Para reflexão

Um caso que merece reflexão neste mundo de conglomerados e corporações:

"While a company dealing with a wicked problem has to experiment with many strategies, it must stay true to a sense of purpose. Mission statements are the foundations of strategy, but in a fast-changing world, companies change their “concept of business,” “scope of activities,” or “statement of purpose” more often than they used to. A company’s identity, which serves as a touchstone against which it can evaluate its choices, is often a more enduring statement of strategic intent.
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An organization’s identity, like that of an individual, comprises the following:

• Values. What is fundamentally important to the company?

• Competencies. What does the company do better than others do?

• Aspirations. How does the company envision and measure success?

An identity provides executives with direction and focuses attention on opportunities and threats. For instance, in August 2007, Campbell Soup decided it would sell off the Godiva business. The company didn’t base the decision on financial performance; Godiva is a superpremium chocolate brand and a profitable business. Trouble is, Campbell’s values, competencies, and aspirations focus on nutrition and simplicity - and Godiva chocolates don’t fit in with that self-image. “Although the premium chocolate category is experiencing strong growth and Godiva is well-positioned for the future, the premium chocolate business does not fit with Campbell’s focus on simple meals,” explained Douglas R. Conant, Campbell Soup’s CEO, while announcing the decision. In December 2007, the company reached an agreement to sell Godiva to Yildiz Holding, which owns the Turkish company Ülker Group, for $850 million. By relying on its identity, rather than on financial projections, Campbell made the decision to sell Godiva quickly and painlessly."

Qual a identidade da sua PME?

Trechos retirados de "Strategy as a Wicked Problem"

Curiosidade do dia

Há exactamente uma semana Estarreja apareceu nos noticiários televisivos da noite por causa do aparatoso incêndio em vários pontos em torno de uma zona industrial.
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Hoje de manhã, aproveitei o céu nublado para fazer uma caminhada por lá. E parei diante deste símbolo:

No ar ainda se sente o cheiro a queimado e, no chão, preto e cinza, salientam-se já uns tufos de erva fresca de cor verde-benetton.
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Sou um fã de usar a biologia como uma metáfora da economia... aliás, a economia é a continuação da biologia.
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Depois da desgraça, depois da recessão, depois da depressão, os recursos que restam são reaproveitados para novos projectos, novas tentativas, novos sonhos.
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Sem necessidade de planeamento central.

Acerca da Grécia

"The First Rule of Strategy 
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The general principle for sequential-move games is that each player should figure out the other players’ future responses and use them in calculating his own best current move. This idea is so important that it is worth codifying into a basic rule of strategic behavior:

RULE 1: Look forward and reason backward. 

Anticipate where your initial decisions will ultimately lead and use this information to calculate your best choice."

Trecho retirado de "The art of strategy : a game theorist's guide to success in business & life" de Avinash K. Dixit e Barry J. Nalebuff.

Outra abordagem

A propósito de "Foodie Friday: Top Trend–Pet the Horse…Pass the Pizza!":

"“The real advantage of the pizza farms, notes Consumerist, is that it provides typically small farms with additional income.
...
‘They’re selling an experience by letting people come to their farm, and I think there are a lot of people out there hungry for this experience.'”
As agritourism continues to grow – so do new opportunities to showcase and sample freshly harvested and prepared farm-fresh foods.
...
Children will chase chickens and pet horses while the adults share conversations and sip on beverages while waiting for “farm-fresh” pizzas to emerge from large wood-burning ovens. This trend is sweeping the heartland of America, and shows no signs of slowing any time soon."

Recordar "A verdade que não nos é contada, acerca do leite"

É claro que Portugal não é o estado de Nova York, quer em nível de vida, quer em gostos, quer em mindset. No entanto, quantas explorações agrícolas podiam beneficiar desta abordagem?

Em vez de continuar a espiral absurda da quantidade, para competir com os gigantes franceses ou servir a distribuição, seguir uma outra via. O objectivo de uma exploração agrícola não é o de alimentar todo o mundo.

"Sometimes the best way to create a profitable and sustainable business is to shrink"

Um excelente artigo, com grandes ensinamentos:

"During the 1990s Tommy Hilfiger became one of fashion’s hottest brands. I got involved in 1996, when I became a partner in a start-up company that signed the license to sell Hilfiger products in Europe. During that period the U.S. business really took off: From 1997 to 2000 the company’s overall sales more than doubled, and it was a stock market success as well. But that came at a price. The brand was too hot, too hyped, and grew too fast. In the United States its products drifted away from its core values, and when demand fell and they began to sell at a discount, the company’s designers started creating stuff that felt like discount clothing—a vicious cycle. By the early 2000s Hilfiger’s U.S. sales were falling every year.
...
One challenge of executing a turnaround in this situation is that when you’re a public company, the expectation is that you’ll grow every quarter. Sometimes the best way to create a profitable and sustainable business is to shrink, [Moi ici: Uma grande verdade que muitos evitam, muitas vezes pela vergonha de encolher a empresa] but it can be difficult to do that in the glare of the public markets.
...
When a brand becomes too big and too visible, giant logos and apparent ubiquity can start working against it. By 2000 the brand had peaked in the U.S., and the company began to face market resistance.
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In the fashion industry, weak demand leads to discounting. If the discounting goes on too long, it can become structural, which means it gets factored into the design process. Let me give you an example. For years Tommy Hilfiger’s designers had been creating shirts that would sell for $79 but would offer the look and quality of shirts that might sell for $89. But when the market started to turn against the brand, retailers had to mark down those shirts to $49 in order to sell them. To be profitable at $49, you need to make very large compromises on materials, styling, and quality. They began designing into the discount environment, and the brand eroded further.
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In the European division, which I was running, we chose not to sell the lower-quality product. To succeed in Europe, we needed a $99 shirt that looked as if it cost $150. By 2001 we’d taken steps to reduce our reliance on the brand’s U.S. operations. We created our own design center and supply chain. From 2000 to 2006, while Hilfiger’s U.S. sales fell every year, European sales grew by roughly 50% every year.
...
The strategy to scale back the U.S. business in the short term laid the groundwork for the brand’s turnaround in the market in less than four years."

Trechos retirados de "Tommy Hilfiger’s Chairman on Going Private to Spark a Turnaround"

Curiosidade do dia

No primeiro trimestre deste ano os empresários do sector bem diziam que a coisa estava um bocado mais fraca que no ano passado. Excepção para as empresas mais low-cost que estavam carregadas de trabalho.
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Volto a recordar um precioso tweet de Nassin Taleb em Agosto passado:

"Economists fail to get w/ GDP growth that anything that grows without an "S" curve (slowing down phase) blows up."

Segundo os dados do INE, publicados na passada sexta-feira, as exportações de calçado português, entre Janeiro e Maio, tiveram uma quebra homóloga de 0,54%.
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Sinal de que é preciso continuar o bom trabalho.
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BTW, as exportações de calçado para fora da UE cresceram 4,8% no mesmo período.

Não é novidade nenhuma

"“The main source of the productivity slowdown is not so much a slowing of innovation by the most globally advanced firms, but rather a slowing of the pace at which innovations spread out throughout the economy - a breakdown of the diffusion machine,” the OECD said.
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But why are innovations not spreading as quickly as before? One key reason appears to be that the process of “creative destruction” identified by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter as essential to capitalism’s dynamism appears to have lost some of its ferocity. In the OECD’s words, “market selection is weak.”
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One reason for that is government policy, which the OECD said favors incumbents across a whole range of areas, from regulations designed to protect the environment, to taxation. As a result, older firms that suffer from low productivity growth endure, often “trapping” workers in jobs for which they are over qualified.
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“High rates of skill mismatch often coincide with the presence of many small and old firms,” the OECD said. “These firms are often unproductive and tend to be harmful for aggregate productivity to the extent that they absorb valuable resources, thereby constraining the growth of more innovative firms.”

Trechos retirados de "OECD: Broken “Diffusion Machine” Is Slowing Productivity"

O fim do século XX

Uma imagem metafórica do que é o fim do século XX:

O fim dos monólitos, o fim do domínio das empresas grandes, a explosão de variedade.

Imagem retirada de "Opening Windows"

O que é isto senão Mongo?

Via @armando_moreira cheguei a este artigo "Salesforce cofounder explains where big old tech companies like Microsoft often go wrong" cim uma mensagem tão querida deste blogue:

"Salesforce is expected to surpass $6 billion in revenue this year, making it the fastest enterprise software company to ever do so. Now it’s worth over $45 billion..It took almost 16 years for Salesforce to get to this point, but its cofounder Parker Harris believes there’s one key reason to its massive growth in a relatively short period of time: focus..Unlike some of its bigger rivals like Oracle and SAP, who are virtually in every area of enterprise software, Salesforce has kept its business focused on the customer relationship management (CRM) space, largely comprised of sales, marketing, and service automation....“Many people have said we just need to add more products. Look at Oracle, look at SAP. Add ERP and inventory or compensation. Add all this stuff,” Harris told IDG. “What we realized is we’re the customer company. We’re the front office solution and our customers would be really upset if we just added a whole bunch of stuff and lost focus.”"

Foco, foco, foco!
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Em vez de querer ser tudo para todos, em vez de uma oferta alargada, just-in-case"; foco, foco, foco!!!
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Interessante como o tema está presente numa série de outros artigos publicados recentemente.
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Por exemplo, "In Technology, Small Fish (Almost Always) Eat Big Fish" (este artigo merece outro postal futuro, sobre outra vertente) pode ler-se:

"Eventually, and inevitably, these “small” entrants eat their way up the food chain into the market, capturing a larger and larger share, until the behemoths of the sector are forced to retreat back into a narrowing market niche.
...
One sterling example is in the CRM (customer relationship management) space. For as long as anyone could remember, the market was owned by Siebel. It was big, offering an incredibly complex solution that had to be installed for customers on their servers, licensed in bulk, with tons of training and customer service attached. Sounds unwieldy, but it was the norm, and everyone needed it.
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Then along came a company called Salesforce.com, offering just one capability of the many Siebel already provided. Only they offered it differently — instead of having to buy hundreds of licenses, customer companies could pay per employee using Salesforce.com, and use it in their web browsers hassle free. They became the automatic choice for the many young companies that couldn’t afford to do anything but start small with SaaS.
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Even so, the larger incumbents like Siebel comforted themselves that enterprise customers would never entrust their precious data and prospect lists to an offsite cloudbased system. Today, Salesforce.com completely dominates the CRM market and has an enormous ecosystem around it. Siebel, having had their lunch eaten right in front of them, became acquisition bait for Oracle.
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Salesforce.com’s ascent highlights the momentum of all cloud solutions, led by small, specialized companies purveying simple, easy-to-understand benefits for consumers and enterprises alike. Think Dropbox and Box, respectively. They are now what people think of when they hear the term “cloud,” not the large, vertically integrated storage solutions of yesteryear.
 ...
[Moi ici: Recordando o exemplo de ontem sobre as peúgas, sobre a decomoditização] Your rallying objective should be to build something truly great for the low end of the marketplace, solving an important problem with a simple, low-friction product in a segment of the market that's underserved by the incumbents. Once you've achieved excellent market traction in this arena, you can nibble your way upward until you're competitive with the heavyweights of your industry."

Ainda um outro artigo sobre o poder do foco "The Increasing Fragmentation of SaaS":

"According to ChiefMarTec, in 2015 there are 1875 marketing technology companies, up from 947 last year. If the number of marketing software companies is any indication, there is a huge expansion in the number of SaaS companies in almost every segment including sales tools, engineering productivity, finance, and human resources.
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This fragmentation trend has been happening for quite some time. In the old model of software procurement, companies would call one of the large software monoliths (Oracle, SAP, IBM, etc) and negotiate an enterprisewide license for a software suite to serve the majority of their departments. These suite offerings promised simplified negotiation and procurement, a single integrated platform with free data interchange across departments, and one point of support. But, this promise was never fulfilled. For example, according to a recent study by Panorama Consulting Solutions, the average
ERP implementation requires 16 months to deploy and 20% of them are considered failures.
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The alternative, which is the fragmented market of today, enables teams to purchase best-of-breed point solutions, try them, and quickly cycle through all the different offerings until they find the best one for their needs. This change in purchasing behavior is happening broadly across SaaS.
...
These department specific software stacks serve their customers much better than a single suite ever could, because each team in each company can select precisely the products that offer the features that meet their specific needs. and if requirements should change, it’s as simple as canceling a subscription, and starting with another product."

O que é isto senão Mongo? Diversidade, focalização, especialização, decomoditização...
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BTW, em sectores completamente diferentes, recordar:

• "Hits" versus nichos;
• "Ter uma estratégia clara = escolhas claras = ideias claras = desejar sucesso à concorrência (parte V)"

A lição da biologia:

Especialização, diferenciação, nichos...

"aposta noutro mindset"

Primeiro, este trecho de Trout em "Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition":

"Now let’s look at that 0 percent differentiation degree in the Banking sector. How can that be? All these big name banks spend millions on advertising telling us how wonderful they are to do business with. Well, class, the answer is obvious. Mergermania has taken a terrible toll. And after all these mergers, who knows who is who these days much less for what they stand. As the psychologists advise, without a line to the past, how can you be sure of a line to the future. The Banking category is a mess and deserves their 0 percent."

O que ouvimos e lê-mos em Portugal sobre os bancos?
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Corrida para fechar agências!
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Corrida para passar a oferecer os serviços via internet!
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O que se passa nos Estados Unidos, que vão à frente na tendência do eficientismo?

"Banks just can’t figure out what to do with their branches.
...
The efforts are proving tricky given that banks want customers to come to branches for moneymaking financial products such as loans or credit cards, but also have to serve the millions of Americans who still regularly make deposits and withdraw cash at the teller line.
...
Bank of America Corp. soon will begin converting about 9,000 tellers to “relationship bankers” who can direct customers to high-tech ATMs or show them how to deposit a check via smartphone.
...
Despite banks cutting costs sharply in recent years, as many as one-third of those branches remain unprofitable, says consulting firm Simon-Kucher & Partners.
...
“Nobody buys a home equity line of credit on impulse,” ... In some cases, the changes risk turning off customers.
...
Some firms are simply shuttering branches. Fifth Third Bancorp last month announced that it will close or sell 100 branches, or 8% of its offices. Like many of its peers, the Cincinnati-based bank also is expanding its use of employees who can handle a variety of functions."

Entretanto no Twitter, encontrei estes tweets de Esko Kilpi, bem em linha com a mensagem deste blogue (ler de baixo para cima):

Recordar "The Three Rules" de Raynor e Ahmed:

• Better before cheaper;
• Revenue before cost;
• There are no other rules

O que é que os bancos andam a fazer há anos?
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A fugir da interacção e a fugir daquelas 3 regras.

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Para terminar, este trecho retirado de "Home and Away" na revista "Health Club Management":

Quem não aposta no "cheaper" e no "cost", aposta na interacção, aposta na co-criação, aposta noutro mindset... eu diria, "Every visit customers have to make are an opportunity for interaction and co-creation"
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Nunca esquecer, Golias pode apostar e ganhar com a automação porque está no seu ADN; contudo, David não tem qualquer vantagem em seguir esse caminho, tem muito mais a perder do que os euros que poupa.

Trechos 2 retirados de "Is This a Coffee Shop or a Bank?"

Curiosidade do dia

Imaginem que esta vigilância acerca do uso de conceitos económicos, "Does Jeb Bush Understand Economics?", se alargava a outros políticos... como Tsipras, ou Arménio Carlos, ou a João Galamba ou Paulo Portas...
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O debate político teria muito menos lixo tóxico a poluir as mensagens. Imaginem o que este tipo de vigilância diria dos políticos que prometem o aumento do SMN para baixar o desemprego, ou das palavras do bispo da Guarda que começa uma frase a lamentar a falta de investimento das empresas grandes no interior e acaba-a a chamar-lhes gafanhotos que chegam, sacam e voam para outras paragens.
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Hoje, com a publicação dos números do comércio internacional foi interessante ver os que defendem o aumento do consumo para fazer crescer a economia, criticarem o aumento das importações... go figure.
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BTW, ganda confusão na cabeça daquele Bush

Baptistas da Silva e números ... (parte II)

Parte I.

Enquanto misteriosamente, segundo a AHRESP, o sector da restauração perdia 53 mil empregos, isto acontecia em Portugal:

"Pela primeira vez desde 2012, há mais famílias a consumir fora de casa, em cafés e restaurantes. Em contrapartida, fazem menos compras nos supermercados, de acordo com os dados recolhidos pela Kantar Worldpannel e divulgados pelo jornal Público e pelo Jornal de Notícias.
O consumo dos portugueses fora de casa aumentou no primeiro semestre do ano, pela primeira vez desde o início da crise.
...
O trabalho "Retrato do shopper português no grande consumo" conclui também que há menos 5% de pessoas a levar comida para o emprego, uma tendência que se acentuou consideravelmente desde o início da crise, com os cortes nos rendimentos, aumentos de impostos e, concretamente ao nível da restauração, o aumento do IVA para os 23%."

Trechos retirados de "Portugueses voltam a ir ao restaurante"

Ver também "Famílias vão menos ao supermercado e gastam mais nos cafés e restaurantes"

Quem tem a cabeça no século XXI concentra-se no ...

Ontem, ao jantar uma francesinha, alguém descrevia-me de forma simples e clara o "ajavardamento" do mercado automóvel, com a montagem de veículos com "plásticos" de fraca qualidade. Sintoma das consequências da aplicação da metodologia do eficientismo, tão cara ao século XX, levada ao extremo.
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Quem tem a cabeça no século XX concentra-se no custo unitário e apela à massa.
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Quem tem a cabeça no século XXI concentra-se no valor percepcionado pelos clientes. E começa por escolher uma tribo em vez de apelar à massa.
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Ao longo dos anos tenho aqui dado exemplos como:

• Littlemissmatched; e
• Happysocks

Produtos para tribos!

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Agora, mais um exemplo, ainda no reino das peúgas, Stance:

"In a startup world crazy with competition to find a niche, Stance's founders realized theirs was hiding in plain sight.…
Oakley weren't the creators of the eyewear category, … Reef, with sandals. Total dominant player, category leader." Both of those brands took basic, utilitarian items and made them lifestyle necessities through design, function, and focused distribution.
…
In researching the sock category, … discovered that even big brands like Polo and Hilfiger licensed their sock business to other companies. "As we put this landscape together, we just became convinced, everyone is really sleepy here," says Kearl. "There's big room for innovation. No one's really created the lab environment where you could innovate on a platform like socks.”"

Em qualquer sector podemos encontrar este "hiding in plain sight", produtos e serviços básicos, utilitários, tratados como commodities, dominados por um mindset concentrado no eficientismo, à espera de quem veja a realidade com outros olhos:

Trechos retirados de "This Company Raised $86 Million to Revolutionize the Tired, Boring World of Socks"

Workshop - RBT (ISO 9001:2015) (Parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

A cláusula 4.1 da ISO DIS 9001:2014, sobre o perceber e compreender uma organização e o seu contexto, menciona a necessidade de identificar os factores internos relevantes, que podem afectar os resultados esperados para o sistema, ou a sua orientação estratégica.
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Uma ferramenta possível, para identificar os factores internos, pode ser baseada na abordagem por processos e, em cada processo investigar o que pode correr mal para que não se cumpram os objectivos de cada processo:

Não o fazemos perder tempo com a matéria para os auditores, não lhe falamos da evolução da norma, ou do Anexo SL, ou da transição, todo o tempo concentrado na RBT.

Valor do investimento: 80€ (mais IVA)
Local: Porto
Inscrições: código RBT01 para o e-mail metanoia@metanoia.pt

Este futuro estava escrito nas estrelas

Recordando "Este futuro está escrito nas estrelas".

"The freight trucking industry is growing profit margins at the fastest rate of all industries, according to financial information company Sageworks.
...
"If the trucking industry is doing well, growing revenues and profits and hiring more employees, it often indicates that consumer demand is strong and their appetite for buying is high," says Sageworks analyst Kevin Abbas.[Moi ici: Este parágrafo faz-me comichão... acredito que o home delivery cresce sobretudo por causa dos novos modelos de negócio online, mais do que por causa do aumento do consumo]
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According to the American Trucking Association, more than 93 percent of companies within the trucking industry are small businesses, with 20 or less trucks.
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Because the freight trucking industry acts as a middle man between production and consumption, increasing profitability in the sector is good news for both U.S. retailers and U.S. manufacturers."

Trecho retirado de "The 10 Most Profitable Industries of Tomorrow"

Curiosidade do dia

A propósito destes números:

Reparem como na redacção da Renascença não percebem nada disto "Alemanha é o país da OCDE onde se trabalha menos", agora imaginem as pessoas que todos os dias, subliminarmente, são catequizadas por eles.

Workshop - RBT (ISO 9001:2015) (Parte II)

Não lhe falamos da evolução da norma, ou do Anexo SL, ou da transição, todo o tempo concentrado na RBT.


Parte I.

Ter memória...

Ter memória...
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Gostava de ouvir Nicolau Santos, o mesmo daqui e daqui, comentar isto:

"De acordo com as intenções manifestadas pelas empresas no Inquérito de Conjuntura ao Investimento de abril de 2015 (com período de inquirição entre 1 de abril e 1 de julho de 2015), o investimento empresarial em termos nominais deverá aumentar 2,5% em 2015. Esta expetativa corresponde a uma revisão em alta das intenções manifestadas no inquérito anterior de outubro de 2014, que apontavam para uma variação de -2,2%. Os resultados deste inquérito indicam ainda um aumento de 5,4% do investimento em 2014, traduzindo também uma revisão em alta face às perspetivas reveladas no inquérito anterior (variação de 1,0%)."

BTW, só espero que a fiscalização da AT e a comunicação das existências, tenha tido um efeito marginal nestes números.

Trechos retirados de "Inquérito de Conjuntura ao Investimento - Inquérito de abril de 2015" do INE

Não há alternativa, não se pode ser neutro (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.

Em linha com:

• o teste da estratégia estúpida;

Mais um trecho retirado de "Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition" de Jack Trout:

"Quality and Customer Orientation Are Rarely Differentiating Ideas
...
quality is a given these days, not a difference. Knowing and loving your customer is a given, not a difference.
...
The great myth of marketing in the 1990s was that ‘‘serving the customer’’ was the name of the game.
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Many marketing people live in a dream world. They believe in the fantasy of the virgin market. This is the belief that marketing is a two-player game involving just the company and the customer. In this fantasy, a company develops a product or service designed to appeal to customer needs, and then uses marketing to harvest the crop.
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But there are no virgin markets. The reality of marketing is that a market consists of consumers strongly or weakly held by a range of competitors. A marketing campaign, therefore, consists of holding on to your customers while at the same time attempting to take customers away from your competitors.
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That’s what differentiation can do. It’s not just about knowing your customer. It’s about your customer knowing about you.
...
Customer satisfaction is not the same as customer commitment. ... More than 40 percent of customers who claimed to be satisfied switched suppliers without looking back."

 A situação é algo caricata e perigosa... a Qualidade, como a estratégia, em vez de promover a diferenciação... promove a uniformização.

Acerca de Mongo

"Maker Movement and these types of Maker Faires as being important for fostering innovation. The result is that more and more people create products instead of only consuming them, and it’s my view that moving people from being only consumers to creators is critical to America’s future. At the very least, some of these folks will discover life long hobbies, but many of them could eventually use their tools and creativity to start businesses. And it would not surprise me if the next major inventor or tech leader was a product of the Maker Movement."

Um mundo de diversidade, de variedade, de prosumers, de novas relações económicas.
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  Trecho retirado de "Why the Maker Movement Is Important to America’s Future"