"Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?"

"Scenarios become more provocative when written from the perspective of who the firm believes will become its fastest-growing customer in five years. (Moi ici: Esta frase não me sai da cabeça... parece-me cada vez mais potente)
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innovation isn’t about an exchange of value at a moment in time but part of an ongoing investment in customers as appreciating assets
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Instead of defining innovation as an investment in the company’s future, we treated it as an investment in the customer’s future. Innovations should make customers more valuable."
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Trechos retirados de "Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?" de Michael Schrage

Vai ser interessante observar a cumplicidade

"Brands have been around for a long time. People often used symbols that stood for their products or their lineage, which may have had a relationship to the creation and purveyance of certain products. But modern branding really came into its own in the twentieth century. The ability to economically put a message in front of a consumer; the emergence of products that you could buy, rather than make yourself; and the pursuit of profits based on the economies of scale provided by manufacturing.., and communication began to suggest that creating a reason why someone should buy your product (as opposed to a competitor's) were good things. As Crawford describes it:
"Consumption, no less than production, needed to be brought under scientific management—the management of desire. Thus, there came to be marketers who called themselves "consumption engineers" in the early decades of the twentieth century."
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This represents a fundamental shift away from the maker/designer model in which the duality of design was mediated through individual decisions based on how the needs of the two sides (process/final artifact) should best be served. Now business was in the driver's seat and could use a more scientific approach to streamlining production and driving demand, with brand being the emerging point of focus for the consumer. In this situation, design's biggest effect would be felt in how the brand was brought to life and used; the decisions about product were no longer open and flexible, and consumers’ attention was often diverted away from the pragmatic tangible value, of the product-in favor of the intangible and aspirational value of the brand."

E o que é que vai mudar com Mongo?
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E quando o produtor e consumidor se puderem reunir numa mesma pessoa?
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E quando o consumidor puder dialogar directamente com o produtor?
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Uma disrupção brutal do modo de vida em que a sociedade ocidental se habituou a viver nos últimos 100 anos.
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Quando os "Giant armadillos" deixarem de cavar túneis, há todo um ecossistema que vai desaparecer... um pouco como em Portugal, com o fim do escavar através das obras públicas.
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Num país socialista como Portugal vai ser interessante observar a cumplicidade e as artimanhas que os governos e os incumbentes vão implementar para atrasar Mongo, para prolongar o modelo do século XX.
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Trechos retirados de "Experience Design: A Framework for Integrating Brand, Experience, and Value"

Fugir à comoditização

A mesma tendência em todo o lado:

"Many consumers now think of some legal services ... as commodities differentiated only by price.
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Commodities, after all, are uniform products that are selected on the basis of price, because price is the only thing that differentiates one offering from another. Services become commodities when clients see the outcome of a service as standard; that is, differences from one service provider to the next are irrelevant to the client’s desired outcomes.
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Most industries are experiencing an accelerating rate of commoditization and, therefore, pricing pressures in their markets. Many factors account for this:

• Most industries have matured, so that knowledge and quality that once separated competitors are now commonly available.

• Excess supply exists in most markets owing in large measure to the Internet, which has erased geographic boundaries, allowing companies to compete anywhere.

• Retailers use store brands to pressure manufacturers to reduce their prices.

• The Internet makes price shopping effortless for consumers and forces manufacturers into online auctions to win retail-store shelf space.

• A growing business service sector enables competitors to quickly copy good ideas.

• Customers have more control of companies’ images due to the rise in blogs.

Businesses try to escape commoditization through product innovation, branding centered on emotional benefits, and improved marketing communications."

Sugestões para fugir à comoditização?

"The recession offers unique opportunities to rethink your value promise and redefine the business that you are in. Before you create your next marketing plan or annual strategic plan, step back alone or with a group of partners and ask the following questions:

• 1) Why should clients work with you, versus other firms that also are qualified to meet their needs? Be careful to answer this question from the client’s perspective. ...

• 2) If you have a differentiated value promise, don’t rest on your laurels. What skills can you develop to make your value promise even more relevant, compelling, unique, and hard to copy? We work in a copycat economy in which competitors emulate others’ good ideas, creating more price-driven competition. The commoditization process is the gravitational force of the economy. You must keep improving your advantages to escape it.

• 3) If you lack a differentiated value promise, what problems and frustrations do your clients face with legal services? What does or could your organization do or have that no competitor could easily match that would address these challenges and greatly benefit current or potential clients?

• 4) How might you disrupt your own services to significantly decrease charges to clients for some or several services?

• 5) Would a different revenue model build a higher value with key clients?"

Estas questões, esta reflexão, não serve só para escritórios de advogados, aplica-se também a uma padaria, a uma empresa de enchidos, a um hotel do interior, a ...
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Fundamental assumir a condução do destino da empresa.
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Trechos retirados de "Surpassing the Gold Standard: Differentiate Your Practice in Ways that Really Matter"

Algo a mudar na paisagem

Algo a mudar na paisagem:

• "The declining return to education spending in South Korea"
• "The other arms race"
• "Skip College Is Top Advice for World-Beating Koreans: Job"
• "What's In A College Degree? Maybe Not As Much As You Think – ReadWrite"
• "“I Quit Academia,” an Important, Growing Subgenre of American Essays"

Curiosidade do dia

"Substituir uns políticos por outros (remover o bloqueio político) não servirá para nada se não forem alterados os dispositivos de políticas públicas que são as fontes dos défices e da dívida."

Trecho retirado de "O que parece não é o que parece"

"life inside a cost leader looks very different from life inside a differentiator"

"Differing imperatives under low-cost strategies and differentiation strategies.In other words, life inside a cost leader looks very different from life inside a differentiator. In a cost leader, managers are forever looking to better understand the drivers of costs and are modifying their operations accordingly. (Moi ici: Recordar ao fazer a barba todos os dias)  In a differentiator, managers are forever attempting to deepen their holistic understanding of customers to learn how to serve them more distinctively. In a cost leader, cost reduction is relentlessly pursued, while in a differentiator, the brand is relentlessly built.Customers are seen and treated very differently. At a cost leader, nonconforming customers - that is, customers who want something special and different from what the firm currently produces - are sacrificed to ensure standardization of the product or service, all in the pursuit of cost-effectiveness. At a differentiator, customers are jealously guarded. If customers indicate a desire for something different, the firm tries to design a new offering that the customers will adore....Both cost leadership and differentiation require the pursuit of distinctiveness. You don’t get to be a cost leader by producing your product or service exactly as your competitors do, and you don’t get to be a differentiator by trying to produce a product or service identical to your competitors’. To succeed in the long run, you must make thoughtful, creative decisions about how to win."

Trecho retirado de "Playing to win" de Roger Martin e Lafley.

O que é que isso pode querer dizer sobre a qualidade da estratégia da Apple?

Há bocado, neste postal "O que é que a sua empresa exclui?" chamávamos a atenção para este trecho carregado de sabedoria:

"If someone else is making money on what you choose not to do, it just might be a sign that you have a good strategy."

Pois bem, agora descubro nesta reflexão de Rags Srinivasan em "Quote of the Century on Running a Business" :

"these plans would eat into Apple’s margins, and investors hate when that happens. True, but they would drive sales and improve Apple’s market share, which would be a boon to Apple’s future earnings, especially if you believe that its low smartphone market share leaves it vulnerable to Google."

Se as escolhas estratégicas da Apple deixarem espaço para que "someone else" (Google) faça dinheiro com o que a  Apple resolveu não fazer... o que é que isso pode querer dizer sobre a qualidade da estratégia da Apple?
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Nunca esquecer:
"Volume is Vanity, Profit is Sanity" ou Hermann Simon e o seu "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets"

Items or insights?

"To the surprise of many, these firms are showing that commissions can sometimes do more harm than good—and that getting rid of them can open a path to higher profits.
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contingent rewards—I call them “if then” rewards, as in “If you do this, then you get that”—work well with routine tasks social scientists dub “algorithmic.” Think stuffing envelopes quickly or turning the same screw the same way on an assembly line. The promise of a reward, especially cash, excites our attention, and we focus narrowly on getting the job done.
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However, those same if-then rewards turn out to be far less effective for complex, creative, conceptual endeavors—what psychologists call “heuristic” work.
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That leads us back to sales. In the middle of the last century, selling was fairly simple. Memorize your script, open your sample case a certain way, fire back standard responses to predictable objections—and do it over and over again until the law of averages works in your favor.
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Today, though, the transactional aspects of sales are disappearing. When routine functions can be automated, and when customers and prospects often have as much data as the saleswoman herself, the skills that matter most are heuristic: Curating and interpreting information instead of merely dispensing it. Identifying new problems along with solving established ones. Selling insights rather than items.
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Should every company forswear sales commissions? No. But simply challenging this orthodoxy helps us recognize that selling today is sophisticated, complex work—and that the people doing it therefore require incentives beyond a dangled carrot."

E recordo a diferença entre vendedores e consultores de compra.
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Trechos retirados de "A Radical Prescription for Sales" de Daniel H. Pink

I see socialists everywhere

"Assunção Cristas não quer portugueses com mais de dois cães por apartamento"
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"Governo vai limitar promoções no comércio"
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Em grande rumo à Sildávia:

O que é que a sua empresa exclui?

Este texto "When a marketing strategy isn't really a strategy at all" lista uma boa quantidade de reflexões sobre estratégia. Contudo, o que realmente me prende a atenção foi o último parágrafo:

"If someone else is making money on what you choose not to do, it just might be a sign that you have a good strategy."

Uma boa lembrança para o facto de muitas estratégicas não preverem a exclusão de nada.
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BTW, lembro-me logo dos SUV de marca Volvo.

Curiosidade do dia

"Bicycles are outselling cars in Europe and that might not be just a blip"

"However, not all the countries where bikes outsold cars were in economic dire straits.  For instance, Lithuania, where bicycles outsold cars a little over nine times, saw its economy grow a healthy 3.6% last year. (That’s despite a slowdown in trade with the rest of the EU countries.) Even as economies recover in Europe and the US, people might be sticking to their bicycles."

Mais um exemplo

"Se guia um Audi ou um Volkswagen é bem provável que as óticas do seu carro tenham sido feitas em Cucujães, uma freguesia do concelho de Oliveira de Azeméis.
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Antes de ser adquirida pelo grupo austríaco Aspock, em 2007, a empresa fabricava componentes e moldes de plástico, atividade que exercia desde a fundação, nos anos 70. Agora está concentrada na produção de farolins e óticas. Este momento marca também um impulso no crescimento nomeadamente na investigação, em que conta com departamentos de física ótica e térmica. A especialização faz parte da estratégia da empresa que dotou a estrutura de recursos humanos especializados em áreas tecnológicas. O processo envolveu parcerias com universidades como a de Aveiro ou a do Minho.
A evolução da eletrónica e do design na iluminação automóvel beneficiou a empresa que se especializou na tecnologia LED, muito em voga no mercado.
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Domingos Pinto explica que o negócio “está orientado para as marcas premium”, um segmento do mercado automóvel que tem conseguido manter-se à tona neste momento mais deprimido da economia."

Trechos retirados de "Aspock: Eles iluminam a estrada à sua frente"

"Managing for Strategic Success"

Um excelente artigo, relevante para o desafio de co-construir uma estratégia para uma empresa, "What Makes Strategic Decisions Diferent", de Phil Rosenzweig, publicado no número de Novembro de 2013 pela Harvard Business Review.

"the bulk of the decision-making research published to date applies to one type of decision, and it’s not the type that’s most challenging for managers. Their most important and most difficult decisions - strategic decisions with consequences for the performance of the company - call for a very diferent approach.
The fact is that people need to make up their minds in a great variety of circumstances, and it’s a source of confusion that the same word, “decision,” is used for all of them.
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A decision. The same term is applied to routine as well as complex deliberations, to both small-stakes bets and high-stakes commitments, and to exploratory steps as well as irreversible moves.
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before we can advise people on how to make better strategic decisions, we need to equip them to recognize how decisions differ.
For that, we need to break the universe of decisions into a few categories. We can then suggest the
best approach for each.
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Categorizing DecisionsDecisions vary along two dimensions: control and performance. The frst considers how much we can infuence the terms of the decision and the outcome. Are we choosing among options presented to us, or can we shape those options? Are we making a onetime judgment, unable to change what happens after the fact, or do we have some control over how things play out once we’ve made the decision? The second dimension addresses the way we measure success. Is our aim to do well, no matter what anyone else does, or do we need to do better than others? That is, is performance absolute or relative?

Decisions in the Fourth FieldThe crux of our discussion comes into focus when we consider the fourth field. For these decisions, we can actively infuence outcomes, and success means doing better than rivals. Here we fnd the essence of strategic management. Business executives aren’t like shoppers picking a product or investors choosing a stock, simply making a choice that leads to one outcome or another. By the way they lead and communicate, and through their ability to inspire and encourage, executives can influence outcomes. That’s the definition of “management.” Moreover, they are in charge of organizations that compete vigorously with others; doing better than rivals is vital. That’s where strategy comes in.
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What sort of mind-set do they require? When we can infuence outcomes, it is useful to summon high levels of self-belief. And when we need to outperform rivals, such elevated levels are not just useful but indeed essential. Only those who are able to muster a degree of commitment and determination that is by some defnitions excessive will be in a position to win. That’s not to say that wildly optimistic thinking will predictably lead to success. It won’t. But in tough competitive situations where positive thinking can influence outcomes, only those who are willing to go beyond what seems reasonable will succeed."

Penso logo no desafio de fazer passar a mensagem, em algumas empresas, de que um consultor não pode tirar uma estratégia da prateleira para aplicação.
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Uma estratégia tem de ser co-construída pela empresa, sob pena de não ser percebida, sob pena de não ser apreendida, sob pena do compromisso não ser suficientemente forte... é a tal história sobre a importância de partir pedra.

Variável em vez de constante

Trecho retirado de "Experience Design - A Framework for Integrating Brand, Experience, and Value" de Patrick Newbery e Kevin Farnham.

"This condition . . . shifting baseline syndrome . . . refers to how we become used to whatever state of affairs is true when we are born, or when we first look at a situation.
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His point is that it’s easy to take the ways things are for granted. We assume they have always been this way and will likely remain that way in the future. This can fool us into believing that there is some objective logic or rationale for why things are the way they are and that we can reliably build on that interpretation. A healthy counterview to shifting baseline syndrome is that the world is in constant flux and probably a lot less linear and serial than we think. What exists today is circumstantial, driven by infl uences we may not see, and therefore should not be assumed as being
the right, or only, way to look at things."

Ao ler isto lembrei-me logo deste postal recente "Three Dangerous Temptations":

"Accepting an Existing Choice as Immutable It can also be tempting to view a where-to-play choice as a given, as having been made for you. But a company always has a choice of where to play.
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It is tempting to think that you have no choice in where to play, because it makes for a great excuse for mediocre performance. It is not easy to change playing fields, but it is doable and can make all the difference."

E recuo até este outro "Drive markets" onde se pode ler:

"Isto nem sempre é fácil... muitos olham para o mercado não como uma variável que se pode tentar alterar em nosso favor, mas como um dado do problema, uma condição imposta. Assim, acabam por se auto-limitar, por se auto-censurar, por reduzir as hipóteses de sucesso futuro." 

Aprender com Tom Peters

"Anybody who uses the term "efficient relationships" has never had an effective relationship. "Efficient relationship" = Oxymoron.
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NEVER FORGET: Innovation = INEFFICIENT process. Eg: Slop. Chaos. Big steps back. Disruptive oddballs. Slapdash demos. Unplanned connections.
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Innovation = INEFFICIENCY. Idle chatter. Chance encounters. Determined enemies. Daydreamers. Unrealistic deadlines. Severe under-funding.
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Nothing wakes up a planning session better than a truly half-assed, premature projected timeline.
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Want immediate engagement around a proposal? Nothing better than a horrible draft document. (Polished is a "Don't mess with this" signal.)"

Sequência de tweets de Tom Peters que arquivei em Junho passado .

Adivinhem!

Ao ler este artigo "Reputation is a small company’s competitive advantage. Here’s why" lembei-me de uma experiência recente.
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A terminar um projecto de apoio à implementação de um sistema de gestão da qualidade numa micro-empresa, colocou-se a questão da certificação do sistema e de a quem recorrer para o fazer.
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A empresa escolheu pedir cotações a 3 entidades.
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As três, na resposta a um e-mail enviaram um questionário e, com base na resposta a esse questionário, duas delas accionaram a "vending machine" e vomitaram uma proposta standard. A terceira, também enviou a sua proposta standard e fez algo mais, pediu uma reunião, pediu uma conversa.
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Adivinhem qual foi a entidade escolhida?
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Adivinhem se o preço alguma vez foi mencionado na reunião?
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Adivinhem qual foi o critério usado pela gerência da micro-empresa?
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Adivinhem qual era a mais pequenas (em Portugal) das entidades contactadas?
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Adivinhem qual das 3 entidades é mais conhecida mundialmente?

O que é que a sua empresa faz para o acelerar?

"If the customers come to better understand value and willing to pay price for it,  you two would be crazy not to provide that value at a price that lets you capture your fair share of value created."

"Come to better understand value" ... como é que se consegue acelerar este processo? O que é que a sua empresa faz para o acelerar?
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Estou-me a lembrar daquele anúncio televisivo em que alguém a parece a exemplificar como é que se deve actuar para desmaquilhar e tonificar a pele.

Trecho retirado daqui.

Retrato-robot

Última imagem que acabo de acrescentar a um relatório onde resumi o arranque de um projecto BSC e preparo a segunda sessão.
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A imagem está na secção intitulada "Perfil dos clientes-alvo e dos agentes-alvo"

Fundamental

"Imagining a New Where to Play Sometimes the key to finding a new place to play is to simply believe that one is possible."

Este é o ponto fundamental, acreditar que uma outra alternativa existe, acreditar que aquilo que os membros da tríade dizem e escrevem nos media não é necessariamente verdade ou uma Lei universal.
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E, depois, as decisões no âmbito da gestão estratégica resultam tanto mais quanto mais se acredita nelas.

Cuidado com os descontos

"Then, out of curiosity – let’s call it “research” - I asked if I was entitled to a volume discount since I was buying so much. Without giving it a second thought, the butcher chopped the per pound price from $8 to $6. As a consumer I appreciated the $60 savings - but as a consultant who helps businesses optimize their pricing, I wondered if the butcher realized how much of the store’s operating profit margin disappeared due to his hastily-considered discount.
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While there are sound reasons to provide volume discounts, most companies over use them and offer them with too little thought. The next time you are contemplating offering a volume discount, ask yourself, “Do I really have to do this?” Back in my gourmet store, I’d already committed to buying 30 pounds of Korean ribs, discount or no discount. It was a classic case of a manager extending a discount that took a wholly unnecessary slice out of profits."

O lookingforjohn vai recordar uma cena deste tipo.

Trecho retirado de "When It’s Wise to Offer Volume Discounts"