Foco, foco, foco

Um excelente artigo:

"The consumer banking industry is notoriously difficult to enter, not least because most customers rarely switch banks. In some countries, people change spouses more often than they change banks.
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The banking industry in South Africa was no exception; for decades the industry was dominated by “the Big Four” (Standard, FNB, Nedbank, and Absa). However, in 2000 a new player entered the industry, called Capitec, which started establishing branches rapidly. By 2007 it broke through the barrier of 1 million active customers; 10 years later it had more than 10 million clients and about 800 branches. It has now become the largest bank in the country."

Qual foi o truque?

"“Our strength has always been our focus.” Indeed, Capitec is more focused, in terms of what it does and does not do, than most companies and certainly most banks. It serves individuals only, not companies or trusts. It offers them a single account: Everybody gets a gold card with exactly the same conditions, prices, and services. A customer can do three things with this account: saving, loans, and transactions — and nothing else. The bank serves these customers through a network of highly efficient physical branches. It has always held on to this model and never wavered.
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Companies, and certainly new entrants looking for growth, often find it difficult to resist jumping onto various new sources of revenue. That’s understandable, because if you are looking for growth, any piece of additional revenue seems welcome. Moreover, in advance, you can never be entirely sure that your original market choices will play out and will generate sufficient income by themselves. Hence, when a new potential stream of revenue presents itself, the company’s management feels it cannot afford to just leave it.
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The result of this is, however, that a company ends up doing a variety of things that each might make sense on an individual basis but in combination create costly complexity — not adding up to something that is bigger than the sum of the parts."

Trechos retirados de "How Capitec Became South Africa’s Biggest Bank"

"e somos nós que não dissecámos até ao fundo"

Na maioria das empresas há sempre muita resistência a alguma organização na área do desenvolvimento de produtos.

Recolhem-se alguns requisitos que o cliente explicitou, adivinham-se os restantes e começa-se a trabalhar, rapidamente, para mostrar que não se está parado. Depois, o cliente refere um pormenor do contexto em que o produto vai ser usado, e começam os "entorses", no limite até se deita fora o que se começou e recomeça-se do quase zero.

Ontem numa empresa ouvia pai e filho:

“- Falta sempre alguma coisa. É o cliente que não diz, e somos nós que não dissecámos até ao fundo”

A ISO 9001 bem recomenda alguma organização na recolha das entradas para o desenvolvimento, mas é mais fácil picar o cartão do que ser exigente connosco próprios. Quanto mais exigente no princípio de um projecto maior a probabilidade de não haver surpresas durante o projecto, de cumprir o prazo e ganhar dinheiro.

O mercado é sempre heterogéneo

"When a company takes a more detailed view of its activities, it shines a spotlight on areas that senior management has never before seen clearly. As aggregation and consolidation give way to precision, it becomes easier to identify previously hidden parts of the organization that are performing strongly—as well as those that are not. This can be an uncomfortable experience for senior executives, as it often has profound implications for the organization’s structure, people, and processes.
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A more-precise understanding of company performance and market potential will lead to resource reallocation, both within and across businesses. The goal, of course, is to target pockets of higher market momentum, thus increasing the growth rate for the company as a whole."

O mercado é sempre heterogéneo, e em Mongo essa dispersão está a aumentar!
Cuidado com as generalizações.


Trechos retirados de "Is Your Growth Strategy Flying Blind?"

O que protegerá Portugal dos robôs?

Mensagem e conclusão errada em "O que protege Portugal dos robôs? Os salários".

A ser verdade teríamos aqui uma motivação forte para manter salários baixos.

Recordo as evoluções na Toyota e na Mercedes e postais como:

• Um mesmo processo automatizado é demasiado rígido para Mongo (Abril 2014)
• Mongo e a automatização... pois! (Fevereiro de 2016)
• Cuidado com a automatização (Abril de 2017)

O que protegerá Portugal dos robôs? Modelos de negócio baseados na minúcia, na interacção, na rapidez, na proximidade, na co-criação, na personalização. Ou seja, Mongo.

Sem estado o que seria de nós?

Teríamos milhares de pequenos e grandes exemplos como este "Grupo no Twitter fez durante o Leslie "o que a Proteção Civil devia fazer"".

A Somália não é uma inevitabilidade sem o papá-estado:

Ainda estamos longe da Somália, que tem 365 dias livres de impostos https://t.co/ZZyNkw32AP

— Joao Galamba (@Joaogalamba) June 16, 2018

Influenciar comportamentos

“Who the groups of similar actors are and how they interact with other groups who have different levels and sources of power.
 The real goals these groups have, be they explicit or implicit.
 Their resources, which are not only physical (such as money, equipment) but mental or moral (such as authority or the expectation of mutual support).
 Their constraints (time limits, other demands, limits to power and authority, including the ability to influence others, and problems they face in achieving their goals).
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In order to influence the resulting behavior, managers can change the system either directly (by changing the actors, setting new goals, giving more resources, or removing some constraints) or indirectly (by, for example, changing reporting lines, processes, information, training, and so on),”

Recordar:

• "It’s a human behavior one." (parte II) (Janeiro de 2017)
• BSC vs ISO 9001 (parte VII) (Janeiro de 2016)
• Parte III - Relacionar processos e pessoas (Janeiro de 2009)

Excerto de: Bungay, Stephen. “The Art of Action: Leadership that Closes the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results”. iBooks.

Alterar preços

"2. Changing prices uniformly across your product catalog
Different products or categories have different price elasticities and require different pricing strategies. Demand for some products will change when a competitor changes their price, but not always. Pricing is more complex than that; while competitive pricing is an important component, it’s not the only one.
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Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to match a competitor’s low price and you may even find opportunities to raise prices instead! For example, Amazon does not have the lowest price on everything—they have some loss leader products or categories but make up the margin in other areas."

Trecho retirado de "Six reasons why your retail pricing strategies aren’t working"

Proximidade, interacção e co-criação

"As demands for higher value and creativity are the norm today and the complexity of offerings has grown, we have begun to see that the division of labor has reached its point of diminishing returns. What managers have learnt is that the division of labor always implies a scheme of interaction by which the different divided activities are made to work together. The lines between the boxes are starting to matter more than the boxes! Complex value creation is impossible without interaction. This is because any higher-value activity involves complementary, often parallel, contributions from more than one person or one team. In fact, the more complex the offering is and the more specialized the resources needed, the greater the demand for the amount, quality and efficiency of communication, because of the inherent interdependence of the activities."

 "Complex value creation is impossible without interaction" - recordar a importância da proximidade para a interacção por trás da co-criação:

• "para lidar com tribos aguerridas é preciso proximidade e interacção, co-criação" (2018)
• "A interacção e a necessidade da proximidade para a co-criação requererão empresas mais pequenas e ... "every laptop will be a corporation"" (2017)
• "Não esquecer o aumento da importância da proximidade produção-consumo, por causa da interacção e da co-criação que acabam por exigir rapidez, flexibilidade e customização." (2016)
• "Apostar na rapidez, na flexibilidade, na proximidade, na autenticidade, nas pequenas séries, na customização, na co-criação, na interacção" (2014)

Trecho inicial de "Interactive value creation"

“We should stop trying to make things so mass appealing”

"“If you’re a marketer or a brand representative, or if you’re trying to build a business, you need to understand that we are talking about feelings most of the time,” said Saint John. “And that’s what we in the 21st century modern world need to figure out: how to connect to our consumers through feelings.”
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In fact, Saint John said that feelings are comparably important to business models and strategies as data and statistics. Instead of relying solely on hard numbers and analyses, she recommended the audience to assess how their customers react to their products and services as these reactions are what would resonate with them and ultimately market the brand.
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A feelings-driven brand also has to move away from trying to appease everyone and making it more personal. She recommended treating the business as if it were a person with its own feelings, behaviors and reactions.
“We should stop trying to make things so mass appealing,” said Saint John. “Make them (the customers) connect to someone in a way that if they were your friend, they would understand.”

Na linha de:

• Aproveitar tudo para fugir do lado racional
• "in the future they’ll be about the heart"
• E porque não somos plankton (parte VII)
• "Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XV)
• Plankton?

Trechos retirados de "Feelings, Not Logic: Insights from Bozoma St. John in Digicon 2018"

"Um outro olhar sobre os números das exportações" (parte II)

Estão a ver a superfície de um rio?

Uma suave ondulação eleva uma molécula de água para cima e para baixo incessantemente. De repente, passa um barco no rio e a ondulação aumenta para depois voltar a uma variação incessante, mas menos brusca.

A economia também é assim, com essas constantes subidas e descidas. Em 2013, porque o so-called "jornalismo" estava contra o governo anterior, ou pior, porque era ignorante e não estudava os números, o desempenho das exportações era menosprezado. Por isso, escrevi na altura "Um outro olhar sobre os números das exportações". Os jornalistas desprezavam o desempenho das exportações porque o atribuíam ao combustível e ao ouro.

Agora porque os so-called "jornalistas" têm um governo da sua cor, ou por ignorância, ou por preguiça, olham para as exportações e tecem loas.

Eu vejo o reverso da medalha daquele postal de 2013. Olhem para os números que sigo aqui há anos:

Comparem com os números do passado:

Comparem Parciais I que representavam mais de 50% do total que eu seguia com os Parciais I do mês de Agosto de 2018 (5%).

As exportações de combustíveis e automóveis estão a esconder uma mudança importante, para quem só olha para o número total, para o agregado e, desconhece o granular.

Outros sintomas "Quase 600 empresas fecharam portas em setembro", "Constituição de empresas em Portugal recua 4% para 2.676 em agosto - Informa D&B"

Teoria conspirativa

Estes tweets:

O alojamento local já é amplamente regulado em Portugal. O que vai acontecer é diferente: a limitação da actividade em algumas freguesias de Lisboa. São coisas muito diferentes. https://t.co/Y4JrxPizkU

— Bruno Faria Lopes (@bfarialopes) October 12, 2018

 

Fizeram-me lembrar este trecho de Meses:

"The driving force of the market process is provided neither by the consumers nor by the owners of the means of productions-land, capital goods, and labor-but by the promoting and speculating entrepreneurs . . . Profit-seeking speculation is the driving force of the market as it is the driving force of production."

Uma teoria conspirativa defenderá a tese de que os legisladores estarão ao serviço dos especuladores para criar toda uma variedade de barreiras que geram lucro. Se não houvesse barreiras, o lucro seria muito menor. Os incumbentes esfregarão as mãos com estas alterações legislativas.

There will be surprises!

"At the individual level Austrians have taken sharp exception to the manner in which neoclassical theory has portrayed the individual decision as a mechanical exercise in constrained maximization.
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Such a portrayal robs human choice of its essentially open-ended character, in which imagination and boldness must inevitably play central roles. For neoclassical theory the only way human choice can be rendered analytically tractable, is for it to be modeled as if it were not made in open-ended fashion, as if there was no scope for qualities such as imagination and boldness. Even though standard neoclassical theory certainly deals extensively with decision making under (Knightian) risk, this is entirely consistent with absence of scope for the qualities of imagination and boldness, because such decision making is seen as being made in the context of known probability functions. In the neoclassical world, decision makers know what they are ignorant about. One is never surprised. For Austrians, however, to abstract from these qualities of imagination, boldness, and surprise is to denature human choice entirely."

Como anónimo engenheiro da província, apaixonado pelo mundo do turnaround, sobrevivência e sucesso das empresas, sempre me espantei com o "basicismo" da abordagem económica do mainstream ao mundo da concorrência. Recordo, por exemplo, "muitas vezes escandalizo-me com a forma como os economistas tratam a economia real" o que me leva logo a um clássico deste país: o Senhor dos Perdões. Recordo, por exemplo. Recordar também um clássico de 2010, "Realidade e teoria".

Trecho retirado de "Entrepreneurial Discovery and the Competitive Market Process: An Austrian Approach" de Israel Kirzner, publicado por Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXV (March 1997), pp. 60-85

Riscos e oportunidades (parte II)

Parte I.

“How to Discover OpportunitiesYou may not have a clue whether you have an opportunity or not. You do not know what you do not know. Verifying whether your firm has present strategic problems is relatively easy. You only have to look for performance gaps. Uncovering “present strategic opportunities generally requires more work. Your stakeholders may already have ideas about potential opportunities but you may also have to search for potential sources of new opportunities for your firm.
Although you may know that your firm has a problem, you may only imagine you have an opportunity. An opportunity gap is not about a decline of the realized performance but about an increase of the objective, that is potential performance. ... You cannot measure the opportunity gap right away, like a problem gap. You need to explore the opportunity by starting to investigate its potential sources: Why would there be an opportunity? Potential sources of opportunities are a firm’s strengths and external opportunities. Here you use components of your SWOT analysis. In an opportunity exploration, you may even start with an exploration of your firm’s potential strengths and potential external opportunities.
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“How to Use a SWOT to Discover OpportunitiesHow to use your SWOT to identify opportunities for your firm? You create a two-by-two confrontation map. You map the strengths and weaknesses on one axis against the opportunities and threats on the other. Next you search for matches of internal components (strengths and weaknesses) and external components (opportunities and threats). By pairing internal and external components you create four quadrants in the map. [Moi ici: Recordar a análise TOWS] Two quadrants point to opportunities. The other two quadrants point to potential explanations for problem gaps.
Matches between strengths and opportunities are high-priority opportunities because they offer the biggest upside potential for the firm.
Matches between weaknesses and opportunities are low-priority opportunities because your firm (at present) lacks the potential to seize the opportunities.
Matches between weaknesses and threats are high-priority problems because they present the biggest downward risk for your firm.
Matches between strengths and threats are low-priority problems because your firm has the potential to counter these threats and thus solve these problems.”

Excerto de: Marc Baaij. “Mapping a Winning Strategy”.

O futuro do trabalho em Mongo

Como escrevemos aqui há anos e anos sobre Mongo e o futuro do trabalho: "Detlef Gürtler “A revolução digital vai desconstruir a organização social atual”":

"Comecemos pelas más notícias [Moi ici: Más?]: esta revolução digital irá desconstruir a organização social formada na era industrial. A sociedade como a conhecemos tem sido, em grande parte, uma conquista da primeira revolução industrial."

Título alternativo

Leio o título "Empregadores portugueses são os menos escolarizados da UE" e vem-me logo à cabeça um título alternativo "Mais escolarizados de Portugal são os menos empreendedores da UE".

Generalidades versus granularidade

Via FB do Hélder F. cheguei a esta tabela "Industries with the fastest growing and most rapidly declining output".

Não pude deixar de recordar o que tinha lido durante a caminhada matinal:

"A company formulating its growth strategy needs to develop insights into trends, future growth rates, and market structures at much greater depth than the aggregate industry level. Insights into sub-industries, segments, categories, and micro-markets are the building blocks of portfolio choices. They are indispensable for companies seeking to make the right decisions about where to compete.
...

...
Granularity level G0
The Earth—or, in our context, the global marketplace—is the highest level of aggregation with the least granularity: the ultimate segment of one. The world economy is growing by roughly 6.2 percent a year in nominal terms.
...
Granularity level G1
If we want to investigate why some companies grow at a rate that is faster or slower than about 6 percent, the first step is to divide up the economy. The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) carves it up into 24 broad industry groups ranging from telecommunications services to energy to biotech.
...
Granularity level G2
Frankly, decisions at the G1 level (such as whether to be in telecommunications, energy, or biotech) are not within the ambit of most companies, so we need not dwell on them here. To get to a deeper level of granularity, we can break down the 24 groups into 151 industries by using other readily available GICS statistics. For instance, the “food, beverages, and tobacco” group breaks down into the component industries “food,” “beverages,” and “tobacco.”
...
Granularity level G3
Each industry can then be divided up again both by sub-industry and by market (country or region). Within the food industry, for instance, two examples of sub-industries might include frozen foods or savories, oils, and dressings.
In analyzing companies’ performance we found that it was usually possible to reach the G3 level of granularity by taking the finest level of data that companies report to the markets. Provided we have access to enough information, we can zoom in on individual sub-industries in individual markets: frozen foods in China, say.
...
Granularity level G4
Sometimes it is possible to use proprietary databases and internal company data to dig deeper than the level at which companies normally report. The definition of the G4 level of granularity varies slightly from industry to industry, but, in essence, it’s the level of categories within sub-industries (such as ice cream within frozen foods) or customer segments within a broad product or service category (such as weight-conscious snackers). The G4 level is important: it represents the minimum level of granularity at which companies need to operate when setting growth priorities and making decisions about resource allocation.
...
Granularity level G5
This is a view of the world at the level of individual customers and transactions —the ultimate segment of one, numbering many billions. [Moi ici: Levar ao extremo o B2I (2018 e 2013)]

Trechos retirados de "The Granularity of Growth - How to Identify the Sources of Growth and Drive Enduring Company Performance" the P. Viguerie, S. Smit e M. Baghai 

Teste

Daqui a um ano, a 9 de Outubro de 2019, revisitaremos este postal para tirar dúvidas:

• OCDE: Economia portuguesa dá sinais de aceleração
• FMI vê Portugal a crescer pouco em 2019 e mais desequilibrado
• “Portugal devia ter vergonha de não ser um país de topo mundial”, diz economista dinamarquês Steen Jakobsen

"there are two very different types of optimism"

"The practical insight is that there are two very different types of optimism. Complacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents. Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse. “If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.”
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What the theory of endogenous technological progress supports is conditional optimism, not complacent optimism. Instead of suggesting that we can relax because policy choices don’t matter, it suggests to the contrary that policy choices are even more important than traditional theory suggests."

Faz-me recordar:

"O presidente de uma associação não pode e não deve falar impunemente. Deve ser consequente, deve ser responsável. Não deve mentir mas deve dar esperança. Não esperança cor de rosa, não esperança mágica mas esperança com base nas oportunidades que possam existir." 

Trecho retirado de "Conditional Optimism about Progress and Climate"

Aproveitar tudo para fugir do lado racional

Ontem em conversa com um empresário de Felgueiras, ele falou-me de Nadim Habib, por causa de uma conferência a que assistiu em Coimbra. Tal como eu em 2013, gostou muito e deu por bem empregue o ter levado consigo alguns colaboradores.

Umas mensagens que guardou foi:

• dantes os clientes ou eram ricos ou eram pobres;
• agora nunca sabemos se se vão comportar como pobres (e regatear tudo), ou se se vão comportar como ricos (e não discutir o preço).

Eu acredito que muitas vezes os clientes comportam-se como pobres porque quem vende não os consegue convencer do valor que vão experienciar. Certo que algumas vezes esses clientes ainda estão numa fase de desenvolvimento tal, que não lhes permite experienciar o tal valor em toda a sua extensão. Por isso, faz sentido que regateiem o preço.

Recordei-me desta conversa ao ler este artigo "Olive oil gets a modernist makeover":

"Most olive oil looks like it belongs in your grandma’s kitchen. Brightland makes beautiful bottles, full of pure, hand-crafted oil by California farmers."

Há dias citava esta frase que acreditó sintetiza a transição para Mongo:

“In the past, jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in the future they’ll be about the heart.” 

No mundo do século XX azeite é azeite, deve ser "puro", estar "graduado", e ser entregue numa garrafa económica que permite embalamento rápido e seguro. Tudo pode ser explicado de forma muito racional.

Em Mongo há os que vendem azeite e há os que vendem mais do que azeite. E os que vendem mais do que azeite têm de aproveitar todas as oportunidades para fugirem da classificação racional e entrar no mundo do coração:

"Iyer wanted the bottles to look attractive enough that people would want to display them in their kitchens, rather than hiding them away in the pantry."

Riscos e oportunidades

“We define two kinds of strategic issues (problems and opportunities) [Moi ici: Riscos e oportunidades na linguagem da ISO 9001] in terms of a substantial and structural gap between your firm’s overarching performance objective and its realized performance. A firm’s overarching objective is generally profit, but firms can also aim at objectives related to people and the planet. A strategic problem is a negative development or event that substantially and structurally prevents your firm from achieving its overarching objective, if your firm does not adapt its strategy. For example, the consumer trend to use less sugar reduces the profit of a bottler of sweet soft drinks. A strategic problem negatively affects your firm’s realized performance and hence creates a so-called performance gap between that performance and your firm’s overarching performance objective...
The potential causes of strategic problems are your firm’s weaknesses and/or external threats. We acknowledge that these causes are components of a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. Such analysis can support the exploration of your firm’s present problem but not as a start. You do not start with the causes of present problems but with their consequences: underperformance. For present problems, you begin with measuring the performance gap. But when you need to explain the gap, then you may use the SWOT analysis, in particular, the weaknesses and threats.
...
Besides strategic problems, we distinguish a second type of issue: strategic opportunities. We define a strategic opportunity as a positive development or event that may allow your firm to substantially and structurally raise its overarching performance objective. For example, the development of a new drug is an opportunity for a pharmaceutical company. Such opportunities also create performance gaps: difference between your firm’s old objective and its new, raised objective. Opportunities require new strategies for your firm to realize its raised overarching objective. Whereas problems create performance gaps by reducing your firm’s realized performance, opportunities create gaps by raising your firm’s objective. Both types of issues require exploring a performance gap for developing insights into how best to close your firm’s gap.”

Excerto de: Marc Baaij. “Mapping a Winning Strategy”