo simulations. Usually, the data, or even reasonable estimates, are simply not available. Nonetheless, all too often these tools become the ultimate arbiter of what gets funded and what does not. So short-term projects with more predictable outcomes beat out the long-term investments needed to replenish technical and operating capabilities. Managers would serve their companies more wisely by recognizing that informed judgment is a better guide to making such decisions than an analytical model loaded with arbitrary assumptions. There is no way to take the guesswork out of the process.”
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Pois bem, através do blogue de Don Sull onde se pode ler isto:
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“Rely exclusively on process to execute. Many managers equate execution with standardized processes. They re-engineer key procedures and employ process disciplines, including six sigma, or total quality management to ensure continuous improvement. These approaches work well for activities–such as processing transactions or manufacturing cars–that can be laid out in advance and repeated thousands or millions of times per year with minimal variation. Process tools work less well for activities that consume much of the typical knowledge workers time, including coordinatinating work across a matrix or generating innovative solutions to unique problems.”
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Descobri este artigo “TQM, ISO 9000, Six Sigma: Do Process Management Programs Discourage Innovation?” onde se pode ler:
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“Yet Wharton management professor Mary J. Benner says now may be the time to reassess the corporate utility of process management programs and apply them with more discrimination. In research done with Harvard Business School professor Michael Tushman, she has found that process management can drag organizations down and dampen innovation. "In the appropriate setting, process management activities can help companies improve efficiency, but the risk is that you misapply these programs, in particular in areas where people are supposed to be innovative," notes Benner. "Brand new technologies to produce products that don't exist are difficult to measure. This kind of innovation may be crowded out when you focus too much on processes you can measure."”
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Antes de continuar a leitura recomendo um postal que escrevi em Junho de 2007 “Não culpem a caneta quando a culpa é de quem escreve!“ de onde retiro o seguinte trecho:
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“Como procuro demonstrar aqui, num mercado muito competitivo, é muito difícil conciliar na mesma organização, duas posturas mentais distintas. Não se pode impunemente, à segunda, terça e quarta apostar na eficiência, para depois, à quinta, sexta e sábado apostar na "boutique" das pequenas séries, no "atelier" das novidades. O 6 Sigma é uma ferramenta talhada para apoiar os negócios na redução dos custos, eficiência, não é uma ferramenta dedicada à eficácia, à criação do UAUUUUU, associado à inovação, à diferenciação.”
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Neste postal Como descobri que não é suficiente optimizar os processos-chave. (3/3) refiro algo a que costumo chamar a atenção nas acções de formação, os processos que constituem uma organização podem ser divididos em duas categorias: os processos contexto e os processos nucleares.
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Aos processos contexto podemos e devemos aplicar os métodos de melhoria da eficiência.
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Aos processos nucleares, fundamentais para a execução e diferenciação estratégica, devemos preocupar-nos acima de tudo com a eficácia. As preocupações com a eficiência nestes processos corta as pernas ao potencial de explosão estratégica.
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"Benner & Tushman (2003) warn agains explicit focus on incremental innovation which is achieved by process management orientation which results in innovation that is closesly related to existing technological or market competencies. Organizations that must meet current customer requirements and new customer demands must deal simultaneously with the inconsistent demands of exploitation and exploration. Authors suggest that appropriate answer is an ambidextrous organization which allows for both exploratory and exploitative activities to be spurred by loose and tight organizational arrangements. Benner & Tushman (2003) suggest that within processes, the tasks, culture, individuals, and organizational arrangements are consistent, but across subunits tasks and cultures are inconsistent and loosely coupled. Tight exploitation units in technologically stable settings, will benefit by reducing variability and maximizing efficiency and control by introducing process management techniques. On the other hand, n turbulent environments, for new customer segments and for radical innovation, process management activities are less conducive to organizational effectiveness. Exploratory units will succeed by experimentation, which is encouraged by introducing variety and loose control."

Que resultados para a inovação (parte II)

Em tempos (Novembro de 2006) escrevi "Que resultados para a INOVAÇÃO?"

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Acerca do, então, projecto de norma prNP 4457 sobre a "Gestão da Investigação Desenvolvimento e Inovação - Requisitos do Sistema de Gestão da Investigação Desenvolvimento e Inovação, onde aproveitava para criticar a falta de concentração em objectivos, a demasiada importância dada ao PDCA em detrimento do CAPD.

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Pois bem, aconselho a leitura de "“TQM, ISO 9000, Six Sigma: Do Process Management Programs Discourage Innovation?”" onde se pode ler:

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"Benner and Tushman examined the photography and paint industries from 1980 to 1999, choosing these two industries for differences in their competitive arenas. "Photography was undergoing major change. It was a turbulent environment and there was a potential need for innovation," says Benner, referring to the move from chemical-based film to digital technology. "Paint was focused on cost reductions. It was trying to reduce solvents in paint as opposed to developing wacky new stuff."

The authors looked at the number of ISO 9000 quality program certifications obtained by the paint and photography firms, the numbers of patents issued to the firms and "the extent to which a firm's patenting efforts built on knowledge it had used in previous patents." In photography, increased ISO certifications were associated with "a significant decline in the number of patents that were based entirely on knowledge new to the firm." In paint, the effect was not as strong but echoed the photography industry's disappointing experience. The results suggest, the authors write, "that in both the paint and photography industries, as process management activities increase, exploitation increases at the expense of exploratory innovations." (a propósito de exploitation e exploration não esquecer James March).

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Espero amanhã voltar ao resto do artigo com a recordação de outro postal escrito em Junho de 2007 "Não culpem a caneta quando a culpa é de quem escreve!"

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Make capabilities the main pillar of your strategy.

"Companies pour enormous amounts of resources into marketing to build brands. But with the exception of a few industries like soft drinks, brands are only as good as the distinctive products they represent.

Creating and making distinctive products requires an array of strong technical, design, and operational capabilities. Given how demanding and sophisticated customers throughout the world have become, marketing cannot cover up weak innovation for long. Apple, Intel, Corning, Amazon, and Applied Materials are companies that understand this.

They realize that the only way to stay ahead of competition is to maintain an innovation advantage over the long term, and the only way they can do that is if they invest in new, differentiated capabilities."

Trecho extraído do número de Julho-Agosto da revista Harvard Business Review "Restoring Competitiveness" de Gary Pisano e Willy Shih.

O papel das pequenas empresas (parte I)

"Perhaps when Hermann Simon’s book The Hidden Champions became a bestseller in the 1990s, this was a big boost for a lot of so-called niche players in Germany. The majority of the small and medium-sized German companies featured in the book were among the 20 percent of such companies that are scale leaders in small markets. It follows that 80 percent of small and medium-sized German companies are niche players that are in more or less strong competitive situations against their sector’s leaders. Given that this group accounts for 49 percent of Germany’s GDP and 70 percent of all jobs, the subject of niche businesses is a central topic for German macroeconomics, even though researchers have not actually acknowledged it as such."
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Trecho retirado de "BEATING THE GLOBAL CONSOLIDATION ENDGAME - Nine Strategies for Winning in Niches" de Fritz Kroeger, Andrej Vizjak e Michael Moriarty.
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Receio que o Diário Económico esteja a colocar a questão de uma forma incorrecta "PME e grandes empresas fazem parte da solução", sem uma palavra sobre se as empresas estão no sector de bens transaccionáveis ou não.
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As grandes empresas, por norma, ou são portuguesas e estão no sector dos bens não transaccionáveis e estamos falados sobre tudo o que isso significa em termos de drenagem e sifonagem, ou são estrangeiras e estão cá por causa de mão-de-obra barata.

Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XXVIII)

Teixeira dos Santos falou em sinais de esperança na retoma económica.
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Quem é o nosso maior cliente?
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Espanha! Espanha! Espanha!
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"UBS, contundente: El desastre en España va a continuar":
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"Para UBS no hay debate sobre los brotes verdes de la economía pese a la mejora del empleo y la menor caída del consumo y la producción industrial. En un durísimo informe sobre España, el banco suizo asevera que el lo peor está por venir y que el desempleo llegará al 20% de la población."

Rapidez, flexibilidade e mais empreendedorismo

A teoria nos livros "Inovação sem limites, uma rede de gente a trabalhar em "open source"" e um exemplo concreto no dia-a-dia:
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"Johnson & Johnson Buys Access to an Alzheimer’s Drug"
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Grandes empresas, grandes equipas de investigação, orçamentos vultuosos e ... muita inércia, muita burocracia