Quando ninguém se diferencia, é tão fácil a gente diferenciar-se

Uma vez, um aluno de mestrado escreveu-me um e-mail a relatar as consequências da aplicação dos conceitos de cliente-alvo e concentração. Foi dele que retive a frase com que rematava o relato:
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 "Quando ninguém se diferencia, é tão fácil a gente diferenciar-se"
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Foi desta frase que me lembrei com a leitura deste postal de Scott McKain:
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"What Tablet PC's Teach About Sameness... and Distinction"
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Não está a fazer o mesmo na sua empresa?
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E na sua vida?
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A escola quer-nos fazer todos iguais, mas o mundo que se está a desenhar e no qual estamos a embrenhar-nos é para quem é diferente, para quem faz a diferença, para quem procura fazer a diferença.

A roda já está a girar... (parte II)

• "Recessão não trava subida do endividamento"
• "Euro-Bailout Fever"
• "Portugal austerity set to bring back recession"
• "Preparativos para ajuda do FMI a Portugal já começaram"
• "Banco de Portugal: Economia portuguesa vai recuar pelo menos 1,3% neste ano"

O capitão Ahab ...

O cuco

"Sócrates inicia ofensiva para incentivar exportações" basta recordar "Ainda podia ser melhor".
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As exportações das desprezadas PMEs não tecnológicas cresceram apesar do governo e da oposição que temos. Chega agora a hora de sacar dividendos de filhos alheios.

O futuro não é, necessariamente, uma continuação linear do passado

Recomendo a leitura de "Seeing What Others Miss" de Steven Feinberg e Stephen Denny.
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A descrição da batalha de Leuctra é um bom exemplo da oportunidade criada por quem decide ver a realidade de uma forma diferente da massa, por quem decide fazer com que o futuro não seja uma continuação linear do passado.
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"By 2015, for the first time, the number of consumers in Asia's middle class will equal those in Europe and North America combined." 
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Em 2010, as vendas a retalho na China subiram... 18,5%.
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Como é que estes factores vão influenciar o futuro da indústria na Europa?
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É a alteração destes factores abióticos que me faz desconfiar que estes números vão ser ultrapassados:

• "Exportações deverão crescer 5,9% este ano"

"Este perfil acompanha a evolução da procura externa, num quadro em que não se antecipam alterações significativas da competitividade externa da economia portuguesa", escreve o Banco de Portugal no Boletim hoje divulgado".
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A competitividade não é algo absoluto, é sempre relativa. A inflação chinesa está a trabalhar e a fazer mudanças na paisagem competitiva enrugada que a massa ainda não realizou... mas os vasos comunicantes já estão a funcionar.
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As exportações, por muito que cresçam, são uma emanação de menos de 30% da nossa economia. No grosso da economia o ano não vai ser fácil:

• "Construção antevê mais um ano de retrocesso"
• "Em dois anos o país perderá 60 mil empregos"
• "Vão desaparecer quase 50 mil postos de trabalho este ano"
• "Pedidos de insolvência de construtoras aumentaram 25 por cento no ano passado"
• "Conjuntura: rendimento disponível real das famílias vai cair 2,4% este ano - BdP"

É preciso que aconteça uma re-alocação de recursos para sectores de actividade que remunerem melhor o dinheiro, e os fluxos já estão em marcha.

Só agora...

Só agora é que esta mensagem está a chegar aos jornais...
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"Criar valor"
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"Muitas empresas estabeleceram planos de redução de despesas agressivos. Nas instituições públicas as oportunidades de melhoria são muitas. No entanto, a lógica de redução de custos é insuficiente. Sob pena de a economia portuguesa entrar em recessão durante anos. O desafio para as instituições portuguesas é o da criação de valor. Não é um chavão sem conteúdo. É um conceito que, se bem entendido e aplicado, pode ajudar a resolver os problemas de eficácia e de eficiência das nossas empresas e organizações públicas."
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Tanto atraso!!!
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Qual é a receita alemã? E agora somos todos alemães, com o euro.
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Concentração na criação de valor e não no corte de custos.
Concentração no numerador e não no denominador.

The Road to serfdom - parte II

Quem está atento ao que dizem os políticos do sistema, da situação e da oposição, sabe que uma das doenças de que sofrem é a das prioridades. Tudo é prioritário.
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"The only exception to the rule that a free society must not be subjected to a single purpose is war and other temporary disasters when subordination of almost everything to the immediate and pressing need is the price at which we preserve our freedom in the long run. This explains also why so many of the fashionable phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what we have learnt to do for the purposes of war are so very misleading: it is sensible temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it more secure in the future; but the same cannot be said for a system proposed as a permanent arrangement.
That no single purpose must be allowed in peace to have absolute preference over all others applies even to the one aim which everybody now agrees comes in the front rank: the conquest of unemployment. There can be no doubt that this must be the goal of our greatest endeavour; even so, it does not mean that such an aim should be allowed to dominate us to the exclusion of everything else, that, as the glib phrase runs, it must be accomplished "at any price"."
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Trecho retirado de "The Road to Serfdom" de F. Hayek.

Small Giants

Em Setembro passado, no Twitter, Tom Peters recomendou 2 livros:

• "Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores in America" de George Whalin; e
• "Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big" de Bo Burlingham
  

Já os tenho comigo há algum tempo. Ontem comecei a ler o "Small Giants" e está a ser um agradável complemento de "Smart Growth" de Edward Hess:

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"For a conventional business, however, the growth is the goal, and the control is what you need to keep it in hand. With the companies we’re looking at, creating opportunities for employees and opening up new possibilities for the business are the goals. Growth is a natural by-product of the company’s success in pursuing its central purpose and reason for being, whatever that may be.
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So we sat down and did a lot of soul-searching.
We asked what we did well, what kind of work did we get a better return on, what did we need to improve. And then we changed everything.”
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“Instead of trying to do it all, we wanted to be the best at a few things. We physically gave up our licenses in other states so we couldn’t work there, and we went from taking every job to questioning every job.” That meant getting rid of customers, including some who’d been with the company for a long time. The team spent hours analyzing the customer base, noting which jobs were more profitable, discussing which niches Butler should be in and which clients played best to its skill set, projecting how economic trends would affect different industries, and so on. Then came the cuts. “We went from twenty-five clients to ten clients,” Butler said. “Mainly we fired the bad ones, including our biggest client”—a giant financial services company —“that accounted for 50 percent of the value of our jobs. The people they had on our projects were demeaning to us. They’d lie and make us look like fools. We told them we didn’t want to work with them anymore.”"
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Por todo o lado a mensagem: concentração, concentração, concentração!!!

Como nascem os monumentos à treta

Ao definir indicadores para um balanced scorecard, por vezes, as pessoas resistem a serem avaliadas por indicadores de fenómenos que não podem controlar.
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A minha resposta costuma ser: "É a vida!"
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É essa sensação que leva os Programas de Actividades na Função Pública a serem listas e mais listas de actividades, aquilo que as pessoas podem fazer, aquilo que as pessoas podem controlar e não haver nem uma referência a objectivos concretos, a metas, a resultados. Basta recordar os monumentos à treta.
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Foi desta cena que me lembrei ao ler:
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"There was a pause. They were all studying the flip chart. Someone frowned. “We ourselves cannot stop market share from declining,” he said. “Do we want to be measured on that?”
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“Strictly speaking, no,” replied Joe, “but it is the purpose behind everything we are doing. If the rate at which we’re losing share goes down, we’ll know what we’re doing is working, even if we don’t hit the target. If we don’t look at it, we might be barking up the wrong tree.”
“What about what we are measured on?” someone piped up. “We’ve all got targets. Dozens of them.”
So they had, including Joe himself. Part of his bonus was tied to the number of new products delivered.
Optimizing that would not be difficult - he could just go for the easy development projects nearest completion.
But they might not have the most impact.
“Look,” he said, “I’ll make a commitment to you. I will renegotiate the targets for this group. I’ll explain what we are doing and that the measures are just there to tell us whether we’re successful or not.
The outcome is what we’re trying to optimize.
The measures are the dashboard. We should not confuse the readings on it with what we really
want to do, which is to arrive on time at our destination."
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Trecho retirado de "How to Make the Most of Your Company’s Strategy" de Stephen Bungay e publicado no número de Janeiro de 2011 da HBR

Estratégias híbridas e puras... risco, flexibilidade e rentabilidade

No postal de 2008 "Não há almoços grátis: Há que optar" utilizei e expliquei a figura que se segue:

Quanto mais pura for a estratégia, afinal a ideia ideia por detrás do mosaico:

• maior a rentabilidade;
• mas também, maior o risco e menor a flexibilidade, num mundo cada vez mais carregado de incerteza.

É preciso fazer escolhas!!!

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Uns decisores optam por mais risco e outros por menos risco. Uns são beneficiados e outros pagam o preço das decisões honestas que tomaram e falharam. É, também assim, que nasce a heterogeneidade dentro de um mesmo sector de actividade.

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William Barnett em "The Red Queen Among Organizations - How Competitiveness Evolves" aborda este tema:

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"A fundamental argument in modern organization theory is that the process of change is especially hazardous the more that the change disrupts established organizational routines, roles, procedures, capabilities, and
identities. Put differently, the more capable and established an organization, the more that changing the organization is disruptive. Being well adapted implies the ability to perform well but also acts to constrain attempts to alter organizational activities. Organizational change is difficult and hazardous precisely when organizations are well adapted to their environment.
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Competition-Inertia Hypothesis: The more an organization experiences a history of competition in one context, the more hazardous it will be for the organization to move into another context.
One implication of this hypothesis is that organizations do not become inert in isolation, but rather they do so in the company of their competitors.
As one organization competes and becomes well adapted to its context, and so less able to change significantly, its competitors are in the same situation. This raises again the problem of organizations collectively descending into competency traps, as discussed in chapter 3. If organizations turn to one another as social referents, then they may learn from one another. Such learning, however, promises to reinforce inertia as competing organizations collectively become both better adapted to one environment and especially vulnerable to disruption should they change to another." (Moi ici: Daí que quando os factores abióticos mudam e influenciam negativamente, é como se uma epidemia atacasse todo um sector)

Macedónia

• "Ministro brasileiro alerta para ameaça de uma guerra comercial à escala global" (Moi ici: Gosto sempre destes apartes, sobretudos quando vêm de um ministro de um país que mantém taxas alfandegárias que rondam os 30% sobre algumas exportações portuguesas)
• "Portugal vai ter de pagar mais para garantir a alimentação" (Moi ici: O que os jornais não dizem mas eu arrisco afirmar é: Se não importássemos pagávamos ainda mais por eles)
• "The Cover-Up Culture" (Moi ici: Não é só por cá que se cultiva o segredo e a negação da realidade)
• "By 2015, for the first time, the number of consumers in Asia's middle class will equal those in Europe and North America combined." (Moi ici: Será que as fábricas asiáticas mal vão dar para o consumo dos asiáticos? Conseguem imaginar as consequências desse cenário?)
• "Novas encomendas às fábricas disparam 24,5% em Novembro"

Paralelismos

"“Understand, when you’re in the middle of a financial crisis, you’re surrounded by chaos. Everybody is calling you wanting to know when they’re getting paid. Your only concern is keeping your company afloat. When your lawyer says, ‘Maybe we should look at Chapter 11,’ you say, ‘Hell, no. That is not an option. Don’t bring it up again.’ You simply don’t accept that you can’t turn things around. So you plunge ahead and get swallowed up in the day-to-day minutiae and sink deeper and deeper. You need to collect your receivables quicker, so you ratchet up the pressure on your customers, who don’t like to be pressured. You need to hold on to your cash, so you stall your vendors, who don’t like to be stalled. Your employees know something is going on. They’re getting calls of their own. But you’re isolated. You really don’t want to talk to anybody. You’re in this downward spiral, and you can’t cut costs fast enough. Maybe you last another three or four weeks, but it’s complete torture. By the time you realize you may have to look at Chapter 11 after all, there’s nothing else to do."
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Trecho retirado de "Small Giants - Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big" de Bo BurlingHam.

A Geração Maio de 68 e a economia socialista...

A juventude, os que têm menos a perder com a mudança, por todo o lado fogem do socialismo:
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"Young people are fleeing Portugal in droves. But is this a bad thing?"
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"No Italian jobs"
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"No voy a volver a España nunca"

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