"With functions, the how-to-win question is more challenging. It’s not always easy to figure out the relative value to a firm of any given function. Although Verizon can probably do a good job of estimating the value provided by its network function versus T-Mobile’s network function, it would most likely have a harder time differentiating between the relative values of the two firms’ HR or finance functions. What’s more, one company’s functions aren’t really competing directly with other companies’ functions in the same industry. That’s because the competing firms may have very different strategies, requiring different capabilities. HR might be hugely valuable for one company, whereas finance is hugely valuable for another. The HR function at the HR-driven company would not want to benchmark HR at the finance-driven company. Functions should compare themselves with functions in other companies only if the companies’ strategies are similar. Likewise, it would make no sense for HR and finance to benchmark each other. Often, the appropriate benchmark is an outsourced provider.Trecho retirado de "The One Thing You Need to Know About Managing Functions"
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The functional team should emerge from its inquiries with a number of possible strategies that answer the questions of where to play and how to win differently from the way the existing strategy does. At this point, the team has to make a choice. It cannot know for sure which of several potential strategies is the right one. But with the slate of possibilities in mind, functional leaders should ask themselves, What would have to be true for each of the strategies to be successful? They should articulate the capabilities and systems required and ask under what conditions the firm should invest in building these capabilities rather than those. With a clear idea of what the enabling conditions are, they can devise tests and experiments to help narrow their options still further."
"Apesar da procura nos mercados internacionais não ser muito dinâmica, as exportações de bens e serviços apresentaram um crescimento homólogo de 3,4%, e continuam a demonstrar a capacidade das empresas portuguesas ganharem quotas de mercado nos principais destinos das exportações portuguesas: Espanha, Alemanha, França e Reino Unido"Alguém foi aos números do INE e sacou aquele 3,4% para poder escorar a afirmação seguinte "demonstrar a capacidade das empresas portuguesas".
"Hoje, o made in Portugal é um importante ativo concorrencial."Todos os dias vejo exemplos do que está a ser feito para dar cabo desse activo. Ainda ontem li esta aberração louca "Empresa espanhola arrasou ponte e villa romanas em Beja para plantar amendoeiras" e recordei o que se está a esvair ao copiar o modelo canceroso espanhol: "Todos vão perder".
"A transformação digital da economia, que motivou o lançamento do Programa Indústria 4.0, cada vez mais presente na economia mundial, irá ser decisiva para alinhar as tendências do mercado com a oferta de produtos, ajustando os mecanismos de produção (aumentando a automatização dos processos, substituindo tarefas com valor reduzido, exigindo novas competências e mais qualificações aos trabalhadores) e estimulando novos modelos de negócio."Relacionar o impacte da Indústria 4.0 na economia portuguesa é ainda mais caricato que esperar que os migrantes resolvam o problema de falta de mão-de-obra em Portugal. BTW, recordar que os macacos não voam.
"Hoje, com taxas de desemprego baixas e uma perspetiva de evolução demográfica difícil, a sustentabilidade do crescimento tem na produtividade um eixo central."Não sei se estou a ser pessimista, realista ... ou optimista, ao acreditar cinicamente nas palavras de Maliranta e Taleb. Nas últimas semanas tive oportunidade de contactar várias empresas pressionadas por um importante cliente para mudar de paradigma de trabalho, e esta reflexão não me sai da cabeça: Quanto tempo?
"… people do not buy products but meanings. People use things for profound emotional, psychological and sociocultural reasons as well as utilitarian ones.Trechos retirados de "People don't buy products. People buy meanings"
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That perspective marks a clear path to innovation management. If people use products or objects due to emotional, psychological and sociocultural motivations, among other reasons, then companies have to look beyond features and performance and embrace the true meanings given to products by users.
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As clear as it is, this path isn’t easy to walk. Meanings are not something we can control or plan for without realizing what their true source is:
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Meanings result from cultural context, social environment, habits, norms and associations.
Meanings can’t be inspired or created without including these subtle contexts."
“Ive had always noticed Jobs’s ability to maintain a laser focus on the task where his attention would make the most difference. One day Ive told Jobs he admired that, and admitted it was something he himself struggled with. Evidently, this became one of the people-development problems Jobs then decided to prioritize. In their daily encounters, Ive said, Jobs “would try to help me improve my focus by asking me, ‘How many times did you say no today?’””Ao final do dia numa caminhada li "The One Thing You Need to Know About Managing Functions" onde encontrei:
“Where should we start?” asked Stephen. Recently appointed head of innovation at a large, diversified apparel company, Stephen had been tasked with building a culture of innovation across a pretty traditional, operations-focused set of brands. So, at the end of an innovation workshop we led for him, he asked us for advice on the smartest place to get started.
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Our answer? With strategy. Begin by thoughtfully articulating the critical choices facing the innovation function. This, we said, would help his team understand where it was headed and how it would get there. He rolled his eyes. “We don’t need a strategy for our team,” he said. “The brands love us. They know they need us. Creating a strategy would be a waste of time—and we’re overwhelmed as it is. In fact, we have more work than we can handle.”
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And there it was: the very best reason to start with strategy. Stephen’s team had more work than it could possibly do. He was trying his best to serve the company and was struggling to keep up. Inevitably, work was falling through the cracks as his team tried to do everything for everyone. By denying that he needed to make strategic choices as the head of a function—about how his team allocated resources, what it prioritized, what it ignored—Stephen was in fact making a choice. He was choosing not to choose. And as a result, his team was failing to achieve much at all."
“The choice of strategy should drive the future evolution of the business.
In Figure 4.10 the strategy choice orients the system towards the needs of specific customers. These needs then drive the required products that best meet those needs. On the right of the figure, we have the three value processes of sourcing, operations and selling. The capabilities required across these value processes are driven by the products we need to meet the needs of the target customers. The three value processes are enabled (or sometimes constrained) by the structures, systems and culture of the business. Capabilities have value only insofar as they are able to deliver customer-perceived use value (PUV) efficiently. And, in turn, the existing structure, systems and culture are only of any value where they enable the three core processes to deliver customer PUV”Tudo começa pela escolha dos clientes-alvo.
"Não é o que nos acontece que conta, é o que nós decidimos fazer com o que nos acontece."De manhã li "The Doris Day effect – when obstacles help us" e sublinhei:
"Was the car accident that redirected her career an extraordinary twist in the story of an extraordinary life? Or was it typical of some broader truth about life, that frustrations can actually help us? Perhaps it is true that what does not kill us makes us stronger.Junto tudo isto e penso na loucura do Brexit...
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Often failure is simply failure, and a setback is exactly what it seems. But sometimes the obstacle that has been placed in our path might provoke us to look around, and perhaps to discover that a better route was there all along."
"As empresas continuam a investir e a desenvolver novos produtos, mas quando se fala do futuro há uma nuvem de incerteza no ar. "2019 está a revelar-se um ano complicado. Há muita volatilidade e sentimos que há desaceleração" ... "Esta tudo muito instável. A prioridade, agora, é estabilizar o negócio e ver como evolui o mercado'
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Ver as exportações fecharem o primeiro trimestre com uma quebra de 0,9% veio confirmar que o cenário está a mudar. "E esta mudança pode ser estrutural ... "as novas gerações trazem novos hábitos. Gastam mais inteiro, mas dão prioridade a coisas tecnológicas, viagens, espetáculos". "Não se trata apenas de transferência do retalho fisico para o e-commerce, porque o somatório das duas frentes também revela uma quebra", comenta. .Depois há o impacto da desvalorização superiora a 40% da lira turca num ano a aumentar a concorrência da Turquia, que tem uma união aduaneira com União Europeia, está geograficamente próxima e conquistou encomendas de marcas como a Inditex (dona da Zara), o maior cliente dos têxteis nacionais." [Moi ici: Quantas empresas têxteis com um sistema da qualidade determinaram estas questões externas e incorporaram-nas na sua revisão do sistema? E falta a acrescentar o Brexit, a guerra comercial dos EUA com a China, e ...]
"neste momento, tudo é muito incerto no mercado internacional", mas a resposta passará sempre por investimento em inovação e tecnologia, design, serviço, logística."Para mim a resposta passa primeiro pela reflexão que leva à escolha dos clientes-alvo, só depois vem o resto:
"Precisamos de muito trabalho de gestão nas empresas. Precisamos de rigor, de foco nos clientes e de foco nos produtos. Mas o caminho continua a ser aquele que já estava definido: inovação e tecnologia, serviço, valor acrescentado, produtos técnicos, atenção aos nichos de mercado, aproximação ao cliente, parcerias. Sabemos que este é um caminho de sentido único, sem retorno. A nosso favor temos o conhecimento e a experiência adquirida e temos um cluster têxtil único na Europa na forma como trabalha toda a fileira. E a isso podemos juntar o esforço das empresas nacionais para diversificarem mercados e conquistarem novos clientes."
"Let’s turn to the numbers. Usually, slightly more than 20% of the value of goods Americans buy from abroad are made in China. But in the first four months of this year, China’s share slipped by more than two percentage points. (The value of total US imports barely budged.)Temperar isto com a estória do banhista gordo, esta evolução vai dar origem a consequências oblíquas, consequências não lineares.
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So what countries are stepping in to fill the void? Mexico and Vietnam have benefited the most, followed by South Korea and Taiwan, according to data from the International Trade Commission.
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That said, signs of a more permanent supply chain rejiggering abound. Foreign investment in Vietnam and Thailand has surged since the beginning of this year, notes SocGen. Foxconn, which supplies Apple, is now gearing up iPhone X production in India. More recently, the company made moves to start producing in Vietnam, joining a slew of other smartphone accessory makers and suppliers.
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The backstory, however, is important here. In many cases, the trade war isn’t so much triggering a China manufacturing exodus as it is accelerating a shift in supply chains that was already well underway. China’s working-age population began shrinking back in 2012. Wages are now nearing levels in advanced economies. And low-wage workers are getting harder to find—let alone retain.
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The suddenness of the factory flight out of China might make it sound like ditching the country is a no-brainer. But for smaller companies that lack Samsung’s clout with suppliers, it’s not. Having spent years nestling their businesses around China’s rich supply chain, these firms can find themselves facing painful tradeoffs."
"Systems with slack are more resilient. The few extra minutes of time aren’t wasted, the same way that a bike helmet isn’t wasted if you don’t have a crash today. That buffer will save the day, sooner or later.
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The mistake happens when we over-index on the easily measured short-term wins and forget to account for the costs of system failure.
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Competitive environments push profit seekers to reduce slack and to play a short-term game. If your organization hits the wall, the market will survive, because we have other options. But that doesn’t mean you will survive.
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Slack is actually a bargain."
Eheh os mesmos q andam em erecção psicológica com a Web Summit em Lx são os mesmos q estão contra a gentrificação de Lx. Definam-se— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) October 6, 2015
De cada vez q fazem uma web summit com esta temperatura a 2 h de Paris o q é q julgam q acontce? https://t.co/7GmMmhXOhD— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) October 30, 2017
Sabem o que acontece às empresas que aumentam os salários para lá do aumento da produtividade? Não têm futuro, fecham!confesso que esta evolução demográfica https://t.co/60ZehA3JGW e o fim da China como fábrica do mundo, já me puseram a namorar esta ideia https://t.co/Kl3ri4hXJc de q em certas zonas do país o SMN já está a prejudicar os trabalhadores. Sem SMN ganhariam mais— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) January 10, 2018
"It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Por fim, Maliranta confirmado por Nassim Taleb:
Mas, e como isto é profundo:
"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants."
"Systems don’t learn because people learn individually – that’s the myth of modernity. Systems learn at the collective level by the mechanism of selection: by eliminating those elements that reduce the fitness of the whole, provided these have skin in the game"Recordar esta "Especulação perigosa" de Novembro último.
— Nuno Fernandes (@NunoCascata) June 14, 2019
"Although there are billions of people in the world, it’s always tempting to believe your existence is unprecedented in some way.
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A few months ago, Prose, a start-up that offers personalized, custom-blended hair-care products based on customers’ responses to a lengthy survey, wore me down with an alluring marketing tactic: beautiful Instagram ads indulging the idea that what’s going on on my head might be too unique for whatever Sephora has to offer. If I told the company my long list of petty hair complaints, perhaps I’d never again have to stand in front of a wall of indistinguishable products, trying to guess which one might be my holy grail.
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The personalized shampoo, conditioner, and hair mask came in simple containers that evinced a distinctly Millennial sense of understated luxury. Each had my name on the label. I wasn’t just going to wash my hair, I told myself. I was going to outsmart it.
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Now, aided by advances in manufacturing and the direct-to-consumer nature of online shopping, personalization has become the hot new thing at much more accessible prices. That’s especially true in the wellness industry, where Prose is one of a slew of new companies offering everything from custom-blended face creams to individualized vitamin cocktails. Together, these brands have attracted millions of shoppers (and millions of dollars in venture-capital funding) by tapping into something powerful: the idea that we’re all fancy and special enough to have something made just for us.
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the current crop of companies offering personalization might end up too successful for their own good: “The problem is that when it works, competitors do it.” It’s not hard to imagine a near future in which upstarts and big brands alike will let you have it your way with a custom cocktail of nutrients or a special face serum all your own, as long as you’re willing to tell them everything about yourself."
“Overcoming myopia begins with situating the organisation and its transactional environment within the broader context of society. Such a perspective recognises the deeper causal relationships that enable and drive industry dynamics and outcomes. Understanding what these causal relationships are, how they might change and how they could affect future operating dynamics is the essence of scenario planning.
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The transactional environment is the arena in which the organisation participates, where the perceived value or benefits it creates are exchanged to satisfy perceived wants and needs. The organisation has an immediate relationship with this environment. The actions of industry stakeholders can have a direct influence on the organisation; and through its policies and actions, the organisation can exert direct influence on industry outcomes. Actors within this environment include customers, employees, distributors, suppliers, regulators, competitors, unions and other relevant participants
The dynamics of the transactional environment are invariably enabled or driven by factors beyond the industry’s boundaries. Within this broader social environment are the deeper, less obvious factors influencing industry dynamics, including demographics, social values, technology, climate, legislation, employment levels and interest rates.
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Together these factors evolve, interact and combine to provide a shifting and dynamic context for the organisation’s operations. At any given time, a unique mix of factors is interacting to produce a particular operating context. And as changes occur across each of these factors, this mix changes, shaping the attitudes, behaviours, wants and needs of society, and ultimately influencing the benefits customers seek from your business
This shifting contextual dynamic serves up a series of ongoing strategic fitness tests where the corporate challenge is to remain in alignment with the environment. Such volatility highlights the folly of strategic inertia or, worse, managerial hubris, a point well made by Theodore Levitt in his classic article ‘Marketing Myopia’. ‘In truth, there is no such thing as a growth industry,’ he argued. ‘There are only companies organized and operated to create and capitalize on growth opportunities. Industries that assume themselves to be riding some automatic growth escalator invariably descend into stagnation.’[Moi ici: Lembra-se da malta que espera a boleia da maré?]
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By instead adopting a contextual outlook, historical trends, and the forecasts based on these trends, are put into perspective. You are able to look at your historical performance, not from the position of absolute outcomes and trends, but from the deeper perspective of underlying drivers and conditions that led to those outcomes. The result is an appreciation for society’s fluency and a broader outlook towards the future.”
