Não é por serem grandes que as empresas exportam! (parte II)

Parte I.

"The good news with unfair advantages is that you don't need one from the outset. When you are just starting out, embrace obscurity to build something valuable without calling out too much competitor attention. Identify an unfair advantage story and if one is not readily apparent, it is always better to leave the unfair advantage box blank than stuffing a weak unfair advantage as a placeholder.
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The bad news with unfair advantages is that once you get some traction, your unfair advantage will get tested -- by your competitors and copycats."

Trecho retirado de "What is an Unfair Advantage?"

"only 54%"

"Since the mid-2000s, organizational change management and transformation have become permanent features of the business landscape. Vast new markets and labor pools have opened up, innovative technologies have put once-powerful business models on the chopping block, and capital flows and investor demand have become less predictable. To meet these challenges, firms have become more sophisticated in the best practices for organizational change management. They are far more sensitive to and more keenly aware of the role that culture plays. They’ve also had to get much better on their follow-through.
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the success rate of major change initiatives is only 54 percent. This is far too low. The costs are high when change efforts go wrong—not only financially but in confusion, lost opportunity, wasted resources, and diminished morale. When employees who have endured real upheaval and put in significant extra hours for an initiative that was announced with great fanfare see it simply fizzle out, cynicism sets in."

Agora imaginem o quanto o mundo muda e muda a uma velocidade mais forte, o quanto essas mudanças requerem novas estratégias, o quanto essas estratégias são apenas hipóteses que têm de ser testadas e afinadas ou revistas, o quanto a execução de uma estratégia assenta na implementação e integração de projectos de mudança em processos... projectos de mudança?

54% nos Estados Unidos! E por cá?


Trechos retirados de "10 Principles of Leading Change Management"

Não é por serem grandes que as empresas exportam!

A propósito de “Pequena dimensão de algumas empresas ainda dificulta ganhos de escala” julgo que há alguma confusão em algumas cabeças.

Não é por serem grandes que as empresas exportam! É por exportarem que as empresas crescem!

Empresas que exportam e ganham dinheiro têm credibilidade na banca para financiarem projectos de crescimento.

Empresas que querem crescer para depois exportar, são empresas que não têm um modelo validado pelo mercado, são um risco para os bancos e não têm uma especialização que as diferencie.

Empresas que querem exportar só com base na escala são empresas que estão no campeonato do preço puro e duro e duvido que o consigam fazer de forma sustentável. Empresas pequenas que começam a exportar, começam a fazê-lo porque têm uma qualquer vantagem que não passa só pelo volume, e será o abuso, a batota em torno dessa vantagem que dará os alicerces para um crescimento não canceroso.

Dores de crescimento

E quando uma empresa abandona as inseguranças, deixa de titubear e assume a execução duma estratégia.

E quando essa estratégia tem um sucesso para lá do que era previsto ...

A revolução que isso representa ... as dores do crescimento, as insatisfações que vão ser geradas nos antigos clientes, a sensação de estar sempre a correr atrás do prejuízo.

Aumentar a capacidade de produção em 20% e mesmo assim ser insuficiente para o aumento da procura.

O que é que a empresa deveria ter feito de diferente para acompanhar melhor o sucesso da estratégia? Como poderá evitar que situações semelhantes se repitam no futuro?
Qual o plano para meter as coisas em modo controlado?

Portugal competitivo

Nas últimas 3 semanas tenho vivido a experiência de visitar e trabalhar com várias PME portuguesas que estão a ter um 2017 muito, muito bom.

Empresas exportadoras que rejeitam encomendas e que crescem a dois dígitos.

Muito bom!!!

Por onde andam aqueles que diziam que as PME portuguesas não podiam competir por causa do euro?

"Strategies are time-bound"

"In retrospect, it seems inevitable. Nokia was so immersed in executing its strategy that it lost sight of its purpose."

Há dias li esta frase e não me sai da cabeça.

"Nokia is far from alone. In fact, history is filled with similar stories. The pepper trade, for example, was disrupted not by a better spice but by refrigeration. It hardly mattered anymore if your pepper supply chain was the best designed and most efficiently run, if your customer base was elite, or if the quality of your pepper was second to none. Your purpose — preserving food — had been co-opted. All the strengths you had worked so hard to build no longer mattered. Today, broadcast and cable television, print journalism, taxi cabs, and (over the longer term) oil and gas are among the industries facing formidable challengers determined to co-opt their purpose.
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To safeguard your company at the level of purpose, you must make strategy the servant rather than the master. Strategies are time-bound and target specific results. Your purpose, in contrast, is what makes you durably relevant to the world. Strategy is but one of several important means to operationalize your purpose. Intrinsic human connection to your purpose is even more important."

E este outro sublinhado também é poderoso:

"All the strengths you had worked so hard to build no longer mattered." 

Trechos retirados de "The Best Companies Know How to Balance Strategy and Purpose"

"you need to build relationships"

"Sales and selling shouldn't be competitive or manipulative.
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Selling is usually competitive, though. Some people love and thrive on the competition. Competition is wrong when the competition is with your client, the industry, or your colleagues. Competition against your best self, well, is needed.
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You do not need to overcome objections; you need to solve problems.
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You do not need to attack the market; you need to build relationships.[Moi ici: Outra vez as relações]
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You do not need to capture deals; you need to create solutions together."

Trecho retirado de "The No. 1 Rule in Sales Is to Forget What You've Been Taught About Sales"

Acerca de Mongo

O que aqui dizemos ao longo de anos e mais anos anda em torno disto, "Why You Should Keep Making Stuff By Hand", eficácia em vez de eficiência, arte em vez de vómito.

Actuar em Mongo

Relacionar "Cuidado com a eficiência" e a citação:

"There are a lot of things that aren’t convenient. There are many possible ways to be more efficient with your limited time and energy. But much of the time, efficiency is the wrong factor to use to decide. Human relationships are inefficient. They require care and feeding. They require effort. That means that the inefficient is more effective in producing the outcome you need, making it the truly efficient choice—and making what you believe to be efficient to be the least inefficient choice because it doesn’t generate a preference to work with you."

Com "Make relationships, not things":

"All relationships are based on trust.
...
Make relationships, not things
The decision to create a relationship instead of a thing has real consequences for what you make, who you ask to make it, and how it gets done."

E com "Cuidado com as melhores práticas":

"Businesses are still organised in the same way they were in Victorian times when we were building factories that churned out consistent objects. We’re now in a world where we sell concepts, content, ideas and thoughts"

Eficácia, relação, interacção. Temas recorrentes neste blogue e fundamentais para perceber como é que as empresas devem actuar em Mongo.

Imaginem a flexibilidade necessária

Imaginem a flexibilidade necessária

"Treat strategy as evergreen. The best companies see strategy less as a plan and more as a direction and agenda of decisions. In effect, a company’s strategy is the sum of decisions it effectively makes and executes over time. This mindset focuses leadership on making near-term decisions with the longer-term destination in mind, but it doesn’t presume that there is only one path from here to there.
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Think of strategy as a portfolio of options, not bonds. The traditional plan-then-do model treats the value of any strategy like a bond. Management forecasts the future coupon payments (or cash flows) associated with various strategies and then selects the one that has the highest discounted value. When volatility is high, however, strategic decisions should be treated more like call options. Leadership decides whether the small up-front investment is worth making as a call on potential profits. As long as the option appears “in the money,” management can continue to invest; the moment the strategy becomes “out of the money,” leadership can stop investing, cut its losses, and move on.
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Create response mechanisms. In a world where the best laid plans can go awry, companies that react quickly and effectively come out on top. Rigorous contingency planning is as important as disciplined action planning. It requires that you identify the most important known unknowns associated with your company’s strategy, specify concrete steps to adjust course if you see an unplanned change in the external environment, and put in place mechanisms to continuously monitor market and competitive conditions.
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Most companies do not take advantage of their opportunities to test and learn. They go for a big bang — and risk a big bust — when a series of smaller, more productive bangs would generate better results.
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Great performance requires great strategy and great execution, but poor execution is often used as an excuse for flawed strategy. Today’s leaders need a new approach to strategy development. They can no longer define a plan over many years and then just do. Success requires identifying the next few steps along a broadly defined strategic path and then learning and refining as you go. This approach makes execution easier and increases the odds of delivering great results."

Trechos retirados de "5 Ways the Best Companies Close the Strategy-Execution Gap"

Fugir do granel

Eu gosto é destas cenas!

Sistematizar, organizar, fugir do granel.

Atribuir responsabilidades e autoridades e começar a melhorar.

Execution is the act of ...

"The common perception is that strategy is done at the top of the org chart, and execution is done below. It is exactly the opposite – let me explain why.
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Usually when businesspeople talk about “strategy” and “execution,” the former is the act of making choices and the latter the act of obeying them. My quibble with this characterization is that the things that happen in the activity called “strategy” and the activity called “execution” are identical: people are making choices about what to do and what not to do.
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No matter where you are in the organization, the choices are the same: they are all where to play/how to win strategy choices.
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And that is why I describe leadership in this layered choice cascade as follows:
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Make only the set of choices you are more capable of making than anyone else.
Explain the choice that has been made and the reasoning behind it.
Explicitly identify the next downstream choice.
Assist in making the downstream choice, as needed.
Commit to revisit and modify the choice based on downstream feedback.
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Strategy is the act of making choices about “where to play” and “how to win” across the various levels and parts of the organization. Execution is the act of parsing out responsibility for those choices, making sure people actually choose (instead of waffling around in indecision).
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This reverses the normal implied responsibilities. While the traditional definitions hold that strategy is done at the top and execution is done below, in this alternative, more useful definition, strategy choices are made throughout the organization and the responsibility for execution lies at the top."

Trechos retirados de "CEOs Should Stop Thinking that Execution is Somebody Else’s Job; It Is Theirs"

Quando o mundo muda há quem dê a volta (parte III)

Parte I e parte II. 

"“The idea that everybody needs to be terrified of Amazon is completely wrong,” says Brian Spaly, who cofounded two e-commerce-centric startups, Bonobos (menswear) and Trunk Club (a wardrobe-in-a-box service), which sold to Walmart and Nordstrom, respectively, for nine-figure sums. “Everybody needs to figure out what makes them special and use those weapons to compete.”
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SUCCESSFUL RETAILERS WILL FEATURE PRODUCTS THAT CUSTOMERS CAN’T GET ELSEWHERE...
When consumers can get seemingly anything and everything online, what can Target offer that Amazon can’t?
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In other words, Target had strayed from what made it “Tar-zhay.” Two decades ago, the company had distinguished itself from other big-box retailers by teaming up with celebrated architect and designer Michael Graves to craft a collection of mass-market housewares, partnering with high-end fashion designers like Isaac Mizrahi for custom fashion lines, and nurturing emerging brands such as Method through forward-thinking curation. “There would be no retail if it weren’t for merchandising, so why isn’t anyone talking about it anymore?” wonders Rachel Shechtman, founder of Story, the novel Manhattan concept store, which reinvents itself regularly (and collaborated with Target in 2014). “Merch assortments designed by spreadsheets and algorithms” is what’s killing department stores, she says.
...
SUCCESSFUL RETAILERS WILL DELIVER A SATISFYING EXPERIENCE...
good experiential design is about solving customer problems.
...
SUCCESSFUL RETAILERS WILL CHALLENGE THE FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS OF COMMERCE...
SUCCESSFUL RETAILERS WILL RESURRECT THE ART OF SELLING"

Trechos retirados de "The Future Of Retail In The Age Of Amazon"

Cuidado com a eficiência

Ontem em "Análise do contexto ao vivo e a cores (parte II)" referi:

"E fico a pensar no dilema do filho de Stephen Covey, e penso em gente mais preocupada em fazer um visto numa checklist de conformidade com a norma do que em reflectir pelo menos uma vez por semestre sobre o ambiente onde a organização está inserida. E isto é demasiado importante ..."

Entretanto, hoje li "The Inefficient is Really Efficient":

"It’s easier to send an email than make a phone call.
...
It’s easier to schedule a phone call than it is to show up. It might take two hours to reach your client, and the meeting is only going to last 20 minutes. A phone call may be more convenient for you, giving you back an hour and half of your day. The question, however, is what is the impact of your presence during this conversation?
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There are a lot of things that aren’t convenient. There are many possible ways to be more efficient with your limited time and energy. But much of the time, efficiency is the wrong factor to use to decide. Human relationships are inefficient. They require care and feeding. They require effort. That means that the inefficient is more effective in producing the outcome you need, making it the truly efficient choice—and making what you believe to be efficient to be the least inefficient choice because it doesn’t generate a preference to work with you."[Moi ici: Excelente trecho!!!]

Recordo a estória do filho de Covey em "A crença louca na eficiência, quando se lida com gente"

Quantas vezes a paranóia do eficientismo prejudicou a actividade da sua empresa? Ontem estive numa reunião em que descrevi a minha adesão a um projecto assim:

- Vim pelos produtos e mantenho-me pela relação. E, "Human relationships are inefficient".

Quantas vezes já chamei aqui a atenção para a importância da eficácia face à eficiência.

Momentos positivos

"When brothers Chip and Dan Heath, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at Duke University’s CASE Center, respectively, asked executives how they invest their resources, the executives estimated that, on average, their companies spend 80 percent of their resources trying to improve the experiences of their unhappiest customers. Yet, report the Heaths, in 2016, when Forrester Research tabulated its annual U.S. Customer Experience Index and modeled the financial results in 16 industries, it discovered that “there’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones.”
...
“positive defining moments” can produce extraordinary effects in both individuals and organizations.
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The authors define a defining moment as “a short experience that is both memorable and meaningful.”
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the positive ones are composed of one or more of four crucial elements: elevation (they rise above the ordinary), insight (they rewire our perceptions), pride (they capture us at our best, reflecting achievements or courageous acts), and connection (they are shared and, in being shared, they bind us together). The more of the four elements that are present in a defining moment, the more powerful it is"

Trechos retirados de "Creating Defining Moments for Your Customers"

Análise do contexto ao vivo e a cores (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Na figura abaixo, a equipa de Alex Osterwalder propõe uma ferramenta para fazer a análise do contexto externo em busca de potenciais forças disruptoras

Até que ponto uma ferramenta deste tipo pode ajudar a sua empresa?

Se olhar para trás consegue identificar 3 ou 4 tendências externas ou eventos que influenciaram o percurso da sua empresa, positiva ou negativamente?

Consegue reconhecer essas tendências externas na figura?

Se sim, OK.

Se não, use-as como base para melhor ajustar a ferramenta à sua realidade. Por exemplo, até que ponto este tropeção está representado na figura? Talvez acrescente ao "Market Analysis" mais um tópico "Customer trends", algo mais concreto que "Needs and demands".

Recordar o "Context Map Canvas"

Figura retirada de "How To Scan Your Business Model Environment For Disruptive Threats And Opportunities"

Indicadores

Para alguém como eu, que aprecia o papel e a utilidade dos indicadores na vida das organizações, eis um artigo interessante, "5 Questions You Must Answer to Measure Your Business Well":

"Regardless of the measurement you need to answer five things about it:
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1. What’s the measurement’s purpose? Know the significance of the metric and what you’ll change in your business based on the numbers you measure.
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2. What data source will you use? Different sources of data can yield different results.
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3. How will you calculate the metric? Define a formula, especially for complex measures.
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4. How frequently will you measure? Measuring takes effort. Be efficient and only measure as frequently as you need to.
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5. Who will review the measure? Define the stakeholders who are going to receive the reports."

Tropeçar e aprender

"Strategy emerges over time as intentions collide with and accommodate a changing reality.
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Emergent strategy is a a realized pattern that was not expressly intended in the original planning of strategy.
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Deliberate strategies provide the organization with a sense of purposeful direction. Emergent strategy implies that organizations are learning what really works."

 Há tempos encontrei uma empresa com um exemplo bem claro desta coisa de tropeçar na realidade e perceber que estava perante uma oportunidade de fazer algo diferente.

Cliente pede um desenvolvimento, empresa faz o desenvolvimento.

Cliente pede produção para esse desenvolvimento, empresa percebe que não tem capacidade de produção para atender a esse pedido e que não está interessada em evoluir para a dimensão que esse cliente impõe.

Empresa percebe que clientes exigentes de grande dimensão recorrem aos seus serviços de concepção e desenvolvimento por causa da sua fama, por causa da sua rapidez e por causa do seu know-how. Empresa percebe que isso pode ser um negócio aparte e independente da produção.

Empresa começa a desenvolver um novo modelo de negócio para certo tipo de clientes-alvo em que a sua proposta de valor gira em torno da qualidade e rapidez do projecto, e já não em torno da produção.

A empresa nunca tinha pensado nesta possibilidade, tropeçou nela e transformou-a numa estratégia deliberada depois de a ter avaliado.

Trecho retirado de "93% of Successful Companies Abandon Their Original Strategy"

Análise do contexto ao vivo e a cores (parte II)

Parte I.

Na semana passada numa empresa, achei interessante o comentário de um trabalhador de uma empresa. Apesar de trabalhar para uma empresa portuguesa, também trabalha em part-time para uma multinacional de muito sucesso.

Qual foi o comentário? Uma desconfiança quanto ao futuro de uma sociedade que não poupa, o que o leva a defender investimentos muito prudentes e a nunca pensar em servir o mercado nacional.

Recordei a conversa quando li "“Nem a moeda única nos salvará de um quarto resgate”, avisa Daniel Bessa".

É sobre estas opiniões que a cláusula 4.1 da ISO 9001:2015 trata, quando se refere às questões externas. A propósito deste webinar ontem realizado, mais de 50% das perguntas que recebi antes e durante o webinar diziam respeito à documentação. A preocupação sobre como é que os auditores vão verificar o cumprimento dos requisitos. Com estes webinars a que acedem pessoas de todo o mundo, percebi que a doença afinal não é portuguesa, é geral: as pessoas acham que só é legal, só é válido o que está escrito na lei. Se não está escrito não deve ser permitido fazer. Se não está escrito, somos livres de fazer o que muito bem entendemos, ponto.

Será que é preciso ter medo de como documentar uma reflexão sobre os factores externos que uma empresa considera relevantes? Se os temas foram discutidos e são relevantes não ficará nada na cabeça de quem os discutiu? E essa discussão não influirá na definição de objectivos e na determinação de riscos e oportunidades?

E apareceu-me agora na cabeça a recordação do texto citado em "Para reflexão" e o título do livro "In an Uncertain World":

"Yet one wonders how long such luck will last. This brings me back to the title of Rubin’s book, his “uncertain world.” In such a world, the vast majority things are outside our control, determined by God or luck. After we have given our best and once the final card is drawn, we should neither become too excited by what we have achieved nor too depressed by what we failed to achieve. We should simply acknowledge the result and move on. Maybe this is the key to a happy life."

Diferentes decisores, perante as mesmas questões externas, terão diferentes opiniões e tomarão diferentes decisões.

Que factores, que temas externos as empresas consideram quando repensam sobre o prazo de validade das suas estratégias, sobre as oportunidades em que tropeçam, sobre as ameaças que julgam perceber no horizonte?

E fico a pensar no dilema do filho de Stephen Covey, e penso em gente mais preocupada em fazer um visto numa checklist de conformidade com a norma do que em reflectir pelo menos uma vez por semestre sobre o ambiente onde a organização está inserida. E isto é demasiado importante ...

Uma testa de ponte

"Mr Galperín is now moving into the banking sector — about half of the region’s 650m population do not have bank accounts. “We have democratised commerce, now we want to democratise money,” he says, humility dissipating.
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Nevertheless, he balks at the suggestion that he is setting out to “disrupt” the banks. “No, no, no,” he protests. “We are not competing with the banks, but targeting the 50 per cent [of people] who have no account, or whose needs are not being met.”"

Acredito que esta postura é a mais adequada para entrar num sector enfrentando menos concorrência aberta, menos resistência e menos "Antrais". Começar pelos que não são clientes de ninguém, começar por quem não está no mercado. Assim, há medida que se vai crescendo, está-se de certa forma longe do radar dos incumbentes, porque não se lhes está a comer quota de mercado.  À medida que a oferta se for adequando aos clientes-alvo, os clientes overservd dos bancos vão começar a repensar a sua lealdade como clientes, e quando os incumbentes acordarem .... vão ter um competidor muito mais forte e com uma lógica de negócio bem diferente.

Trecho retirado de "MercadoLibre’s Marcos Galperín on Latin America’s ecommerce boom"