Smart Growth

Acabei a leitura de "Smart Growth" de Edward Hess.
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Valeu a pena!
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O autor empastela um bocado, mas a leitura do capítulo 8 "Managing the Risks of Growth - Private Companies" só por si vale o livro todo.
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Nele, o autor, lista as conclusões de um estudo que fez a 54 empresas "I looked at companies that were part of the small group that had survived the start- up phase and had been through a high- growth phase."
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As conclusões gerais são:
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"I found that growth equaled change. Growth changed the companies— their culture, their people, and how they did business. Growth changed the human dynamics of how people communicated and with whom they communicated.
It challenged peoples’ competencies and interpersonal skills. Furthermore, for these companies, the human dynamic of growth proved to be one of the biggest challenges of managing growth. And this challenge recurred as the companies grew because many management teams were not able to manage a bigger or more complex business. As a result, CEOs had to continuously upgrade these teams and face the difficulties of hiring and integrating new players into existing management teams, which oft en stirred up difficult emotional and loyalty issues for remaining team members.
These human dynamics made growth difficult to manage, and it also made smooth and continuous growth rare."
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Quem conhece este blogue sabe o quanto aprecio "Volume is Vanity, Profit is Sanity", e o quanto duvido do crescer por crescer:
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"1.Most companies did not plan for growth. In some cases, it just happened. Those CEOs regretted not thinking about what a bigger company would look like and regretted not thinking about how much growth their company could accommodate. Some companies were overwhelmed by growth and had to slow growth down in order to survive. Others understood the risks of growing too fast before they had the people and quality and financial processes in place and, thus, they turned away business until they were more prepared for growth.
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2.As they learned that growth was a difficult process and was sometimes a one-step-forward-and- two-steps-backward process, they learned the need to manage the pace of growth. Many CEOs said their companies became better when they learned to say no to new opportunities. Learning to focus and being strategic in taking on business led to a “sweet- spot” strategy for many.
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3.Growth changed things. Growth changed what the CEO did. Growth changed what the employees did. Growth added people and more structure. And when they added new people to the mix, they got different human dynamics than before. The chemistry changed. When the management teams expanded, the different combinations of interpersonal dynamics multiplied the people complexity, which impacted execution. Growth increased the complexity of communications and the chance of miscommunications and interpersonal misunderstandings.
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4.CEOs had to learn how to delegate and, as one said, “Delegation is not a natural act.” Delegation was a consistent diffi cult issue for CEOs.
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5.Most companies had difficulties in building a management team because of multiple hiring mistakes. These mistakes were financially and emotionally costly.
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6.Even if assembling a management team went well, many CEOs were surprised at the difficulty of getting that team to work together effectively.
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7.Managing the pace of growth presented a major challenge for many companies. For some, growth happened too fast, forcing companies to put on the brakes to allow the people, processes, and controls to catch up. Some, in fact, came close to losing the business because they grew too fast.
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8.As these private companies grew, the roles of CEOs changed, often dramatically. CEOs who initially did everything had to shift to managing everything, to managing managers, and then to coaching managers and leading culture and strategy.
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9.Most CEOs learned that growth required them to upgrade their people. This caused stress because such changes adversely affected loyal employees who had helped build the business. Many CEOs stated that they had to undertake these difficult upgrades more than once. Given the risks of making mistakes in hires described above, the added stress of disrupting loyal employees and changing team dynamics was wearing on CEOs, who yearned for team stability. Many CEOs said the challenges of hiring and managing a leadership team was the hardest part of the job.
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10.Growth was not an easy process and the various tensions usually resulted in a zig-zag pattern of growth. Managing company growth created tensions between professional accountability and having a family environment; between managing the rate of growth versus delivering quality; between being cautious about turning business away and also worrying that too much business would overwhelm people and processes.
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11.Many CEOs stressed that they had to get honest with themselves and at some point question why they should continue to grow and whether growth would change them and their company so much that the business would no longer be fun.
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13.Some of the CEOs were cognizant of the fact that at a certain revenue level they were likely going to engage bigger, well- capitalized competition.
That competition would expose them to significant risk and may require taking on an institutional partner or selling. Both alternatives meant big changes for the company, the CEOs, and the employees. In some cases, the CEO’s goal was to keep his or her revenue level below that
inflection point."

Inovação e Mongo de braço dado

Numa paisagem competitiva cada vez mais enrugada existem cada vez mais óptimos locais, existem cada vez mais atractores dispersos, existem cada vez mais nichos.
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Por isso, há muito que prevejo a mongolização do planeta Terra numa explosão câmbrica de pequenas empresas a competirem em cada um desses muitos nichos.
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Ao longo dos anos, a suportar, a influenciar e a alimentar esta crença, encontro artigos deste tipo "Innovation in large companies", aqui vai um cheirinho:
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"What`s interesting is that most of the innovations I identified came from small companies or independent researchers and inventors. Large companies like Dupont, 3M and Bayer were also innovating but most of the exciting innovations were coming from else where – some very small companies and independent inventors.

Innovation is risky business. It starts with an idea from an individual inside the company. The fragile idea will run into so many hardships from within the company let alone technical difficulties. It is unfortunate, but it is natural. Most people working in large companies are working there because they are risk-averse anyway. If they were risk takers and truly innovative they would have started their own companies." (BTW, este sítio é fascinante "Inventables")
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Na mesma onda
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"Is the problem with capitalism that people are trying to fix it?":
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"we are now entering a new and very different third era of capitalism - "customer capitalism" or “Capitalism 3.0”.
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Capitalism 3.0 involves a wholesale revolution in management thinking focused on "delighting customers" and redefining managerial roles, coordination mechansisms, values and communications so that everyone and everything in the firm is oriented towards accomplishing this goal. It means reversing the value chain and starting from what would delight the client and focusing the entire organization on that goal." (Moi ici: uma constante neste blogue: Primeiro, quem são os clientes-alvo? E, depois, focar tudo em satisfazê-lo)
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"The organization starts from looking at the needs of the customer or client and orienting the whole organization on meeting those needs. The reason for doing so is simple: the balance of power dramatically has shifted from seller to buyer: the customer is now the boss."
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Na mesma onda "Reinventing capitalism":
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"I believe that everybody benefits, if in the future a larger number of workers think like owners and act like investors."
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Na mesma onda este comentário de Steve Blank.

5 empresas numa

Uma das metáforas que uso com frequência, para representar o funcionamento das equipas de gestão das empresas, é a do jongleur.

Acredito que quando olhamos para uma empresa não vemos uma empresa, devemos ver quatro empresas:

• a empresa de hoje;
• a empresa do futuro;
• a empresa em construção; e
• a empresa feedback

Nestes postais "Jongleurs: será mesmo assim?" e "Exemplo de balanced scorecard (parte VI)" detalhei este pensamento.

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Entretanto, descobri um livro de Vasconcellos e Sá "A empresa negligenciada" (Jongleurs) em que o autor defende que existem, ou deviam existir, duas empresas numa:

• a empresa de hoje, e 
• a empresa do futuro, (a tal empresa negligenciada)

Pois bem, este mês a revista HBR publica "The CEO's Role In Business Model Reinvention" de Vijay Govindarajan e Chris Trimble.

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Neste artigo os autores defendem que quando se olha para uma empresa... devemos ver 3 empresas em simultâneo:

• a empresa de hoje;
• a empresa de ontem; e
• a empresa do futuro.

Os autores chegam mesmo a escrever "Before you can create, you must forget". Ou seja, introduzem no cenário a empresa de ontem, a empresa que precisa de ser eliminada "pruning lines of business that are underperforming or no longer fit the company's strategy."

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Em tempos escrevi uma série de postais "Como descobri que não é suficiente optimizar os processos-chave." (parte I) (parte II) e (parte III), na sequência da leitura de "Dealing with Darwin" de Geoffrey Moore, onde relatei a descoberta de que afinal os processos contexto também deviam ser objecto de iniciativas, para torná-los mais eficientes e, assim, poder retirar recursos escassos para aplicar nos processos críticos para o negócio.
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Ou seja, quando olhamos para uma empresa não vemos uma empresa, devemos ver cinco empresas:

• a empresa de ontem,
• a empresa de hoje;
• a empresa do futuro;
• a empresa em construção; e
• a empresa feedback

Há um certo perfume a "cargo cult policy"

Se fizermos muito buzz sobre "exportações, exportações, exportações" elas vão ocorrer!
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"Primeiro-ministro anuncia Congresso das Exportações para 9 de Fevereiro"
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Ou será para perfilhar um filho que não é dele?
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E colher os louros da vitória merecidos por quem conseguiu dar a volta, apesar dos políticos da situação e da oposição que temos?

A roda já está a girar...

• "Alemanha e França querem que Portugal aceite ajuda"
• "“Der Spiegel” diz que Alemanha e França querem que Portugal aceite ajuda financeira"
• "Alemanha e França querem que Portugal aceite ajuda financeira"
• "Mercados continuam a empurrar Portugal para uma ajuda externa"
• "Cavaco surpreendido com notícias sobre ajuda a Portugal"
• "Cavaco desconhece qualquer pressão para que Portugal peça ajuda"
• "Alemanha e França pressionam Portugal a pedir ajuda, diz a revista Der Spiegel"
• "Portugal deve recorrer ao fundo de resgate "rapidamente""
• "São “inaceitáveis" pressões para Portugal recorrer ao FMI"

Tentar descortinar futuros hipotéticos que não são continuações lineares do passado

Ontem escrevi "Alimentar discussões sobre hipotéticos futuros" e "Uma investigação que precisava de ser feita - uma emergência que precisava de ser reconhecida" sobre um tema que me é muito caro, pôr as empresas e os empresários a pensar num futuro hipotético que não seja uma continuação linear do passado, para ganhar a vantagem de cavalgar a onda da mudança, em vez de correr atrás do prejuízo com as calças na mão.
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Ontem descobri mais um artigo que merecia ser objecto de reflexão por parte dos empresários "China Manufacturing and Transport Cost Showing Sharp Rise – Trends and Implications for Business":
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"China is becoming America – fast. Before we know it, we will be bringing jobs back here to the US. You might think that jobs would migrate to India or Southeast Asia next, and there will be some of that, but the inflation occurring in China will happen to those countries too as they move up the income and consumption curve."
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Ontem o John escreveu num comentário "conheço alguns amigos meus que nunca fizeram uma análise swot e têm sucesso".
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A minha resposta instintiva foi recordar uma entrevista a um bispo italiano em que o entrevistador lhe perguntou:
- Já reparou na quantidade de pessoas que vão à missa todos os Domingos e que, no entanto, são maus como as cobras?
Ao que o bispo lhe respondeu:
- Se não fossem à missa eram bem piores!
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Pois bem, muito sinceramente, ainda bem para esses amigos do aluno. Mas será que não poderiam ainda ficar melhor se reflectissem sobre a sua situação e racionalizassem o porquê do seu sucesso? Será que poderiam ampliar ainda mais as vantagens competitivas de que desfrutam?
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Voltando ao artigo sobre a evolução da sociedade de consumo chinesa, quais podem ser as implicações para a indústria na Europa e, sobretudo, em Portugal?
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Os americanos queixam-se disto "Reminiscences Of An American Industrial Nation - How In A Few Short Years America Lost Its Manufacturing Sector" (BTW, ainda há dias escrevia sobre a facilidade de obter capital como uma forma de promover a deslocalização rápida de empresas e, como uma forma de atrasar ou evitar a subida na escala de valor).
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Os empresários podem sofrer da falácia da centralidade:
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"Researcher Ron Westrum, observing the diagnostic practices of pediatricians in the 1940s and 1950s, spotted what he has come to call the fallacy of centrality. The fallacy is this: under the assumption that you are in a central position, you presume that if something serious were happening, you would know about it. And since you don’t know about it, it isn’t happening. It is precisely this distortion that kept pediatricians from diagnosing child abuse until the early 1960s. Their reasoning? If parents were abusing their children, I’d know about it; since I don’t know about it, it isn’t happening." (daqui)
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Assim sendo, quando é que podem tomar consciência de que algo de importante mudou, ou está a mudar, a nível dos factores abióticos que influenciam a paisagem competitiva enrugada em que competem? (O timing é fundamental como conta Soros "I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong... I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away") (daqui)
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James March e Barbara Levitt escreveram em 1988 o artigo "Organizational Learning". Chamo a atenção para o tema "Learning from the experience of others" e sobretudo para "Mechanisms for Diffusion". Não é fácil para uma organização aprender!
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A coisa complica-se mais quando se lê o terceiro capítulo de "The Red Queen Among Organizations - How Competitiveness Evolves" de William Barnett:
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"Organizational evolution is constrained in three ways. First, organizations are temporally constrained, sometimes “forgetting” valuable lessons and other times retaining the lessons of the past even when environmental change renders this outcome maladaptive. Second, the Red Queen describes a coevolutionary process among multiple organizations, but what is done in response to one competitor may constrain what can be done in response to another. This interdependence implies what might be thought of as a spatial constraint, affecting organizations that attempt to adapt to multiple, conflicting logics of competition simultaneously. Third, organizational learning is known to be constrained by the limitations of direct organizational experience, which often constitute biased samples of possible competitive realities."
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Barnett e March & Levitt escrevem sobre a aprendizagem míope:
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"Given that learning in Red Queen evolution is experiential, myopic learning might plague organizations as they develop through this process.
Myopic learning would arise if an organization were to experience a relatively narrow range of competitions, leaving it with a limited and biased understanding of the context’s logic of competition.
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More generally, the myopia problem appears whenever an organization’s competitive experiences are focused too narrowly on a small range of all possible competitions. When this bias arises, an organization becomes poorly adapted to other possible competitions even as it learns."
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Conversar sobre futuros hipotéticos, não para impor modelos ou respostas, mas para alertar as mentes que individualmente serão despertadas para realidades alternativas.

Desenvolver indicadores para a perspectiva Recursos e Infra-estruturas (parte 5 de 4)

Em tempos escrevi este postal "Desenvolver indicadores para a perspectiva Recursos e Infra-estruturas (parte 4 de 4)".
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Nele confessava a minha insatisfação, a minha incomodidade ao lidar com o tema da cultura de uma empresa.
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Este trecho de "Rework" de Jason Fried e David Hansson vem ao encontro da sensação descrita acima. Não a resolve mas ajuda-me a explicá-la:
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"You don't create a culture
Instant cultures are artificial cultures. They're big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules. They are obvious, ugly, and plastic. Artificial culture is paint. Real culture is patina.
You don't create a culture. It happens. This is why new companies don't have a culture. Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust, then trust will be built in. If you treat customers right, then treating customers right becomes your culture.
Culture isn't a foosball table or trust falls. It isn't policy. It isn't the Christmas party or the company picnic. Those are objects and events, not culture. And it's not a slogan, either. Culture is action, not words.
So don't worry too much about it. Don't force it. You can't install a culture. Like a fine scotch, you've got to give it time to develop."
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Se cultura é acção, se cultura é patina, se cultura é o subproduto de um padrão consistente de comportamentos. Então, se fizermos uma viagem no tempo até ao futuro... que comportamentos e que acções gostaríamos de observar?

Have You Ever Had It So Blue

The Road to serfdom - parte I

"The crucial point is that it is infinitely more difficult rationally to comprehend the necessity of submitting to forces whose operation we cannot follow in detail, than to do so out of the humble awe which religion, or even the respect for the doctrines of economics, did inspire. It may indeed be the case that infinitely more intelligence on the part of everybody would be needed than anybody now possesses, if we were even merely to maintain our present complex civilisation without anybody having to do things of which he does not comprehend the necessity. The refusal to yield to forces which we neither understand nor can recognise as the conscious decisions of an intelligent being is the product of an incomplete and therefore erroneous rationalism. .
It is incomplete because it fails to comprehend that the co-ordination of the multifarious individual efforts in a complex society must take account of facts no individual can completely survey. And it fails to see that, unless this complex society is to be destroyed, the only alternative to submission to the impersonal and seemingly irrational forces of the market is submission to an equally uncontrollable and therefore arbitrary power of other men. In his anxiety to escape the irksome restraints which he now feels, man does not realise that the new authoritarian restraints which will have to be deliberately imposed in their stead will be even more painful."
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Mais actual que nunca e a conjugar bem com a emergência e Seth Godin.

Continua.

Alimentar discussões sobre hipotéticos futuros

Talvez Martin Feldstein esteja a ser demasiado optimista "Harvard’s Feldstein Says U.S., China Trade Gap on Path to Resolution"
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No entanto,  a valorização do yuan e o crescimento do mercado doméstico chinês são dois poderosos factores abióticos que estão a alterar a paisagem competitiva enrugada.
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Que estratégias podem emergir destas alterações?
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O que é que as associações industriais estão a fazer para gerar a discussão entre os seus associados? Não para darem origem a planos quinquenais, mas para gerarem carambolas nas mentes dos mais ambiciosos, dos mais apaixonados, dos mais temerários, para que nasçam dezenas, centenas de planos individuais, à medida de cada empresa, à medida da experiência, à medida do cadastro, à medida do CV de cada empresa/empresário... Minkowski em acção!
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Enquanto escrevo isto, o twitter avisou-me que Seth Godin publicou um novo postal... nem de propósito:
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"The sure-fire recipe for business success
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Wait, I was confused. There's a sure-fire recipe for delicious chocolate chip cookies. There is in fact a magic formula.
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For businesses, not so much. There isn't one secret, one process, one solution. Instead, there are a thousand or maybe a million.
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It's not a jigsaw puzzle, it's a strand of DNA, easily rearranged and sometimes it even works. For a while."

UN-marketing (parte IV)

Why am I relating these ideas, theories and facts?

• "Companies Ignore Customer Feedback on Social Media" ("94% of companies are not using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to gather customer feedback despite the fact that consumers are increasingly engaging to discuss products using the platforms to discuss their experiences with products. The most common ways for companies to gather feedback continue to be email/online surveys (51%), formal phone surveys (28%), and informal phone calls (28%).")
• "Online is not a separate place" ("Communities are about belonging. The public access that the Internet now allows people to have is mistakenly believed to mean trying to get the broadest possible audience. But in effect people are trying to reach people like themselves, like-minded people, in order to belong to a community. There has been a tremendous increase in the amount of material that is available to the public, not really intended for the public, but instead for the emerging communities.
  
  Many of our behaviours are held in place not by rational decisions or desires but by present or bygone constraints. Our cultures are shaped as much by these constraints as they are by capabilities and aspirations. Changes often take place very fast when the constraints are removed. The challenge is that misleading metaphors are often the biggest obstacles to moving forward after the technological constraints are gone.
  
  Change occurs not so much as a result of new information leading to individual learning but when the patterns of connectedness between individuals change. Learning as a result of the print revolution was seen as an individual process. Learning as a result of the social media revolution is an active process of communication between people. Knowledge was earlier seen as being stored in content. Today knowledge is understood to be perpetually constructed in communication. Books could be transmitted from one person to another. Today knowledge is the process of relating. The technological constraints are gone; now is the time to get rid of the wrong, constraining metaphors.")

Perhaps the answer is also here:

• "Sem uma relação amorosa com os clientes-alvo... nada"

Cucos em acção - first things first

"Alunos fartos de estudar à chuva boicotam aulas"
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"DREC gasta 138 mil euros a tapar o sol aos carros"
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"O dirigente do SPRC ressalva que "estas são as coisas que vêm à tona!" e lança uma questão: "Quanto mais disto haverá espalhado pelas várias capitanias do Ministério da Educação e de outros organismos do mesmo Governo que imporá tantos sacrifícios aos portugueses neste ano que agora se inicia?"."
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Num país em crise com um sector público que gasta mais de 1,6 milhões de euros em cabazes de Natal tudo é possível.
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"Ao JN, a presidente da AP/ESJF, Ana Costa, afirmou-se "chocada" com as prioridades e o "desprezo da DREC""
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Chocada!!!??? Chocado fico eu quando as pessoas se indignam com estas coisas. Estas coisas não são pessoais, não acontecem porque os decisores da DREC são más pessoas, estas coisas são uma consequência directa do esquema das coisas num mundo socialista.... que vontade de reler "The Road to Serfdom"...

Uma investigação que precisava de ser feita - uma emergência que precisava de ser reconhecida

Era bom que os jornais não se ficassem só por isto "Preço da "t-shirt" portuguesa dispara 42% nas exportações".
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Aquela frase "os industriais portugueses dizem que se está a "vender menos e a ganhar mais"" devia ser investigada.
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Era interessante que 2/3 jornalistas bons investigassem 6/7 casos concretos de empresas bem sucedidas. Os relatos dessas histórias, com nomes, com moradas, com casos concretos, deviam ser divulgados por todas as empresas do sector para perceberem que além do choradinho habitual da associação, há alternativas, há formas de fugir do campeonato do preço/custo para entrar no campeonato do valor.
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Recordando esse velhinho artigo de Mintzberg "Crafting Strategy" pode acontecer que algumas das empresas que estão a ter bons resultados estejam a tirar partido de uma conjugação não deliberada que surtiu efeito, uma estratégia emergente. Também para elas seria útil reflectir e racionalizar sobre o que está a acontecer, para poderem ... fazer batota. Em vez de apenas tirar partido dos factores críticos de sucesso já existentes, passar inflacionar essa vantagem, trabalhá-la ainda mais para a aprofundar.
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Talvez fosse interessante fazer a radiografia de Terry Hill, até que ponto a estratégia e a organização das operações formam uma estrutura sinérgica que se auto-reforça? Ou será que há ainda várias hipóteses de melhoria?
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Ainda, talvez fosse interessante mergulhar e estudar as diferenças entre o têxtil que está a dar a volta e o têxtil que ainda está a fechar como relatado aqui, o que é que o sector pode aprender?
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"Emergence is an important topic: it deals with behaviors and or qualities that arise without warning, without apparent central control and are properties of the entire system and environment and not of individual components. The wetness of water can be considered an emergent property or the flocking behavior of a large group of birds. Both have qualities and properties that cannot be found in individual agents.

The idea of emergence includes the idea of emergent design through adaptation to dynamic conditions. Consider the case of DNA versus intelligent design. Evolution by adaptive DNA is without apparent central control and develops without warning and usually in unpredictable ways with unforeseeable magnitudes of outcomes; intelligent design takes the opposite position in every way: central control according to a pre-established plan that goes according to design with foreseeable and specified outcomes.

Johnson offers the following components and behaviors that seem to apply to most complex systems and situations.

Components:

• The system contains a collection of many interacting objects.
• The behavior of agents/objects is affected by memory or feedback.
• Objects/agents can adapt their strategies based on memory or feedback.
• Exists in an open system, affected by the environment.

Behaviors:

• The system appears to be alive.
• Filled with emergent phenomenon that are surprising and can be extreme.
• Absence of an invisible hand or central controller.
• There is a mix of orderly and disorderly behavior." 

Trecho retirado de "An executive summary of complexity theory"
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"With Emergence, such involved behaviours are not specified directly by a set of rules, they arise as a dynamic result of the rest of the system. Just as simple rules can lead to complex behavior, complex rules (just look at tax law) can lead to stupid behavior. We love detail. And attention to detail can lead to success, but it can equally lead to morale-killing stagnation, meetings, and compromise. You can't plan, forecast, or predict everything, but you can cultivate an environment that facilitates the kind of emergent behaviour from which you can benefit: "Design broadly. Iterate locally. Finalize specifically.""

Trecho retirado de "Emergence"

Já não há respeito

"A aprovação do Decreto-Lei que estabelece as normas de execução é “uma decisão de grande importância” e “é um sinal que o Governo dá no sentido de reiterar a sua determinação de execução orçamental”" (6 de Janeiro 2011) trecho retirado daqui.
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"O risco de default dos dois países da zona euro está em novos máximos. Os juros das Obrigações do Tesouro portuguesas a 10 anos estão nos 7,12%, novo máximo desde a adesão ao euro" (7 de Janeiro de 2011) trecho retirado daqui.
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Este grito de Camilo Lourenço "Chega de medidas. Façam…!" faz-me lembrar este trecho do livro Rework de Jason Fried e David Hansson.
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"you need people who are going to do work, not delegate work. Everyone's got to be producing. No one can be above the work.
That means you need to avoid hiring delegators, those people who love telling others what to do. Delegators are dead weight for a small team. They clog the pipes for others by coming up with busywork. And when they run out of work to assign, they make up more--regardless of whether it needs to be done."

Rodrigo Leão

Escolher - fazer opções!!!

É fundamental fazer escolhas!
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É fundamental decidir quem são os clientes-alvo. Não se pode servir bem toda a gente!!!
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Quem quer servir toda a gente tem de fazer muitos compromissos, tem de optar pelo meio-termo, tem de "perder a alma"
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"Draw a line in the sand
As you get going, keep in mind why you're doing what you're doing. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you're willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world.
A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider, and more passionately than any advertising could.
Strong opinions aren't free. You'll turn some people off. They'll accuse you of being arrogant and aloof. That's life. For everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one's upset by what you're saying, you're probably not pushing hard enough. (And you're probably boring, too.)
When you don't know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious."
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Trecho retirado de "Rework" de Jason Fried e David Hansson.

A jangada de pedra

"No voy a volver a España nunca"
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"Recibos verdes. Quem ganha mil euros passa a receber apenas 598"
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"Banco central da Suíça deixou de aceitar dívida de Portugal"
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O jogo do gato e do rato (parte VIII)

Este artigo do Jornal de Notícias é um bom exemplo da aplicação do jogo do rato:
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"Salário mínimo sobe e país perde competitividade"
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Escrevi bom exemplo... talvez devesse escrever mau exemplo, pois afunila, pois algema, pois limita o problema a só uma das parcelas, a dos custos.

E não é nessa que nos devemos concentrar... cuidado com o retorno da atenção!!!
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Além disso parece que o autor do artigo confunde salários com custos unitários do trabalho:

• O jogo do gato e do rato (parte I)
• O jogo do gato e do rato (parte V)
• O jogo do gato e do rato (parte IV)

Dúvida, como é que este estudo explica o sucesso do calçado? 

Dúvida, como é que este estudo explica o regresso dos têxteis?

Sem uma relação amorosa com os clientes-alvo... nada!

"As I sat there in the ginormous company’s fancy conference room, it occurred to me that everything they said about their target market was a ploy to get the customer to take an action—to consume, to buy, to transfer money into said ginormous company’s increasingly ginormous (but maybe not enough) coffers. They expressed no genuine love for the customer. He was a target. She was a sitting duck. Customers apparently had no inherent value beyond what they were able to add to the ginormous company’s bottom line and no purpose apart from keeping everyone in that room employed. The customer would have been completely irrelevant, except that the ad campaigns being created needed an audience and the product being manufactured needed someone to buy it—and then buy some more. But why?"
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Trecho retirado de "Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business" de Nancy Lublin"

Diferenças e heterogeneidade não rimam com média

Uma das lições que aprendi nos meus primeiros anos de trabalho foi: desconfiar sempre de resultados que apenas retratam a média. A dispersão é muito, muito, muito importante.
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Assim, pensando bem, é absurdo pensar que uma média caracterize o desempenho de um sector de actividade povoado por empresas diferentes, com histórias diferentes, com pessoas diferentes.
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Dois exemplos:

• Este artigo "The granularity of growth" de Mehrdad Baghai, Sven Smit e Patrick Viguerie; e
  
• Este outro artigo "AstraZeneca's Risky Bet on Drug Discovery" na revista Bloomberg Businessweek

Diferentes empresas, no mesmo sector de actividade, fazem diferentes opções, têm diferentes capacidades e obtêm diferentes resultados...

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Esta figura é elucidativa:

É tão básico... tão errado, o considerar-se a média como uma boa representação de um sector heterogéneo.