"How to Get Your Employees to Think Strategically"

"he cites a 2013 study by his company in which 97 percent of a group of 10,000 senior executives said strategic thinking is the most critical leadership skill for an organization's success. In another study, he writes, 60,000 managers and executives in more than 140 countries rated a strategic approach to leadership as more effective than other attributes including innovation, persuasion, communication, and results orientation.
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Kabacoff says that you need to encourage managers to set aside time to thinking strategically until it becomes part of their job. He suggests you provide them with information on your company's market, industry, customers, competitors, and emerging technologies. "One of the key prerequisites of strategic leadership is having relevant and broad business information that helps leaders elevate their thinking beyond the day-to-day," he writes.
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"Individuals and groups need to understand the broader organizational strategy in order to stay focused and incorporate it into their own plans and strategies," Kabacoff writes.
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Reward thinking, not reaction.
Whenever possible, try to promote foresight and long-term thinking. Kabacoff says you should reward your managers for the "evidence of thinking, not just reacting," and for "being able to quickly generate several solutions to a given problem and identifying the solution with the greatest long-term benefit for the organization."
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Ask "why" and "when."Kabacoff says you need to promote a "future perspective" in your company. If a manager suggests a course of action, you need to him or her ask two questions: First, what underlying strategic goal does this action serve, and why? And second, what kind of impact will this have on internal and external stakeholders? "Consistently asking these two questions whenever action is considered will go a long way towards developing strategic leaders," he writes."

E na sua empresa... cultiva-se o pensamento estratégico, ou cultiva-se o granel instituído?

Trechos retirados de "How to Get Your Employees to Think Strategically"

Bom material para reflexão

Um artigo muito, muito bom "The Sharing Economy Isn’t About Sharing at All", que deixa pistas para reflexão:

"the sharing economy isn’t really a “sharing” economy at all; it’s an access economy.
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Sharing is a form of social exchange that takes place among people known to each other, without any profit.
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When “sharing” is market-mediated — when a company is an intermediary between consumers who don’t know each other — it is no longer sharing at all. Rather, consumers are paying to access someone else’s goods or services for a particular period of time. It is an economic exchange, and consumers are after utilitarian, rather than social, value.
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[in an] access economy rather than a sharing economy – has important implications for how companies in this space compete. It implies that consumers are more interested in lower costs and convenience than they are in fostering social  relationships with the company or other consumers. Companies that understand this will have a competitive advantage.
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1 ... consumers simply want to make savvy purchases, and access economy companies allow them to achieve this, by offering more convenience at a lower price. Companies that emphasize convenience and price over the ability to foster connections will have a competitive advantage.
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2 Consumers think about access differently than they think about ownership. And most of our best practices in marketing are built upon an ownership model. For example, being a part of a brand community is important to consumers for many products and services that they own, as they represent who they are, and consumers appreciate being able to share identity building practices with  likeminded others. When consumers are able to access a wide variety of brands at any given moment, like driving a BMW one day and a Toyota Prius the next day, they don’t necessarily feel that one brand is more “them” than another, and they do not connect to the brands in the same closely-binding, identity building fashion. They would rather sample a variety of identities which they can discard when they want. Thus, trying to foster a community of consumers around an access economy brand is rarely successful"

Modelos de negócio e ...

Na revista "Health Club Management" deste mês de Julho encontrei uma referência a uma empresa com um novo modelo de negócio em torno do fitness e dos ginásios, a ClassPass:

"It’s a monthly fitness membership programme that allows people to take classes at different studios and boutique clubs. For US$99 a month, people have access to an unlimited number of classes – but they can’t do the same class more than three times a month."

Em "How Getting Mugged And Maced Helped A World-Class Dancer Save Her Struggling Startup" e "How one fitness entrepreneur raised $14 million" obtive mais informação sobre o modelo, a origem e o pivoting entretanto feito.
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O potencial de inovação com base nos modelo de negócio não cessa de me surpreender, é mesmo um mundo de combinações de abordagens ao mercado, com ou sem activos, as tais plataformas.
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No artigo da revista "Health Club Management", "Pick ’n’ mix", há no entanto, um trecho que me ficou atravessado na garganta, pois representa o que há de pior, IMHO, na herança do mindset do século XX:

"What challenges did you face when launching ClassPass?You need to engage both sides – the studios and the customers – and they need to work in conjunction with each other. A lot of it was just finding the right product that would sell on both sides. In fact it was easy to sell to the studios, because the concept works well for them: they have excess capacity they want to fill."

 "they have excess capacity they want to fill", os tais que se vêem como gestores de activos físicos, e a criação da relação, da interacção, da tribo, da comunidade?

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

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

Quanto mais mergulho na versão DIS da ISO 9001 (BTW, parece que as diferenças para a FDIS são muito poucas), mais me convenço que seguiram uma percepção que registei no livro "Gestão Ambiental - Sintonizar Ambiente e Estratégia para o Negócio".
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Em Março de 2013 neste postal escrevi, e justifiquei, acerca da maior inteligência da ISO 14001 face à ISO 9001.
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No livro, usamos este esquema para ilustrar a modelação de um sistema de gestão concentrado em produzir resultados esperados.

Basta substituir "Levantamento Ambiental" por "Levantamento de Riscos e Oportunidades".
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Ontem voltei a lembrar-me deste modelo ao ler o texto da ISO/DIS 9001:2014 sobre a comunicação:

Recordei logo o que escrevi no livro. Primeiro sobre a comunicação interna:

Depois, sobre a comunicação externa:

E por fim, tendo em conta as alíneas a) a d) do texto da ISO/DIS 9001:2014, esta tabela:

Valor do investimento: 80€ (mais IVA)
Local: Porto

Inscrições: código RBT01 para o e-mail metanoia@metanoia.pt

BTW, engraçado, a editora nunca me pagou um cêntimo por este livro... coisas de quem anda à chuva.

Curiosidade do dia

"A questão não está no perdão da dívida (que é óbvio que não poderá ser paga, como já aconteceu com os anteriores perdões e descontos), mas sim na neutralização dos factores que geraram e continuam a gerar a dívida. A questão não está no que querem os eleitores gregos, mas sim no que é o campo de possibilidades numa área monetária comum, em que todos os eleitorados são partes interessadas."

Trecho retirado de "Uma esquina na História"

O efeito BES

"Mais 21 mil empresas criadas no 1.º semestre"
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"Mais de 21 mil empresas criadas até junho"

"Na primeira metade do ano foram criadas 21.094 empresas em Portugal, o que representa um crescimento de 11,9% face ao primeiro semestre de 2014 e de 6,8% face ao mesmo período de 2013, foi hoje divulgado."

Impressionante como, apesar das insolvências estarem a estagnar/cair (conforme as fontes), continua esta depuração:

"Os serviços dependentes da procura interna e das importações concentram a maioria das insolvências, embora reduzindo o número de empresas insolventes face ao mesmo período de 2014."

Estratégia e marketing

Moi, o "porteiro do marketing" em muitas PME, tinha de sorrir ao ler isto e a concordar:

"A dangerous canyon often arises between business model strategy and marketing. Separate roles, meetings, deliverables, timetables, personalities and consultancies exist on each side of the divide. When business strategy and marketing execution move forward independently – as they often do – spin, distrust, poor customer experiences and commoditization result.
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you know a company by its actions and customer experiences, not by the story it tells in its marketing communications. The actions and experiences create what Montague calls your company’s Metastory: the observed truth in the minds of customers, prospects, employees and other stakeholders. Your Metastory is what your company wants to become, if it is not already."

Trechos retirados de "Are your business model strategy and marketing communications aligned?"

Porque não somos plankton (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.
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E continua a venda de activos da P&G, "Procter & Gamble Agrees To Sell 43 Beauty Brands For $12.5 Billion"

Tantos políticos prisioneiros do argumento "Groundhog Day"

Outro recorte retirado de "Strategy as a Wicked Problem":

"Companies design planning systems to work based on feedback; they compare results with plans and take corrective actions. Though it’s a powerful source of learning, feedback has limited relevance in a wicked context. Feedback allows enterprises to refine fundamentally sound strategies; wicked problems require executives to come up with novel ones. Feedback helps people learn from the past; wicked problems arise from unanticipated, uncertain, and unclear futures. Feedback helps people learn in contexts such as the movie Groundhog Day, where the protagonist (Phil Connors) encounters the same set of circumstances every day, which enables him to perfect his responses over time. Wicked problems arise in circumstances such as those in the TV series Quantum Leap, where the protagonist (Sam Beckett) finds himself in an unfamiliar time and place in each episode. Comprehending the challenge he faces is itself the initial problem..To develop a feed-forward orientation as a complement to the feedback practices they currently use, corporations must learn to envision the future. In this variation of scenario planning, enterprises should describe the set of external and internal circumstances that they would like to see in the next 10, 20, or 50 years. This will open executives’ minds to the range and unpredictability of possibilities that the future may bring. Enterprises must then pursue strategies that will increase the likelihood of those circumstances’ becoming reality."

Recordar "Parte VII – Zapatero e os outros."
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Tanta gente na política que ainda continua com o mindset do tempo da vida fácil...

Curiosidade do dia

Tribos, tribos, tribos e .... neste caso também os conservadores empedernidos.

"Brick and mortar record stores have been hurting for over a decade now, as the music industry is forced to witness the sales of CDs drop year after year. While vinyl has certainly found a way to thrive in the past few years, it hasn’t been enough for many businesses, as there are still stores that close up shop all the time. So, as streaming platforms become the go-to way to consume music and the world begins to move into the post-iTunes era, why is one company expanding their record store business and opening new locations?
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HMV is one of the biggest names in music in the world, even if the brand has never quite made it in the US (it shuttered the few stores that existed a decade ago). Just recently, the company has announced plans to expand its store count and to move into a new territory: the Middle East. HMV has apparently reached a deal with a Qatari conglomerate to open at least fifteen stores in the next few years in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and of course Qatar. It also looks like deals may be in the works for the brand to eventually open in nearby nations in northern Africa like Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco."

Trechos retirados de "Why Is This Chain Of Record Stores Opening New Locations In 2015?"

Sem noção?

"As exportações portuguesas da indústria de vestuário e confeção mostram um crescimento homólogo até maio de 2015, de 1,4%, com um valor de 1,186 mil milhões de euros. Já as importações, neste mesmo período, cifram-se em 740 milhões de euros.
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Estes são os mais recentes dados lançados pela ANIVEC – Associação Nacional das Indústrias de Vestuário e Confecção, que sublinha ainda que o sector do vestuário, confeção e moda apresenta um mercado volúvel e de rápida renovação, com a sazonalidade e os curtos ciclos de vida dos produtos a criarem desafios acrescidos para a manutenção da vantagem competitiva."

Será que não têm noção de que é a sazonalidade e os ciclos de vida cada vez mais curtos que reforçam a vantagem competitiva do sector em Portugal?

Recordar "Hoje, o que diria Ricardo?"

Trecho retirado de "Exportações De Vestuário E Confeção Até Maio Atingem 1,186 Mil Mihões"

Cadê o efeito BES?

"“No segundo trimestre de 2014, a economia portuguesa terá crescido 0,7% em cadeia e 1,7% em termos homólogos, em ligeira aceleração face ao trimestre anterior (0,4% e 1,5%, respetivamente)”, segundo as estimativas do núcleo de estudos de conjuntura da economia portuguesa (NECEP) da Universidade Católica.
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O gabinete de estudos da Católica estima, também, que no segundo trimestre do ano, a taxa de desemprego terá descido para 12,8%.
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Quanto ao crescimento médio da economia nacional durante 2015, o NECEP decidiu fazer uma revisão em baixa das previsões, para 2,1%."

Trecho retirado de "Crescimento no segundo trimestre terá acelerado, estima a Universidade Católica"

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

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

Sobre a principal alteração introduzida pela versão de 2015 na ISO 9001, a abordagem baseada no risco (RBT).
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Um dia dedicado a testar a aplicação do RBT e como pode ser usado para desenvolver de raiz um SGQ, ou ser incorporado num SGQ já existente.

Valor do investimento: 80€ (mais IVA)
Local: Porto

Inscrições: código RBT01 para o e-mail metanoia@metanoia.pt

"You just avoided a PITA client"

Recordar o "dinheiro deixado em cima da mesa" em "Para acabar com o deixar dinheiro em cima da mesa - parte IIa" e "Para os que que deixam dinheiro em cima da mesa, porque se subestimam"

"Buyers can smell fear and anxiety a mile away, and most will take advantage. Successful salespeople avoid this problem by having enough confidence - in themselves and their products - to stand firm.
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If price is the only decision point for a client, red flags should be waving so furiously that you turn around and run the other way as quickly as possible. This person will become a PITA—a “pain in the ass” client who considers you a commodity. You will be nickeland-dimed, squeezed on everything, and expected to deliver additional services at no charge.
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Even when talking to great clients, many reps in business to business sales underestimate their own value. At a recent sales conference, one marketing agency suggested that up to 95 percent of salespeople compromise on price before their customers even bring it up.
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So when someone pushes you on price, stand your ground. If you don’t get the deal, consider yourself lucky. You just avoided a PITA client."

Trechos retirados de "Business to Business Sales Reps Shouldn’t Cave on Price"

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.
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‘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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.