O principio da competição exclusiva

Volto ao relatório de Ray Algar, "Health club industry mid-market report" com um exemplo de um ginásio em Munique, o My Sportlady:

"Rooted in the My Sportlady philosophy is the belief that the club should provide more than an activity experience and offer more guidance on what a member really needs. This is when a member visits the club and thinks the best use of their time is to take part in an intense 60-minute class (enrich the body) when in fact it would be more beneficial to simply relax and re-charge (enrich the soul). Jasmin [a fundadora] tells the story of a member she observed who brought her young child into the club crèche and then simply spent the subsequent hour in a relaxation chair, disconnected from all the demands of daily life. At this moment the club was there to provide the mother with tranquillity, not physicality.
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During the 1990s the club began evolving and becoming more than a fitness environment, adding a spa, treatment rooms, a crèche and a cooking school. Partnerships were also formed with doctors, osteopaths and a midwife to support members through a pregnancy. The club’s aim is to support every aspect of the person – fitness, nutrition and health for the body and relaxation for the mind and soul. Their cooking school has become the club’s most lucrative profit centre.
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On a zero to ten scale of competitive intensity, Jasmin believes the area now rates an eight. Before McFit launched in 1997 and kickstarted the low-cost trend, My Sportlady would compete with high-end, full-service club brands. During this early period, Jasmin admits to spending considerable time thinking about these other clubs, believing that winning was about keeping up with them and trying to match their facilities. As My Sportlady matured and its philosophy developed, this fixation on other clubs subsided as it became clear that the team’s focus should be on delivering the club’s everyday mission, something they could control – helping women to feel well and gain a sense of balance in their lives.
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Membership at My Sportlady ranges from:

• €79 – €99 per month ($89 – $112).

• The cheapest is a two-year option for €79 per month

• A one year contract is €89 per month

• A 6-month option for €99 is available for those seeking more flexibility"

Comparar com as cadeias low-cost:

"McFit, the European giants of low-cost gyms, launched a club in Worms in 2006, just a six-minute drive away where membership costs €19.90 ($22) per month. This was followed by FitnessKing, a 24-hour low-cost gym at €17.99 ($20). Later in 2015, FitX, a third low-cost, 24-hour gym opens and will be a little cheaper at €15 per month ($16)."

Recordar os rouxinóis de MacArthur:

 Diferentes empresas que trabalham para diferentes tipos de clientes-alvo não competem entre si, ainda que ocupem espaços muito próximos.
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Recordar Julho de 2006, o o principio da competição exclusiva de Gause:

“Duas espécies não podem coexistir indefinidamente se se alimentarem do mesmo tipo de nutriente escasso."

Curiosidade do dia

Sintomas de um mundo sempre em mutação "China’s Better-than-Expected Trade Numbers Raise Questions":

As exportações chinesas em território negativo em 2015.
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A fábrica do mundo já era.

O mundo sempre a mudar

Denominador versus Numerador

"My key message was that we need to avoid getting distracted. It’s easy and understandable to get consumed by the amazing technology ... But, at the end of the day, from a business perspective, the key question remains: where’s the money?
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There will be profound shifts in both value creation and value capture in the years ahead. [Moi ici: Imaginam já a quantidade de futuros coitadinhos a pedir providências cautelares ou proteccionismo, ou outra treta qualquer para os proteger do futuro]
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[Moi ici: Sublinho a terminologia que vai ser usada de seguida, terminologia que comecei a usar há muitos anos] The automotive industry has traditionally focused more on the denominator of that equation – ensuring that we get from Point A to Point B as efficiently, safely and comfortably as possible. I suggest that the winners in terms of value creation in the future will be those who focus on the numerator of the equation – what value are we experiencing once we get to Point B? And is Point B the highest value destination for us, given our unique context and aspirations? The value for us is much more in the destination than in the movement itself – for most of us, most of the time, mobility is simply a means to an end, it isn’t the end itself."

Recordar Abril de 2009 em "No meio do Atlântico..."

Trechos retirados de "Where's the Money? The Future of the Mobility Ecosystem"

Vendedores de banha da cobra

Uma mistura de "os macacos não voam" com crença no poder divinatório dos governos (o Grande Planeador, o Grande Geometra) em "Industry clusters: The modern-day snake oil":

"A recent study provides one more argument against government officials who tout “industry clusters” as the Holy Grail of regional growth and innovation.
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The formula for creating these clusters is always the same: Pick a hot industry, build a technology park next to a research university, provide incentives for businesses to relocate, add some venture capital and then watch the magic happen. But, as I have noted before, the magic never happens.
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 the key drivers of innovation in Norway are the communication channels that local entrepreneurs maintain to the outside world and their open-mindedness toward foreign cultures, change and new ideas. Companies that are “regionally minded” — that maintain ties only with players within the same cluster — are four times less likely to innovate than the globally connected. The study found that regional and national clusters are “irrelevant for innovation.”"

O fundamental é haver gente com coragem para empreender:

"rather than obsess over clusters, we need to start obsessing over people. We need to remove the obstacles to entre­pre­neur­ship — such as knowledge of how to start companies, fear of failure, lack of mentors and networks, government regulations and financing. And we need to repair our university research commercialization system so that research breakthroughs translate into invention. That’s the correct formula for nurturing regional growth." 

 Da próxima vez que ouvir um autarca e/ou um ministro a prometer magia a partir destes clusters top-down, lembre-se deste texto:

Acerca da monitorização dos processos

Vamos realizar um Workshop subordinado ao tema "Indicadores de Monitorização dos Processos" em Lisboa no próximo dia 20 e em Aveiro no próximo dia 27 de Janeiro (pormenores aqui).

De acordo com a minha experiência, penso que os problemas com a monitorização dos processos podem ser rastreados a 4 causas-raiz:

1. Processos mal definidos

2. Indicadores de espectro muito largo (misturam realidades distintas. Por exemplo, propostas que demoram 3 semanas a preparar com propostas que demoram 3 minutos)

3. Indicadores desligados da estratégia para o negócio

4. Monitorização deficiente, falta de ferramentas para interpretar o que está a acontecer.

Acerca da produtividade e dos feriados (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

Voltemos à equação:

"Profitability = Intellectual Capital X Price X Effectiveness"

e Eficácia em vez de Eficiência e a doença do eficientismo:

"In the business of the future, effectiveness takes precedence over efficiency. A business does not exist to be efficient; it exists to create wealth for its customers. An obsessive compulsion to increase efficiency (doing things right) reduces the firm's effectiveness at doing the right things. The pursuit of efficiency has hindered most companies' capability to pursue opportunities, hence these organizations spend most of their time solving problems. One cannot grow a company and continuously cut costs and increase efficiency. It is not that efficiency is bad, per se, it is that it is being pursued at the expense of nearly everything else. To add insult to injury, the efficiency measures that do exist in the modern organization tend to be lagging indicators that measure efforts and activities, not leading indicators that measure results and define success the same way the customer does. Focusing on effectiveness implicitly recognizes there is no such thing as a free statistic. Just because we can measure something accurately does not mean we should. Effectiveness means that imprecise measurements of the right things are infinitely more valuable than precise measurements of the wrong things. This will no doubt shock some readers, especially those who were trained in cost accounting or possess MBAs. But controlling costs, and accounting for them, does not ensure success." 

Quantas empresas minaram o seu futuro à custa desta perseguição paranóica da eficiência?

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As nossas fábricas de calçado, de têxteis, de mobiliário, hoje, por norma, são menos eficientes que no passado.

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E muito mais competitivas.

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E muito mais produtivas.

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E muito mais eficazes.

BTW, recordar esta reflexão de Outubro de 2007 "A eficácia é mais importante, ou está primeiro que a eficiência"

Curiosidade do dia

Admirável mundo novo (sem ironia):

• "Shrinking Tech Means Room at the Top" (que carrossel de novidades... tantas providências cautelares em perspectiva);
• "Vermonters Are Installing The First Tesla Home Batteries, Preparing For Winter";
• "The Internet of Things and supply chain management";
• "3D printing in the food industry";
• "3D printing: The trends that will change the game in 2016";
• "SCIENTISTS HIJACK A ROSE’S NATURAL CIRCUITRY, MAY ONE DAY TURN IT INTO A BEDSIDE LAMP"

Workshop Balanced Scorecard (Felgueiras e S João da Madeira)

Em colaboração com o Centro Tecnológico do Calçado, realizaremos dois Workshops sobre o Balanced Scorecard:

• 19 de Janeiro em São João da Madeira;
• 26 de Janeiro em Felgueiras

Interessados podem encontrar informação e inscrever-se aqui.

Acerca dos processos

A grande vantagem da ISO 9001 para muitas PME reside em resolver o tema que se segue:

"what are her first impressions of the fitness sector in this respect? "It's a very inspiring industry, but when you pull back the blankets there aren't really any standards or processes. And that's not just in our company: we had none when I arrived, but I can't find them anywhere. No best practice, no standards, no systems. "When I joined Jatomi Fitness we had 18 different logos, but that was just a symptom of the root cause: a lack of standards. So we've gone back to the foundations, effectively building these under the existing company — putting standards and processes in place to create what I call our gym blueprint, which covers everything from the hiring process to building a new club. If you want to grow as a brand, you have to have these systems and processes — it's just not possible to do it without them."

Cada vez menos PME sem processos definidos... bem, ás vezes aquilo que as empresas de processos não são processos a sério mas essa é outra história.

Trecho retirado da revista HCM de Janeiro de 2016, no âmbito de uma entrevista com Tracy Gehlan CEO da cadeia de clubes Jatomi Fitness:

Agricultura e o futuro

De um lado o passado agarrado a abordagens que tiveram sucesso, que foram adequadas até que o mundo mudou, "Preço do leite caiu seis cêntimos em 2015" e sempre com amplo espaço nos media, tentam evitar a mudança.
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Do outro, os que souberam adaptar-se a esse mundo alterado:

• Vale da Rosa duplica produção
• “Sovena é uma das maiores do mundo no negócio de azeite”
• Poças Júnior investe no enoturismo

Saliento em "Portugal será de novo um país agrícola? Europa vê grande potencial":

"Hoje, a agricultura e as pescas passam mais despercebidas. Fortemente desmanteladas desde que Portugal aderiu à UE (então CEE, em 1986), algumas atividades ficaram, [Moi ici: Como o têxtil, o calçado, o mobiliário, a metalomecânica e a cerâmica entre outros] em todo o caso, mais produtivas.
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o sector agroalimentar tem relevância nas exportações de bens: pesa 12% do total e cresce 6% ao ano.
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Algo pode estar a mudar outra vez, indicam vários estudos e os relatos vivos de alguns (jovens) que estão a trocar as cidades e os empregos nos serviços pelo campo e por projetos agrícolas inovadores, exportadores.
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Portugal é, na análise do Cedefop, emblemático. No país que outrora foi profundamente agrícola, o maior número de oportunidades de emprego está, justamente e outra vez, na agricultura – cerca de 26% do total será para trabalhadores qualificados em agricultura, floresta e pesca, muito acima da projeção para a UE”, referem os peritos.
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“Parece que Portugal está a acelerar a sua transição para uma economia mais intensiva em conhecimento”, além de que as projeções indicam que cerca de dois terços de todas as oportunidades de emprego entre agora e 2025 irão requerer qualificações de nível alto e médio”.
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[Moi ici: Interessante esta ponta de pensamento estratégico] “Há muita gente a produzir plantas aromáticas e medicinais em Portugal, mas nós fazemo-lo de forma biológica. Isso diferencia-nos e torna as nossas plantas melhores.”
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Exportamos 100%, o clima é uma vantagem.”"

Recordar as palavras de Jaime Silva:

• "Um monumento - Um símbolo - Um exemplo" (Março de 2011)
• "Ter razão antes do mainstream é tramado" (Dezembro de 2014)

Para reflexão

Mais um momento do anónimo da província:

Quando comecei a derivar a minha vida profissional da Qualidade para a Estratégia, emprenhava pelos ouvidos e pelos olhos o que os media nacionais me diziam: "os empresários portugueses são os piores do mundo".
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Hoje, quase 20 anos depois, sei que que são exactamente iguais aos outros, não são as ovelhas negras
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Com base nos dados do PORDATA, qual o país da Europa Ocidental que mais viu crescer a sua Produtividade do trabalho por hora trabalhada (PPS)?
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Acha que consegue adivinhar?

Vê alguém nos media tradicionais a salientar este feito?

Curiosidade do dia

Este tweet é do melhor:

The iPhone 7 if Apple was a democracy 📱😱 (via @JoyofTech) pic.twitter.com/QV9y5h5ar7

— The Next Web (@TheNextWeb) January 11, 2016

Relacionar com "Evernote’s 5% problem offers a cautionary lesson to tech companies":

"Evernote had spread itself too thin, and there was no core experience. Though Evernote did, in fact, continue to push out new features and products, they never managed to fix the underlying problem.
...
But the 5 percent problem offers a good lesson about how important it is to maintain a core identity as you build new features and products.
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The Silicon Valley mentality fosters a desire to continue building and iterating because if you don’t, you could get lapped by some new competitor who comes along and outflanks you. And sometimes engineers and product developers just get overly enamored with themselves and their ideas and lose sight of the bigger picture.
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But adding new features requires discipline.
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If you lose sight of the core experience and fall prey to the 5 percent problem, you likely won’t find the road back out."

Estratégia passa por isto, passa por ter uma identidade, passa por saber renunciar, recordar no mundo do fitness "Salami slicers"

"get used to it"

A propósito dos jornalistas e da sua campanha para que os contribuintes tenham de pagar uma taxa para suportar os jornais:

"In a web world where you want the content to flow freely, how do you use exclusivity - holding content back - to your advantage?
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Information is abundant, and almost any content can easily be found for free. For any person or company trying to monetize scarce or premium content on the social web, there is always somebody else out there willing to provide the same webinar, video, or eBook for nothing, destroying your idea of a scarce resource. Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price codifies this idea by basically saying "get used to it" - you have to find adjacencies and other revenue streams because people expect Internet-based content and services to be free.
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Is there anything scarce on the Internet?
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Yes, there is, according to digital marketing savant Christopher S. Penn of SHIFT Communications. "Scarcity is actually more powerful than ever on the social web," he said. "While content may be free, what has become extremely scarce is time, attention, and influence. These are hot commodities, rare commodities. As an example, I have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter. I can't tell you the number of direct messages and tweets, Facebook messages, and emails I receive every day asking, 'Hey, can you promote my whatever' because they know that it means something. Moving content creates true value. So in that regard, scarcity is a weapon that is in play like never before." On the other side of the coin, providing exclusive or limited access to content can create the perception of scarcity that can make the content move. [Moi ici: Claro que isto é exactamente o contrário do que se faz, cada vez mais manchas noticiosas obtidas no supermercado low-cost da Agência Lusa que todos serve igual e comoditiza. Onde está a especialização? Onde está o profissionalismo?] 

O mesmo se passa com a sua empresa, o mesmo se passa com os suinicultores, o mesmo se passará com o retalho tradicional perante os deflacionistas do retalho online.

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Como não recordar os jogos evolutivos em que se conclui que não há nenhuma estratégia vencedora, todas são transientes, todas são transitórias.

Trechos retirados de "The Content Code"

Workshop Abordagem baseada no risco - Porto

Programa, destinatários, valor do investimento e inscrição aqui.
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Como é que a abordagem baseada no risco actua como uma acção preventiva?
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Consideremos uma empresa que determinou o seu desempenho em 2015 relativamente a um dos indicadores associados a resultados valorizados pelos clientes:

A empresa pretendia um resultado inferior a 10% de atrasos na entrega e conseguiu 8%. 2015 correu bem!
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Agora, a empresa pretende para 2016 melhorar o desempenho:

O ano ainda é uma criança, o futuro está por escrever. No entanto, qual o valor mais provável para 2016?
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Se nada mudar, se não acontecer nenhuma surpresaa interna ou externa o mais provável é que o desempenho no final de 2016 seja igual ao de 2015:

Estamos em Janeiro de 2016 e a prever que se nada for alterado pela empresa, então, o desempenho de 2016 será não-conforme, será negativo. 
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Existe, portanto, um risco de isto acontecer...
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Qual a probabilidade dele acontecer?
E se acontecer qual a gravidade desta falha?
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Assim, em Janeiro de 2016 decidimos mudar um ou mais processos que influenciam a taxa de entregas atrasadas, para prevenir a ocorrência da não-conformidade:

Recordar que os riscos são, segundo a ISO 9000, os efeitos da incerteza nos resultados esperados. E a taxa de atrasos nas entregas é um resultado esperado determinado pela realização de um ou mais processos.
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As alterações aos processos feitas em Janeiro são para prevenir a não-conformidade no desempenho no final do ano.

Muito mais do que valor financeiro (parte VIII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI e parte VII. 

"How the experience economy will evolve
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The experience economy is a long-term underlying shift in the very structure of advanced economies and the forces of creative destruction take time.
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The shift into today’s experience economy comes with a number of implications that leaders should keep in mind as they manage their company’s shift from commodity trading, manufacturing and service providing or innovate wholly new businesses birthed in experiences:
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1. Mass customization is the route up the progression of economic value
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Companies should focus on reaching inside of the individual, living, breathing customer, making their offerings as personal and as individual as the customer
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2. Work is theatre. Business enterprises would gain an invaluable perspective simply by declaring their work to be theatre. For when a business sees its workplace as a bare stage, it opens up opportunities to distinguish itself from the myriad humdrum makers of goods and providers of services that perform work without recognizing the true nature of their acts. With theatre furnishing the operating model, even the most mundane of tasks can engage customers in a memorable way.[Moi ici: Quando li isto, juro, recuei logo até Dezembro de 2006]

3. Authenticity is the new consumer sensibility. Concomitant with the shift into the experience economy is a shift in the primary criterion by which people choose what to buy and from whom to buy. No matter the offering – commodity, good, service, experience or transformation – customers will judge it based on whether or not they view it as authentic – that is, whether or not it conforms to their own self-image.
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4. The experience is the marketing. Perhaps the worst offender when it comes to authenticity is advertising, as it has become a phoniness-generating machine. [Moi ici: Relacionar com o outro recorte que se segue mais abaixo] Companies should invest their marketing money in experience places. The best way to generate demand for any offering in today’s experience economy is with an experience so engaging that customers can’t help but pay attention and buy that offering. Marketing therefore needs to become placemaking, where companies create a portfolio of places, both real and virtual, to simultaneously render authenticity and generate demand."

Trechos retirados de "A leader's guide to innovation in the experience economy" de Pine e Gilmore, publicado em STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP, VOL. 42 NO. 1 2014, pp. 24-29

""“Marketing experiences are the new marketing,”
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“It is really important for CMOs to understand that brand architecture is sort of representative of a bygone era where brands would tell people through creative campaigns what that brand stood for and why you should care,”
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experiences are now the new brand.
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the need for CMOs to become “experience architects.”"

Trechos retirado de "Experiences Are The New Brand, And CMOs Are Their Architects"

Prestes a cometer um crime (parte IV)

Parte I e parte II.
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Ainda acerca do poder das redes em Mongo e de como a concorrência é diferente, este trecho retirado da revista HCM de Janeiro de 2016, no âmbito de uma entrevista com Tracy Gehlan CEO da cadeia de clubes Jatomi Fitness:

"The fitness sector's introspective viewpoint is also hindering its growth, adds Gehlan: "Everyone's competing against each other head to head, battling over the small pool of people who've already decided to join a gym. That's the wrong time and place to compete. "Rather than competing against other gyms, we should be out there competing with diets, weight loss tablets, recipes, meal plans all the other easier options consumers will try before they even contemplate joining a gym. Because I don't want to be 15th on the list. I want to move my business into a position where it's able to compete as soon as people start doing their 'how to change my life' research." 

Interessante como ela elege, como concorrência, as alternativas aos ginásios que ajudam a cumprir o mesmo JTBD.

Curiosidade do dia

Imaginem os retalhistas a adoptar o mesmo comportamento dos suinicultores...

• "Why Retailers Must Restructure In 2016"
• "3 Retail Assumptions to Challenge for Humans of the Digital Age"

Oportunidade perdida

"You’ve implemented a successful Net Promoter Score survey, with a good response rate and a high NPS score. Congrats! Pop that number on your website, sit back and watch the leads roll in. Right?
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Not quite. When NPS surveys don’t lead to action, it becomes a vanity metric that means very little to your business."

Recuar a 2006, a um postal a caminho dos 10 anos "Medir o Grau de Satisfação dos Clientes para quê?":

"Porque é que uma organização há-de avaliar o grau de satisfação dos seus clientes?
Respostas retorcidas poderão ser:
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Para nos auto-incensarmos. Assim, perante resultados positivos podemos felicitar-nos e encaixilhar o relatório que proclama tais auspiciosas conclusões. "Olhem quão bons nós somos!""

O importante é não perder o propósito, e o propósito é melhorar:

"Na minha humilde opinião, uma organização deve avaliar a opinião dos seus clientes, para ter acesso a informação privilegiada sobre o que é prioritário: onde agir, onde investir, para melhorar o desempenho da organização aos olhos de quem a sustenta, de quem lhes paga as facturas."

Se uma avaliação da opinião dos clientes não dá origem a acções de melhoria foi um desperdício de recursos. No entanto, a abordagem mais comum é outra é a de usar o exercício para comprovar que está tudo bem. E, em algumas empresas, esta é a disposição com que se recebem as opiniões menos positivas, pronto a ripostar:

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Trecho inicial retirado de "What Your Net Promoter Score Isn’t Telling You"

Prestes a cometer um crime (parte II)

"Profitability = Intellectual Capital X Price X Effectiveness"
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Volto a pegar nesta equação... para a usar na leitura de "The Open Economy":

"To understand Apple’s problem, let’s look at the iPhone, which makes up more than 60% of the company’s revenues. In terms of raw materials, it’s probably not worth more than a few bucks, yet people gladly pay $649 to buy one. The difference, MIT’s Cesar Hidalgo argues in his new book, Why Information Grows
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, is what he calls “crystallized imagination.”
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Apple is a very special company because it has mastered the art of crystallizing imagination in its products in such a way that they are more desirable—and hence more valuable—than anything anyone else can produce. The problem for Apple, however, is that there is a lot more imagination in the world than Apple can control by itself.
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The truth is that we can’t think of competitiveness as a strictly internal matter anymore. We no longer operate in an industrial economy in which we can gain competitive advantage merely through engineering greater efficiency. Rather, we need to widen and deepen connections.
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So we can’t continue to think of success in terms of clawing our way to the top of the heap. Rather, we need to learn to position ourselves at the center of networks. Nobody, not even a company as special as Apple, can succeed alone."

Agora, comparar o que penso acerca da concorrência em Mongo aqui, com este pre-crime para satisfazer os incumbentes e a reacção destes outros incumbentes noutras paragens. Depois, voltar a ler aquele trecho "we need to learn to position ourselves at the center of networks". Depois, talvez estudar o que Esko Kilpi reflecte sobre as redes.

Na equação, aquele Capital Intelectual não é, quase sempre, sobre os conhecimentos académicos dos operários, dos executantes, (afinal é o mesmo operário que salta do Vale do Ave para Munique), é sobre a capacidade de decisão dos que têm poder e autoridade para mudar as empresas e/ou as associações.
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Muito mais do que valor financeiro (parte VII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V e parte VI.
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Mais um exemplo do que pode ser feito na economia das experiências:

"Extreme Sandbox, a heavy-equipment playground for adults....Customers pay about $300 to play with construction equipment in a giant sand pit. Clients can drive an excavator, operate a bulldozer, or crush a car (for an extra $100) for up to 7 hours."

No que diz respeito à experience economy o céu é o limite!!!
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Ainda ontem "Seis pessoas perdidas no Gerês" e "Seis pessoas em apuros no alto do Gerês já foram socorridas"... esta gente ganhou recordações, memórias para sempre e, como refere Kahneman em "Thinking, Fast and Slow":

"A story is about significant events and memorable moments, not about time passing....In many cases we evaluate touristic vacations by the story and the memories that we expect to store. The word memorable is often used to describe vacation highlights, explicitly revealing the goal of the experience."

Trechos retirados de "Mark Cuban Does the Unthinkable on 'Shark Tank'"
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