Curiosidade do dia

A propósito de "TGV que não saiu do papel custou 153 milhões de euros" onde se pode ler:

"Tribunal de Contas diz que a alta velocidade não teria viabilidade económica num relatório que não teve o contraditório da Refer."

Era interessante a inteligentzia jornalística cá do burgo ter um pouco de memória e perguntar ao economista Fancisco Louçã se ainda mantém estas opiniões "Bloco de Esquerda rejeita suspensão do TGV".

Sem desculpas

""I had no choice," actually means, "I had only one path that was easy in the moment."
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The agenda we invent and act on defines our organizations, our work, and the people we choose to become."

Trecho retirado de "Choices"

Acerca de Mongo (parte II)

Na sequência de "Acerca de Mongo" mais um interessante sobre o futuro do trabalho em Mongo em "The future of work":

"Using the now ubiquitous platform of the smartphone to deliver labour and services in a variety of new ways will challenge many of the fundamental assumptions of 20th-century capitalism, from the nature of the firm to the structure of careers.
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The idea that having a good job means being an employee of a particular company is a legacy of a period that stretched from about 1880 to 1980. The huge companies created by the Industrial Revolution brought armies of workers together, often under a single roof. In its early stages this was a step down for many independent artisans who could no longer compete with machine-made goods; it was a step up for day-labourers who had survived by selling their labour to gang masters.
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Thus more and more of the routine parts of knowledge work can be parcelled out to individuals, just as they were previously parcelled out to companies. This could be bad news for the business models of professional-service companies which use juniors to do fairly routine work—thus providing the firm with income and the juniors with training—while the partners do the more sophisticated stuff. As on-demand solutions and automation prove applicable to more and more routine work, that model becomes hard to sustain.
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The on-demand economy is unlikely to be a happy experience for people who value stability more than flexibility: middle-aged professionals with children to educate and mortgages to pay. On the other hand it is likely to benefit people who value flexibility more than security: students who want to supplement their incomes; bohemians who can afford to dip in and out of the labour market; young mothers who want to combine bringing up children with part-time jobs; the semi-retired, whether voluntarily so or not."

Mais um exemplo

Mais um exemplo positivo do mundo das conserveiras:

"A conserveira açoriana Cofaco, líder nacional do sector, foi a empresa da agro-indústria que mais cresceu em volume de vendas em 2013, tendo registado um resultado de cerca de 73 milhões euros, mais 29,6 por cento do que no ano anterior.
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No mesmo período, a única empresa do sector conserveiro nacional incluída no ranking das 500 maiores empresas, registou um crescimento dos resultados líquidos de 1 130 milhões de euros, ou seja mais cerca de 184 por cento."

Entretanto em "Lesboa"os comentadores acham que estes são anos perdidos...
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Trecho retirado de "Açoriana Cofaco com o maior crescimento do sector conserveiro nacional"

Quem são os potenciais clientes desprezados no seu sector?

Gostei muito deste artigo "The gym for people who would never use a gym"The gym for people who would never use a gym".
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Já por várias vezes, no meu contacto com o mundo do fitness, referi o desencontro entre as imagens que ocupam as paredes, de jovens musculados "Bon Chic Bon Genre", e a realidade demográfica do mercado. Se as imagens são de jovens musculados bcbg, então, a mensagem é a de que esses são o público-alvo. É uma opção legítima, contudo, é preciso não esquecer onde está a maior parte do mercado potencial.
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Interessante também perceber que se tratou da última tentativa de salvar o negócio e, que a ideia era tão absurda que não conseguiu o apoio de nenhum investidor.
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É fundamental, como se defende neste blogue, escolher quem são os clientes-alvo e perceber o que os mobiliza, o que os atrai, o que os faz sonhar. Depois, ser coerente e focado.

Enfim, a treta do costume

"O projecto ferroviário português de alta velocidade cancelado em 2012, um investimento superior a 11,6 mil milhões de euros, não teria "viabilidade financeira", de acordo com a auditoria do Tribunal de Contas (TdC),
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"Os riscos de procura relevantes recairiam sobre a CP e a REFER, empresas públicas economicamente deficitárias. Em contrapartida, os pagamentos pela disponibilidade da infra-estrutura às concessionárias gozariam de estabilidade, característica típica das rendas", alerta o relatório do TdC."

Estou a ouvir uns tótós argumentarem que o dinheiro dos fundos europeus se perdeu por não terem sido aproveitados nesta obra.
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Enfim, a treta do costume.
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"Tribunal de Contas diz que alta velocidade não teria "viabilidade financeira"

Acerca da execução

"There are two principal things a leader can influence when it comes to producing results: your strategy (or plan) and your ability to execute that strategy.
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Why is execution so difficult? After all, if the strategy is clear, and you as the leader are driving it, won’t the team naturally engage to achieve it? The answer is “no,” and it’s likely that your own experience has proven this more than once."

"if the strategy is clear"... a estratégia pode ser clara mas o mundo está pleno de incerteza. Esse é o tema que Spender tão bem trata com a introdução da retórica. Não basta comunicar, não basta transmitir a estratégia, é preciso persuadir.
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Por mais que se transmita a estratégia, é precisa que haja autonomia de actuação de quem está no terreno e, se depara com novidades nào previstas no algoritmo da estratégia.

Trechos retirados de "4 Disciplines of Execution" de Chris McChesney, Sean Covey e Jim Huling.

As escolhas importantes

"To break from the pack, you must dominate some significant area of the market.
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In today’s Copycat Economy, you can’t be great in many businesses, you can’t be curious, cool and crazy in many businesses, and it’s a fool’s gambit even to try. You must choose your markets, your products, and your customers very carefully, then go in with tremendous creative and productive force until you dominate the arenas you’ve selected.
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First, it’s important to remember that domination is not necessarily about being the biggest. Whopping balance sheets, stout sales figures, fat market shares, and big newspaper headlines are no indication that a company has taken command of its market,
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Neither is domination about beating up a rival"

Trechos retirados de "Break From the Pack" de Oren Harari

Not Yet?

O contexto é fundamental

"In 2000, Venchi ventured into retail selling only its chocolates. Such a narrow product line wasn’t enough to support a big investment. Six years later, the company tried again, but added chocolate beverages, ice cream and other products.
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It also upgraded its locations and store designs, replacing cheap furniture with tonier pieces. Venchi also hired more experienced sales staff.
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“The change in the perception was so big that the average consumer went from spending €5 to about €12,” Mr. Ferrero said. “We’re becoming more like a luxury fashion house than a food store.”"

E não tem nada a ver com o produto, tudo com o contexto em que o produto é percepcionado e adquirido.
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Trecho retirado de "Prices Pinch Prosciutto Trade"
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BTW, depois de ler o artigo completo, como não pensar no esforço exportador bem sucedido, que tantos e tantos pequenos produtores portugueses estão a ter.

Acerca de Mongo

Em "The on-demand economy - Workers on tap" e em "The sharing economy must share the risk" encontro a mesma falha. Em minha opinião, o futuro não é Uber. Uber é o nome destas mega-plataformas que relacionam procuram e oferta.
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Por que é que a procura e a oferta vão continuar a precisar destas mega-plataformas? Por que é que oferta e procura hão-de condescender, no médio-prazo, em pagar um imposto revolucionário para o dono da plataforma, quando vai ser fácil para a oferta ter a sua própria plataforma?

Erros no pricing

"Mistake No. 1:
 Basing prices on costs, not customers’ perceptions of value.
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Mistake No. 2: Companies base their prices on “the marketplace.”.
By resorting to “marketplace pricing,” companies accept the commoditization of their product or service. Marketplace pricing is a resting place for companies that have given up, and where profits end up being razor thin. Instead of giving up, these management teams must find ways to differentiate their products or services so as to create additional value for specific market segments
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Mistake No. 3: Same profit margin across different product lines....
The iron law of pricing is that different customers will assign different values to identical products. For any single product, profit is optimized when the price reflects each customer’s willingness to pay. This willingness to pay is a reflection of his or her perception of value of that product, and the profit margin in another product line is completely irrelevant.
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Mistake No. 4:
 Companies fail to segment their customers..
Mistake No. 5: Companies hold prices at the same level for too long..
Mistake No. 6: Salespeople incentivized strictly on revenue..
Volume-based sales incentives create a drain on profits when salespeople are compensated to push volume, even at the lowest possible price. This mistake is especially costly when salespeople have the authority to negotiate discounts. They will almost always leave money on the table by: selling lower priced products and dropping prices to “clinch the deal.”
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Mistake No. 7:
 Changing prices without forecasting competitors’ reactions."

Trechos retirados de "The Top 10 Pricing Mistakes Companies Are Making"

E depois da comunicação da estratégia (parte I)

O quinto capítulo de "Business Strategy - Managing Uncertainty, Opportunity, and Enterprise" de  J.-C. Spender foi uma grande surpresa.

"If a strategy was simply a logical plan to reach a known objective, and many think of strategy of this way, communicating it would be easy. But the preceding chapters show strategizing as an ongoing process of selecting and dealing creatively with the situation’s uncertainties. Even when this has been done and the firm’s BM has been constructed, resourced, and its implementers trained up, and there is an appropriate idiosyncratic language with which to express and control it, those implementing will get further surprises and meet further uncertainties as they transform thought into action. It follows the strategizing process is not complete until it has been translated into irrevocable action, until all the actors identified have committed, “plunged in with both feet.” ... So strategizing managers need a communications approach that engages the implementers and others in the strategizing process actively and draws them into it, rather than an approach that treats their hearers as dumb cogs in a mechanical system designed to achieve their plans. ... Strategists need to know how to engage their subordinates in a process that continues up to the very moment of commitment."

Depois de comunicada a estratégia, o mundo continua a girar, as incertezas a desenrolarem-se e a realidade a mudar... a estratégia comunicada inicialmente tem de ser ajustada por cada um, no seu posto de trabalho.

Acerca do preço

"What does your pricing say about you? Most sales people lack the confidence to charge full price. Regardless of the pricing model you have worked hard to develop, when push comes to shove—and often even before push comes to shove—sales people cave in and offer discounts. This reflects an underlying lack of confidence in the value of your company’s product and services.
You can dramatically increase your profitability in the coming year by emphasizing pricing realization as much as pricing strategy."

Trechos retirados de "Stop Discounting with These 5 Tips"

Votos de um Bom 2015

"A commodity business is a bottom-line operation of cold calculation.
A brand disrupts commodities with cultural value beyond calculation.
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Marketing models people as potential buyers.
Brand strategy models people as potential co-creators of value.
Very different approaches."

Tweets de @brandstrat

Curiosidade do dia

Esta manhã, eram cerca das 11h10, num caminho florestal onde o sol não conseguia chegar:

 Não, não é vidro, é mesmo gelo.

Aprender com Darwin (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.
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Outro exemplo monumental da vantagem da aprendizagem à Drawin "To avoid big IT catastrophes, follow Darwin":

"Unnoticed and unsung, however. this government may actually have found a way to bring the horrid history of big. public IT projects to an end.
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McKinsey found in 2012 that 17 per cent of IT projects budgeted at more than $15 million fail so badly they threaten the company's very existence.
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Instead, Mr Maude and Mr Bracken are teaching the civil service to start small, fail fast, get feedback from users early and evolve the thing as you go along.
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those who succeed allow for plenty of low-cost trial and error and incremental change. It's the mechanism Charles Darwin discovered that Mother Nature uses. Rather than a grand "creationist" plan or a big leap, natural selection incrementally discovers success through trial and failure.
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Yet government kept trying to do things by grand plan.
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Mr Maude began by centralising controls so that he had to sign off any IT contract of more than £1 million (now raised to £5 million), then built up an in-house capability to offer cheaper and. better design, and opened procurement to smaller companies. Government contracts with outside IT suppliers are now shorter and smaller. Some of the savings on over were so vast that civil servants refused to believe than. In one case, 98,5 per cent of the cost of an existing contract was saved by letting a contract to a small British business rather than an incumbent multinational IT firm, and it worked better."

Claro que isto são más notícias que têm de ser abafadas pelas redes dos anafados incumbentes. Isto não se pode fazer.

Para reflexão acerca da agricultura (parte II)

Depois de ler "Cogumelos 'made in' Japão produzidos em estufas de Vimioso" não pude logo deixar de recordar estas conversas "Para reflexão acerca da agricultura".
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Faz-me espécie que para um investimento de 100 mil euros, o dinheiro público entre com 80%.
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O sucesso destes burocratas deve medir-se pelos euros distribuídos, não pela taxa de sucesso, de retorno, desses mesmos euros.

Curiosidade do dia

Ao ler este título "Novos carros patrulha da GNR desviados para uso de oficiais", lembrei-me logo do título e da mensagem simbólica deste livro "Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't"

"they mistake turnover for profitability"

Muito sumo em "9 Ways Your Pricing Strategy Sucks":

"Why do I want to talk about pricing? There is a disease called “Price Discounting.” It is like heroin. It will kill you and your business. Let me give you an example to explain this:
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You make a 30% gross margin. You decide one day to reduce your prices by 6%. That means that you now have to increase your gross sales by 25% to make the same gross profit. Now that is just insane, but that is what occurs in the market place.
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Especially in time when there is fear, anxiety and sales restriction. People get gun shy. They play Russian roulette with their own business. Businesses go broke because they do not sell in their market; they do not understand the implications of pricing; they mistake turnover for profitability and they grow their sales and wonder why they are not making any money.
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So here are the nine reasons why your pricing strategy could suck:
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1. You price by a textbook formula or an industry norm.
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2. You have an excessive concern about your competitor's pricing.
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3. You attract customers who buy on price....
4. A predetermined belief that is all they will pay.
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5. You allow apple to apple comparisons....
6. You have created no differentiation....
7. You do not offer premium price options.
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8. Ignorance or stupidity about business math.
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9. Poor self or business esteem or feelings of not deserving more."