"Customers don’t want your product or what it does"

"JTBD Principles
Customers don’t want your product or what it does; they want help making their lives better (i.e. they want progress).
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Focusing on the product itself, what it does, or how customers use it closes your mind to innovation opportunities.[Moi ici: E condena as empresas ao cost+plus pricing]
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JTBD is laser focused on describing customer motivation.
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“Jobs were never intended to explain what the product must do. They stand for what the customer must do.” And what must customers do? They must overcome their struggles and make their lives better.
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Solutions come and go, while Jobs stay largely the same. JTBD is about understanding human motivation as a problem to be solved. Human motivation changes slowly. Therefore, Jobs change slowly.
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Solutions, on the other hand, constantly change because technology enables better ways of creating solutions that solve our Jobs. This is why we focus on the JTBD and not the product itself or what the product does."

Trechos retirados de "When coffee & kale compete" de Alan Klement.

Curiosidade do dia

A propósito desta evolução nos Estados Unidos "O suíno é a mercadoria de pior desempenho por excesso de oferta".
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Estou mesmo a ver isto a implicar mais ajudas, mais apoios, mais torrefacção de impostagem actual ou futura para ingloriamente tentar manter um status quo.

Qual a actividade digital da sua empresa?

Aprendi há uns anos, através de um livro que o Aranha me recomendou, que a internet torna a geografia irrelevante em muitos aspectos. 

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Em "The Neighborhood Bookstore’s Unlikely Ally? The Internet" encontro um exemplo que muitas PME podiam estudar e procurar tirar lições. A pequena livraria a fazer o seu ressurgimento apesar da Amazon!

"he quickly realized his business wouldn’t survive in this remote locale if his only customers were local buyers.
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A decade ago, independent bookstores were viewed as an industry on the decline. [Moi ici: Uma das lições mais importantes da minha vida profissional aprendi-a num livro: "Na página 255: “… there are no “sunset” industries condemned to disappear in high wage economies, although there are certainly sunset and condemned strategies, among them building a business on the advantages to be gained by cheap labor” - Na página 257: “If they prosper despite competition from foreign companies with very low-paid workers, it is because they bundle into the products they sell other desirable features, like speed, fashion, uniqueness, and image.”"] Crushed on price by Amazon and by the wide selection of national retailers like Barnes & Noble, thousands of mom-and-pop outlets had closed up shop.

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But after years of losses, they are emerging from the decimation, with the number of independent bookstores rising 21 percent from 2010 to 2015.
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In a twist of fate, it is the internet — the very thing that was supposed to wipe them out — that is helping these small stores.
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“Bookstores are being reinvented by taking advantage of how the world has changed,”
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Some bookstores are investing in infrastructure, such as in-shop e-book printers and new back-end systems, while others are embracing social media as an inexpensive way to connect with new customers.
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owners like Mr. Makin are finding ways to gain customer loyalty with the aid of technology. He knew he could not compete with Amazon on price, but he believed that online buyers would flock to Brilliant Books if they experienced the same customer service that shoppers in his physical store do.
“I say, ‘We are your long-distance local bookstore,’” Mr. Makin said.
He began offering free shipping anywhere in the United States and hired a full-time social media manager, who promotes the store and has used Twitter and Facebook to talk to readers who would never find themselves near Traverse City."

Como é que a sua empresa pode aproveitar a internet? Se for como a empresa típica, manda fazer um site e usa-o como um anúncio nas páginas amarelas. No tempo das páginas amarelas o potencial cliente pesquisava por ordem alfabética, hoje, a Google é que lista a ordem de aparecimento e essa ordem ou se paga ou exige actividade digital. Qual a actividade digital da sua empresa?

"The customer will be transformed from being an audience to an actor"

Leio "What Businesses Need To Know About The Fourth Industrial Revolution" e fico a pensar que há aqui qualquer coisa em falta. Questiono-me se será por causa da audiência-alvo do artigo e do seu âmbito de actuação.
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Entretanto, encontro o que sinto falta lá naquele texto em "A pattern language of post-industrial work":

"The customer is now seen as being directly and actively involved in the key moments of value creation as opposed to passively consuming value. [Moi ici: No 1º artigo o cliente é visto como um alvo imóvel]
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There are profound implications that result from this change of thinking. Products and services are not reproducible as such any more. Solutions are by default contextual, but they can be starting points for someone else to create value. Creative, connected learning is at the core of the post-industrial business.
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To succeed you need relationships and interaction. When customers are identified as individuals in different use contexts, the sales process is really a joint process of solving problems. You and your customer necessarily then become cooperators. You are together trying to solve the customer’s problem in a way that both satisfies the customer and ensures a profit for you.
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The focus should now be on cooperation and emergent interaction based on transparency, interdependence and responsiveness.
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The really big objective of the digital transformation is to reconfigure agency in a way that brings relationships into the center.
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The key understanding is that it is now the customers or members of the network who create value, not the network owner. The customer will be transformed from being an audience to an actor."[Moi ici: Frase assassina para os crentes no modo gringo de fazer negócio à la século XX]

É a continuação de ""a human touch becomes more important than ever""

"Finding your niche"

Como desenvolvi no ano passado nesta série com 17 partes, "tecto de vidro":

"Finding your niche, clarifying any market confusion and being transparent in your weakness will allow you to focus, create and get back to what you truly love doing. And when you get back to doing something you love, word spreads like wildfire."

E quantas PME são capazes de arriscar seguir esta disciplina? Quantas continuam dominadas pelo efeito de escala em vez de apostarem no efeito de profundidade?

Quantas definem quem são os seus clientes-alvo?

Trecho retirado de "Why Trying to Become a Jack of All Trades Hurts Your Business"

Outra vez a marca Portugal

Na senda do que aprendi acerca do valor do made in Portugal na agricultura versus o Mar del Plastico de Almeria, em linha com a ideia da "joalharia" agrícola:

• "A marca Portugal"
• "ter razão antes do mainstream é tramado"

Este artigo desta semana, "Exportação ganha com fama de Portugal":

""Um consumidor do Centro da Europa prefere um produto português a um produto espanhol, marroquino, turco ou egípcio. Mesmo se o nosso produto for mais caro, desde que seja de qualidade, nós vendemos." "No ano passado, um produtor teve de me mostrar uma factura para eu acreditar que tinha  vendido batata-doce de Aljezur três vezes mais cara na Alemanha e na Suíça do que o valor do produto espanhol e norte-americano. Conseguiu isso por ter um produto de excelência."

Curiosidade do dia

• Sobretaxa de IRS pode continuar para alguns contribuintes
• Estamos a “empurrar com a barriga” problema na Segurança Social

O Estranhistão é diferente do Normalistão

Para reflexão do bicicletas et al como Ferreira do Amaral.

eheheh a malta do Normalistão, a malta formatada no século XX passa-se com estas coisas. Pobre bicicletas https://t.co/7bwhI9hZjC

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) October 8, 2016

Em Mongo, no Estranhistão do século XXI a economia do século XX, do Normalistão, não funciona. QED https://t.co/DTfgHiq8aK

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) October 8, 2016

Boas notícias

O meu primeiro patrão foi Belmiro de Azevedo, no âmbito de um estágio pós-universidade.
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O meu primeiro emprego foi na Divisão de Tecidos Plastificados da TMG em Campelos, Guimarães. Depois, passou a TMG Automotive.
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Por isso, é com algum carinho que encontro esta notícia "Mercedes devolve TMG a Famalicão". Fico contente pelas pessoas que lá conheci e que ainda lá devem trabalhar, como o Cândido, a Glória e o Senra.
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Na TMG Automotive tive a melhor função que se pode ter no mundo fabril: engenheiro de produto. Tive oportunidade de trabalhar com um cliente super-exigente e, ao mesmo tempo, inteligente, como a VW. Passava horas a fazer experiências, a testar receitas, a compilar os resultados e as provas (amostras, não se usavam fotos) em dossiês para uso pela engenharia de processo e não só.
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BTW, saí no dia em que me propuseram passar do mundo das especificações automóveis para o mundo dos toques e brilhos da moda.

Sintomas de Mongo por todo o lado

Sintomas de Mongo por todo o lado, sintomas do surgimento de nichos em todo o lado, sintoma de oportunidades para o aparecimento de pequenas empresas focadas em servir estas pequenas tribos.
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Mais um exemplo de como as pessoas não querem ser tratadas como plancton, desta feita, "Niche Maternity Retailers Surge As Millennial Moms Redefine The Category":

""Women with a strong sense of personal style feel alienated by maternity and perceive the industry as a whole to be cheap and unfashionable,"
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Storq is one of many new brands livening up this once ignored clothing category. New online labels such as Hatch are rapidly growing, while established brands like ASOS and Topshop have successfully branched out into the maternity market. What used to be limited to a few players is now a battleground for multiple competitors reaching out to moms-to-be. Sales at former strongholds, traditional brick-and-mortar maternity stores, are down and expected to further decline. [Moi ici: Comparem isto com as previsões que fazemos aqui há anos sore o impacte, sobre as consequências de Mongo para os gigantes. Os economistas formados no pensamento económico do Normalistão vão pensar nas economias de escala só que isso não é para Mongo] Destination Maternity, which accounts for 20% of the market, will close 25 to 30 stores in 2016.
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Sales are declining, explained IBISWorld industry analyst Madeline Hurley, because retailers continue to be mass-focused, trying to meet the needs of too many. Meanwhile, online retailers catering to niche tastes are thriving in this market. [Moi ici: Capeesh? Qual a vantagem da escala? Lindo para as PME] The average age for first-time mothers is also rising gradually, which means women are more established in their careers by the time they pursue motherhood. That means they have more money to spend on fashionable maternity wear. "Women want to feel beautiful whether they’re nine months pregnant or not," says Hurley."

O que prejudica a inovação

"I struggled with innovation for many years. I finally made progress when I focused on two things: (1) the customers’ struggle to make life better and (2) how customers imagine their lives being better when they have the right solution. This understanding has helped me become a better innovator.
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Creative destruction is accelerating. The average time a company spends on the S&P 500 continues to drop. ... This happened for numerous reasons. A big one is that it has never been easier to create a product and get it to customers.
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even though solutions and technologies come and go, human motivation changes very slowly. In some cases, human motivation hasn’t changed at all. The focus on customer motivation is the key to successful, ongoing innovation and business."

Segue-se uma série de ideias sobre o que prejudica a aposta na inovação:

"“Sunk costs” keep us from creating new products.
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It’s a mistake to focus on our customers’ physical characteristics.
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We don’t take into consideration how customers see competition.
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We myopically study and improve upon customers’ “needs” and expectations of today; instead we should study and improve the systems to which customers belong.
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We may think only about the upsides of product changes, ignore the downsides, and fail to embrace new ways of solving customers’ problems.
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Our decision making can be misled when we manage by visible figures only, and don’t appreciate the context surrounding them."

Trechos retirados de "When coffee & kale compete" de Alan Klement.

"to base critical decisions on inner strengths and convictions rather than on alleged external needs"

Costumo escrever e defender que uma PME deve começar pela sua identidade, pela sua experiência, por aquilo que tem (recordar a effectuation). Por isso, isto toca-me:

"Choose Your Destiny Plasticity guides companies to base critical decisions on inner strengths and convictions rather than on alleged external needs.
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purpose: the unbreakable conviction about what the company stands for, something that cannot be traded for something else. Having this vision is probably the most indispensable element. To develop and survive in a competing world, companies also must have a reason for being. If they are only followers mimicking the leaders, they are destined to die."

Trechos retirados de "Corporate Plasticity: How to Change, Adapt, and Excel" 

Diferenciação e B2B

"in our experience, there are 4 methods for increasing product differentiation that are generally underutilized, if not completely ignored.
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In a commoditized B2B market, there are four additional ways to differentiate your offering from the competition and increase your differentiation: leveraging the brand, innovating your service offering, as well as designing product and packaging in a way that creates an aesthetic beyond the functional."

Quantas destas alavancas as PME em Portugal utilizam? E a sua empresa?
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Ontem, ao realizar uma auditoria, foi bom descobrir uma PME a apostar na criação de uma marca B2B, a apostar no desenvolvimento de actividade comercial proactiva, ...
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Trechos retirados de "differentiating - alternative ways to differentiate in an increasingly commoditizing market place"

Quando se pensa no futuro ...

Quando se começa a pensar no futuro, quando se começa imaginar as implicações do que pode vir aí, alguns não escondem a cabeça debaixo da areia e fazem algo:

"we are moving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first one; that was the context for the introduction of the Google Assistant.
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It was a year prior to the aforementioned iOS 6 that Apple first introduced the idea of an assistant in the guise of Siri; for the first time you could (theoretically) compute by voice. It didn’t work very well at first (arguably it still doesn’t), but the implications for computing generally and Google specifically were profound: voice interaction both expanded where computing could be done, from situations in which you could devote your eyes and hands to your device to effectively everywhere, even as it constrained what you could do.
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An assistant has to be far more proactive than, for example, a search results page; it’s not enough to present possible answers: rather, an assistant needs to give the right answer.
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Google has a business-model problem: the “I’m Feeling Lucky Button” guaranteed that the search in question would not make Google any money. After all, if a user doesn’t have to choose from search results, said user also doesn’t have the opportunity to click an ad, thus choosing the winner of the competition Google created between its advertisers for user attention. Google Assistant has the exact same problem: where do the ads go?
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It is not that Google is artificially constraining its horizontal business model; it is that its business model is being constrained by the reality of a world where, as Pichai noted, artificial intelligence comes first. In that world you must own the interaction point, and there is no room for ads, rendering both Google’s distribution and business model moot. Both must change for the company’s technological advantage to come to the fore."

E a sua empresa, o que faz?
Trechos retirados de "Google and the Limits of Strategy"

Curiosidade do dia

So it begins:

• "Perdão fiscal. Rocha Andrade não sabe se vai ganhar ou perder receita"

Dolorosa leitura

Em "Redsigma - O fim da linha" escrevi:

"prefiro apoiar empresas a estarem à frente da onda, tão à frente que ainda não existem normas."

Descobri isto em 2004, quando PME e eu percebemos que a marcação CE vinha abrir caminho à comoditização acelerada.
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Relacionar com:

"1. Innovation precedes regulation, not the other way around. In entrepreneurial societies, innovation always precedes regulation. In the United States, for instance, scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York are always one step ahead of regulators, developing innovations that help us solve some of our most critical problems. The regulators eventually catch up, but not before the innovators have developed viable solutions for us to improve our lives. If the regulations in your society precede innovation from entrepreneurs, this is likely to curb the entrepreneurial spirt of innovators."

Relacionar o "é preciso perder a vergonha de impostar quem acumula dinheiro" com:

"2. Entrepreneurs and innovators are richly rewarded for their breakthroughs. In an entrepreneurial society, entrepreneurs are popular heroes and profit materially from their work. People want to emulate them. In non-entrepreneurial societies, government officials, politicians, and civil servants are the ones who—while not heroes— reap the greatest financial rewards, largely because they are key to getting anything done. When that is the case, then society is at the mercy of the altruism of government officials as opposed to the ingenuity of entrepreneurs and innovators." 

Uma questão preocupante para os portugueses é os políticos portugueses terem sucesso mas o país não.

— JoãoMiranda (@joaomiranda) October 5, 2016

Para muitos, nesta sociedade a caminho da "prosperidade socialista venezuelana", o trecho que se segue é perigosa retórica de direita:

"5. Work is becoming more modularized. As societies become more entrepreneurial, work, and our idea of work, is becoming more modularized. In other words, work will no longer be confined to employment contracts that require people to work at least eight hours a day for an indefinite amount of time for a corporation. Instead, work will depend largely on shorter term engagements and will be specific to a particular project." 

 E, talvez o trecho mais doloroso para quem acompanha a sociedade portuguesa:

"6. The society is either prosperous or is on a clear path toward prosperity. Perhaps the clearest sign that you live in an entrepreneurial society is that it is either prosperous or on a path to prosperity. Prosperity is different from growth. Economies can grow without becoming prosperous."

Trechos retirados de "6 Signs You’re Living in an Entrepreneurial Society"

Theatre vs Theater

Em 2005 ou 2006 li "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage".
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Se repararem na foto do livro o título é "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage". No entanto, se repararem no título da Amazom... "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage".

"the authors challenge the reader’s perceptions and constraints of traditional business constructs. The title presents a shift of the reader’s attention from processes and procedures to those of performance and staging.
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Theatre is the performance.
Theater is the environment containing the performance.
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If this is true, then the title also creates a second challenge by asking; if work is theatre and every business a stage, then what type of guides must one follow in order to design the constructs for the work theater and the type of staging required to curate the experience? Some models of experiential design are needed to go beyond architectural design."

Nunca tinha pensado nesta nuance, theatre/theater, tão comum no inglês e que se perde no português (como, por exemplo, exploration vs exploitation").
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Trabalho é uma performance e todo o negócio é um palco. Como deve ser esse palco? Como é que esse palco contribui para a realização da performance e para a experienciação?

Trechos retirados de "Creating Experiential Places: A Case For Place Personae" de Kevin M. Dulle.

A merecer reflexão

Por mais de uma vez trabalhei com empresas que na mesma reunião de análise do desempenho, exibiam com orgulho um relatório que afiançava o elevado grau de satisfação dos clientes e o seu progresso face ao ano anterior, enquanto ao mesmo tempo discutiam com preocupação a continuada erosão da facturação. Tento sempre chamar a atenção para a contradição.
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Este trecho que se segue vai no sentido oposto mas ilustra o mesmo problema com os números:

"Spirit Airlines. Customers have consistently rated it as the worst airline in America. Nevertheless, it continues to be the fastest-growing and most profitable airline in America. If customers hate it so much, why do they keep buying it?
Figures can not only be misleading; they can be misused."

Para quem trabalha com a ISO 9001:2015 recomendo a leitura exegética do segundo requisito que se pode retirar da cláusula 4.2. Aposto que esta Spirit Airlines identificou claramente os seus clientes-alvo e faz-lhes uma proposta de valor que eles acham muito boa embora imponha um trade-off muito forte. Ver "Bare Fare".
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Reflectir em "Figures can not only be misleading; they can be misused"



Trecho retirado de "When coffee & kale compete" de Alan Klement.

Para reflexão

Uma chamada de atenção para as PME portuguesas que operam no B2B.
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Algures no vosso ecossistema vai estar um C de consumidor:

E se isto está a acontecer com os consumidores, "The 10 Commandments of New Consumerism".
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Como é que esta evolução pode ser aproveitada pelas PME portuguesas para se diferenciarem de concorrentes de multinacionais e não só?

Curiosidade do dia

Dedicado ao amigo Cortes, fiel escudeiro da Geringonça:

• Austeridade de esquerda e austeridade de direita;
• A despesa pública e a pasta de dentes;
• FMI. Portugal com défice de 3% este ano e no próximo.