Lidar com as restrições (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

A propósito de restrições, às vezes, o problema é a falta de restrições, a falta de foco. Eis um bom exemplo em "The Dolittle effect":

"Why is the new Dolittle movie so bad? Savaged by critics and viewers, it had:

• One of the most bankable movie stars in the world

• A story that had previously been the basis of two hit movies

• The best CGI houses in the world

• Unlimited time and money

I think the best way to understand why it failed is to look at the reasons above. Ironically, it’s these assets and lack of constraints that created the circumstances that allowed the movie to become a turkey."

E o que é a incapacidade de seleccionar um grupo de clientes-alvo senão uma incapacidade de assumir restrições?

Lidar com as restrições (parte II)

Na Parte I escrevemos:

"Quantas vezes só depois de encostadas à parede, só depois de terem perdido tudo, é que as empresas tentam o que parece absurdo, ou o que vai contra a formatação do mainstream e... resulta"

Primeiro este postal de 2014 "Curiosidade do dia" sobre a pêra-rocha em que o embargo russo era vista pelo sector como  um oportunidade. Depois, em 2015 este outro postal "Curiosidade do dia" dava conta da retoma das exportações de pêra-rocha.

Neste postal recente, "Dez anos de exportações - uma perspectiva" vemos que as exportações de fruta cresceram mais de 263%.

Entretanto, ontem li "Exportações de pera rocha sobem para os 90 milhões de euros em 2019":

"As exportações de pera rocha renderam entre janeiro e novembro de 2019 mais 16% em relação a 2018.
...
Nos últimos três anos, o setor da produção da pera rocha investiu 430 mil euros num projeto de promoção da fruta na Alemanha, Brasil, Espanha, França, Reino Unidos, Peru e China.
.
Nesse âmbito, a ANP participou em nove feiras internacionais em Espanha, Alemanha, China e Peru, trouxe 18 jornalistas, chefs e bloggers estrangeiros a visitar a região do Oeste, onde a fruta é produzida, deu a provar a pera em 1.730 voos da companhia aérea TAP com destino a Alemanha, França, Reino Unido e Espanha e efetuou uma campanha publicitária na capital francesa, com 700 mupis colocados de forma estratégica."

Monitoring risks - Frequency

Last Thursday I was asked how often to update the risk assessment and assessment in a quality management system according to ISO 9001: 2015. I gave an answer around this:

"At least annually, but that is not very effective, the more the risk based approach is embedded in the organization’s management system, the more frequently it should be performed. Every day, I see in newspapers external events that can generate risks and opportunities. For example, will this coronavirus crisis have an impact in your own organization? I try to implement the risk-based thinking in all management meetings, at several levels."

In the meantime, I had the opportunity to read an interesting article on risk and supply chains,"Supply chain risk management is back", and I saw the answer to the question from another perspective:

"A systematic classification of risks, and development of a related response strategy, is essential to improve supply-chain resilience strategically—while keeping required investment to a minimum. A simple framework can help by classifying risks on two axes: the vertical estimates to what extent a risk can be anticipated, while the horizontal quantifies the risk’s expected impact.

• “Manageable surprises” are difficult to anticipate but manageable in terms of impact.

• “Black swans” are hard to anticipate and severe in terms of impact.

• “Brewing storms” can be anticipated and will have a high impact once they materialize.

• “Business challenges” are typically low-impact risks that can be both anticipated and managed quite easily."

Each quadrant deserves a different treatment:

"For each of the quadrants, a specific set of response strategies can be developed. A reactive risk-management approach should be taken for risks that are difficult to predict, and a more proactive approach for those with higher predictability.

• Low-impact risks that are hard to anticipate, such as the bankruptcy of an individual supplier or a localized conflict in a country without major operations, can be accepted or avoided to a certain extent by diversifying operations. Systematically implementing a dual-sourcing strategy, through nominating new suppliers or negotiating a second source of supply from the same supplier, help mitigate this risk category.

• High-impact risks that are hard to anticipate, including natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or cyberattacks, can be managed by building strong crisis-management capabilities and resilience throughout the system. A supply-chain risk-management team can introduce a systemic risk-monitoring process which can be enhanced by regular scenario-planning exercises. Through keeping healthy reserves for parts with long recovery times, companies can prevent some supply-chain disruptions. Another way to mitigate risks which are difficult to anticipate is transferring risk to other parties: taking out insurance and introducing risk-related contract language are possible answers.

• Low-impact risks that are relatively easy to anticipate, such as labor disputes, regulatory changes, or changes in customer preferences (for minimal plastic usage or increased product sustainability, for example) can be managed proactively by increasing the robustness of the supply-chain system. The most important single measure, though, is solid training of the workforce to handle everyday risks. Encouraging employees to voice concerns about possible defects and disruptions helps create a general risk awareness as a first step to managing disruptions. IT systems and tools can then help to continuously monitor disruptive trends and events.

• High-impact risks that are relatively easy to anticipate, including Brexit, US–China trade regulations, or decarbonization targets, need the most attention. A systematic review of the supply-chain setup may be advisable. Possible response strategies include redefining the sourcing strategy by, say, raising the share of local suppliers, or revisiting the manufacturing footprint by moving some manufacturing operations out of certain areas. Establishing CKD operations in countries with high import taxes on finished products can be another option. The review of the inventory build-up strategy helps optimize service levels by increasing safety-stock levels for critical components which cannot be sourced from alternative locations. In some cases, preparing for changes in demand can be an appropriate answer."

An idea to improve risk management efficiency is to give different attention depending on the greater or lesser capacity for anticipation and the greater or lesser impact of the risk.

Now, I'm remembering an example from Tom Peters in the book "Re-Imagine" about Dell answer to problems in the supply chain... managing risks wasn't managing risks, it was doing normal business.

Em quem é que eles vão votar?

Ontem ao ler o tweet de resposta:

O Chega irá crescer sobretudo onde havia boas votações do pcp. É transferência directa.

— Gabriel Silva (@GabrielfSilva) January 30, 2020

Fiz logo a ponte para o pensamento que me percorria enquanto lia "Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming – and save the planet".

Lembram-se da série sobre o avanço do partido de Salvini no terreno onde a esquerda operária era forte? Aqui: Curiosidade do dia - comunismo e Chega (parte III).

Leiam o artigo do Guardian, jornal conotado com o Labour, e comecem a pensar nos agricultores ingleses:

"Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life.
...
Research by the thinktank RethinkX suggests that proteins from precision fermentation will be around 10 times cheaper than animal protein by 2035. The result, it says, will be the near-complete collapse of the livestock industry.
...
RethinkX envisages an extremely rapid “death spiral” in the livestock industry.
...
Dairy farming in the United States, it claims, will be “all but bankrupt by 2030”. It believes that the American beef industry’s revenues will fall by 90% by 2035."

Em quem é que eles vão votar?

Lidar com as restrições

Ontem de manhã li duas vezes este artigo "Constraints Don’t Have to Be Constraining"

"The goal of the session was for students to hone their entrepre­neurial instincts by trying to identify opportunities, limited by the $5 they had been given. And in fact, they were very entrepreneurial.
...
But which teams made the most in profit? Those that didn’t use the $5 at all.
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It’s a lesson they are all amazed to learn: Those who come back with the highest profits — one year, a team earned more than $4,000 — are typically the ones who never even use the seed money. The teams that seem to generate the greatest profit are those who look at the resources at their disposal through a completely different lens.
...
“You put me at zero, [and] there is no limit to what I can achieve.”
.
We have a tendency to focus on constraints and to think of them as a kind of adversity. But in fact, constraints can be a form of advantage. When we own our constraints, magical things can happen — and the constraints can become tools to propel us forward.
...
 You see, focusing on the $5 limits the ideas that are possible.
...
Constraints don’t have to be constraining. Those who assumed that they had nothing in start‑up capital did better. They didn’t see the $5 as a crutch, so they focused on the opportunity instead of the con­straint. That freed them up to think about what other assets they did have, and pushed them to look beyond $5 problems to more valuable opportunities. The lesson: If we let others dictate our constraints, then we can’t dictate our own opportunities.
...
Constraints are inevitable, yes. But rather than accepting them, we can discover and pay attention to them. We can recognize their value. In many ways, we need them. When we notice constraints but we don’t let them define our possibilities, we can actually flip them to create an advantage."

Comecemos pelo: “You put me at zero, [and] there is no limit to what I can achieve.”
Há dias ao ler "The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications" de Otto Scharmer o autor recorda o dia em que adolescente saiu da escola antes da hora e chegou a tempo de ver o que restava da casa com 350 anos, onde tinha nascido e vivia, a desaparecer num incêndio. Então, o autor recorda este pensamento:

“As I stood there, taking in the heat of the fire and feeling time slow down, I realized how attached I had been to all the things destroyed by the fire. Everything I thought I was had dissolved. Everything? No, perhaps not everything, for I felt that a tiny element of myself still existed. Somebody was still there, watching all this. Who?
At that moment I realized there was another dimension of myself that I hadn’t previously been aware of, a dimension that related to my future possibilities. At that moment, I felt drawn upward, above my physical body, and began watching the scene from that elevated place. I felt my mind quieting and expanding in a moment of unparalleled clarity. I was not the person I had thought I was. My real self was not attached to all the material possessions smoldering inside the ruins. I suddenly knew that I, my true Self, was still alive! It was this “I” that was the Seer. And this Seer was more alive, more awake, more acutely present than the “I” that I had known before. No longer weighed down by the material possessions the fire had just consumed, with everything gone, I was lighter and free, released to encounter the other part of myself, the part that drew me into the future—into my future—into a world waiting for me to bring it into reality.”

Quantas vezes só depois de encostadas à parede, só depois de terem perdido tudo, é que as empresas tentam o que parece absurdo, ou o que vai contra a formatação do mainstream e... resulta?

 E acerca do: "We have a tendency to focus on constraints and to think of them as a kind of adversity." E o que é assumir uma estratégia senão criar uma restrição para nos beneficiar? Como aprendi com Stephen Covey: Não é o que nos acontece que conta. É o que decidimos fazer com o que nos acontece. Adversidade ou oportunidade não é uma característica do que nos aparece no caminho, mas uma classificação que nós atribuímos.

Por fim, o truque principal: "When we notice constraints but we don’t let them define our possibilities, we can actually flip them to create an advantage."

O futuro do retalho

"Where we find ourselves today is at the end of the beginning of e-commerce. In 2019 a little more than $3 trillion dollars in global retail was transacted online and was largely comprised of the sorts of products that are relatively simple to transact — electronics, airline and event tickets, shoes, and a range of other commodity items. However, the outstanding opportunity is $27 trillion remaining in the global retail economy, including things that are fundamentally more complex purchases.
...
In the future, all but the most convenience-based retailers will begin to use their stores as media to acquire customers and their media platforms as stores to transact sales.
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Put another way, media is now a cost of sales and rent is now a cost of customer acquisition. Retailers that miss or ignore this shift will do so at their peril.
...
Media is not merely becoming the store, it's becoming the ultimate store.
.
Conversely, however, physical stores are going through a very different but corresponding evolution. Brick-and-mortar stores are no longer simply a channel for the distribution of products. They no longer act as the final point in the purchase funnel.
...
Physical stores are becoming a powerful media channel, and very often the first point of contact between brands and consumers. As consumers become increasingly technologically entrenched, they'll crave far more and better physical retail experiences. And so brick-and-mortar spaces will offer retailers and brands the opportunity to draw the consumer into the brand story, deliver a remarkable and immersive brand and product experience, and ultimately galvanize their relationship with consumers.
...
In essence, the unique selling process you create becomes as much of a product as the product itself." 

Trechos retirados de "The future of retail: What 2020 and beyond will bring to the industry"

Aprender com o futuro (parte III)

Parte II e parte I.

Como diz Otto Scharmer, aprender com o futuro à medida que este emerge:

"According to a recent study, two out of ten German companies with more than 100 employees is already using 3D printing and another 23 % are planning to do so. Germany's leading industries, i.e. automotive, mechanical engineering and chemicals, are pioneers in 3D printing.
...
The representative study concludes that 3D printing is one of the most important topics in the German economy. According to the study 19 % of all German companies with more than 100 employees, has already started to use additive manufacturing.
...
According to the Bitkom study, the automotive industry is also a pioneer in 3D printing, with 41 % (22 % in 2017) of companies already using it. Currently, car manufacturers are using additive technologies mainly for prototype and tool making. Trials of additive series production are conducted more frequently.
...
38 % of machine and plant manufacturers are already using 3D printing. In 2017, only 26 % of the companies used this technology. This increase can partly be explained by the possibility of optimizing the functionality of additively manufactured components, such as optimized cooling structures.
...
In the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, 38 % of companies also make use of additive manufacturing - twice as many as in 2017 (19 %)."

Impressionante a velocidade a que a coisa se propaga.

Que considerações estratégicas levam as empresas a usar a impressão 3D?

Pelo menos 3 ou 4 destes motivos parecem-me muito interessantes como meios de aprendizagem acerca do futuro.

Como não fazer a ponte para este postal "Para reflexão" e para "Se eu fosse líder de um adjudicatário, ou de uma entidade executante, e quisesse ter um papel nesse futuro, montaria 3 ou 4, ou 5 ou 10 dessas casas auto-suficientes, e usaria-as como cobaias, para perceber", para aprender com o futuro que está a emergir e desenvolver uma vantagem competitiva.

Trechos iniciais retirados de "3D Printing is One of the Most Important Economic Topics"

Espuma dos dias

"Taxa de desemprego terminou o ano de 2018 estabilizada nos 6,7% da população ativa, indica o INE" (30.01.2019)

"A taxa de desemprego subiu para 6,9% em dezembro de 2019, depois de se ter fixado em 6,7% em novembro, segundo dados divulgados pelo Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE), esta quarta-feira." (29.01.2020)

Já agora:

"O INE revela ainda que a taxa de desemprego dos jovens foi estimada em 19,3% e verificou um acréscimo de 0,6 p.p. em relação ao mês precedente, enquanto “a taxa de desemprego dos adultos foi estimada em 5,9%, o que corresponde a um aumento de 0,1 p.p. relativamente ao mês anterior”.
.
Os dados definitivos relativos a novembro de 2019 mostram que a população desempregada foi de 348,9 mil pessoas, um aumento de 9,8 mil e de 3,6 mil por comparação com novembro de 2018. “Aquele valor representa uma revisão em alta de 0,4% (1,5 mil) da estimativa provisória divulgada há um mês”, acrescenta.
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A estimativa rápida revela que em dezembro de 2019, a população desempregada, cuja estimativa provisória foi de 357,7 mil pessoas, teve um acréscimo de 8,8 mil em relação ao mês anterior e de 4,3% 14,8 mil por comparação com o mês homólogo de 2018."

Fugir da race-to-the-bottom

O amigo @walternatez chamou-me a atenção para este artigo muito interessante:

How millions of French shoppers are rejecting cut-price capitalism https://t.co/wl767AfCZQ cc @ccz1

— walter, lider impopular (@walternatez) January 28, 2020

Há uma frase acerca do leite que já citei aqui muitas vezes:

"Milk is the ultimate low-involvement category, and it shows. Only 10% of the international sample (in Denmark, Germany and Spain the number is less than 5%) would expect the private label version to be of a lesser quality."

Cito-a, embora não a pratique. Há muitos anos que prefiro leite dos Açores.

Outra citação deste blogue é:

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

Como fugir à comoditização? Apostando na diferenciação. Recordo este exemplo francês do leite integral que descrevi no ano passado em "Cambão versus estratégias baseadas nos clientes-alvo".

O artigo conta uma estória sobre como fugir da race-to-the-bottom:

"“Someone said, would I please have a look at milk,” Chabanne said. “So I did. It was an
absolute disaster. Dairy farmers were desperate, losing money on every litre; prices werebeing driven down mercilessly by the big retail groups.”
Chabanne did the arithmetic: a mere eight cents (6.8p) a litre was the difference between
a milk producer going bust (or worse: the suicide rate among French dairy farmers is30% higher than in the general population) and making a decent living. [Moi ici: A distribuição grande consegue este poder negocial porque há produtores muito grandes que conseguem ganhar dinheiro mesmo com preços muito baixos. Recordo o tamanho médio das produções leiteiras em Portugal e na Europa. No texto sobre Portugal escrevi "Explorações com menos de 10 cabeças podem ser rentáveis, não podem é seguir o mesmo modelo de negócio das que praticam a produção à escala industrial."]
...
“The average French consumer buys 50 litres of milk a year,” he said. “That meant that if consumers spent just €4 more on their milk per year, the producer might actually survive. I was convinced people would be prepared to do that.”
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His hunch has proved right. French consumers have bought 123m litres of milk labelled C’est qui le patron?! (Who’s the boss?) since its launch in November 2016, making it the fourth-biggest milk brand in France, outsold only by the most cut-price supermarket-own brands. [Moi ici: Como não recordar o tema da polarização dos mercados]
...
As with all of the cooperative’s products, neither was advertised on TV, promoted instore or pushed by a sales team. [Moi ici: Notável]
...
The basic assumption by supermarkets is that all consumers want competitively priced produce. The cheaper, the better. CQLP might have just rewritten that rule. [Moi ici: Como não recordar a ideia de que quem trabalha prefere trabalhar para uma empresa que dê sentido ao seu esforço. Como não recordar que na língua inglesa "patron", patrono, é também sinónimo de cliente regular. Aquele que patroniza]
...
In just three years, CQLP has won over nearly 11.5 million French consumers – about one in five adults. It has also boosted the incomes of more than 3,000 farmers and manufacturers, all of whom benefit from the pledge emblazoned in big, bold capitals on the brand’s packaging: “This product pays its producer a fair price.”
...
C’est qui le patron?! is “basically about consumers both taking control of what’s on our plates, and supporting producers”, he said. “There will always be people, for all kinds of reasons, for whom price matters most. But there are also more and more who feel maybe slightly guilty when they shop for food – and would like to do better.”"

Lembrei-me da estória dos pêssegos:

"A informação que o gerente me deu não devia estar escondida. A caixa de pêssegos devia ter uma foto do agricultor, um mapa da região onde foram produzidos e uma mensagem pessoal dele para os consumidores.
.
Voltando ao segundo tweet, citado lá em cima, o século XX enterrou-nos no Normalistão, encarcerou-nos num modelo mental em que só o preço conta, e só nos ensinou uma forma de fazer preços: custo mais uma margem.
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No Estranhistão, os actores económicos vão aprender que o preço não tem nada a ver com o custo e tudo a ver com o valor percepcionado pelos clientes-alvo."

Aprender com o futuro (parte II)

 Parte I.

“Understanding process means to understand the making of our social relationships. If you want to change a stakeholder relationship from, say, dysfunctional to helpful, you cannot just order people to do it. You have to intervene further upstream in the process of social reality creation. You have to change the making of that relationship from one mode to another—for example, from reactive to co-creative.
...
Often in organizations you see CEOs and executives who fail to get that. They think they can create behavioral change just by making speeches and pushing tools onto the organization. Tools are important. But they are also overrated because they are so visible. But what is usually underrated is all the stuff that is invisible to the eye—for example, the less visible elements of a good holding space: intention, attention, and the subtle qualities of deep listening. Building a good container means to build a good holding space for a generative social process.
...
And just as the organic farmer depends completely on the living quality of the soil, social pioneers depend on the living quality of the social field. I define social field as the quality of relationships that give rise to patterns of thinking, conversing, and organizing, which in turn produce practical results.
And just as the farmer cannot “drive” a plant to grow faster, a leader or change maker in an organization or a community cannot force practical results. Instead, attention must be focused on improving the quality of the soil. What is the quality of the social soil? It is the quality of relationships among individuals, teams, and institutions that give rise to collective behavior and practical results.
...
For example: the quality of my listening co-shapes how the conversation unfolds. Or, speaking more generally, the quality of results in any social system is a function of the consciousness from which the people in that system operate. Boiled down to three words, the idea can be expressed as form follows consciousness.
...
Listening is probably the most underrated leadership skill. At the heart of most examples of colossal leadership failures—which are in no short supply—leaders are often unable to connect with and make sense of the “VUCA” world around them; that is, a world defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
Listening, however, is not only important to leadership. If you are not a good listener, there is no way that you can develop real mastery in any discipline.
The most consistent feedback we have received from the hundreds of workshops, programs, and innovation journeys we have facilitated is this: Shifting your mode of listening is life-changing. Shifting how you listen, the way you pay attention, sounds like a really small change. But here is the thing: Changing how you listen means that you change how you experience relationships and the world. And if you change that, you change, well, EVERYTHING.”

Ao ler estes trechos vieram-me à memória as imagens que visualizei no Twitter há dias:

In case you missed it, video of the week: Dutch PM checks his bike into a big underground parking place. Attendant (of Kurdish origin) is amazed: “He has to check in and out like a normal person! This is how you run a country. I’m never leaving” pic.twitter.com/49aGdWH2Tx

— Ben Coates (@bencoates1) January 25, 2020

E reli " It is the quality of relationships among individuals, teams, and institutions that give rise to collective behavior and practical results."

Ainda ontem, durante um telefonema, recordei esta estória "Crédito fácil e barato", sem "intention, attention, and the subtle qualities of deep listening" como criar o terreno para uma mudança real?

Trechos retirados de "The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications" de Otto Scharmer.

Demografia e segunda-mão

Ontem ouvi grande parte deste podcast, "Adam Minter on Secondhand" e fiquei admirado com os milhões de dólares envolvidos no negócio dos materiais em segunda-mão. À medida que a onda demográfica avança cada vez mais pessoas optam por mudar para casas mais pequenas e desfazer-se de muitos dos seus bens. Algo semelhante ao que li sobre o que acontece no Japão aos bens dos idosos falecidos. Recordo "Dying Alone in Japan: The Industry Devoted to What’s Left Behind" que referi em "Negócio de futuro".

Entretanto, antes tinha lido "By 2023, the secondhand clothes market will double to $51 billion. Here’s why".

Também recordo:

• Compras em segunda-mão (Março de 2019)
• Estratégia, Economia Circular, Novos Modelos de Negócio (Dezembro de 2019)

E:

• E a demografia? (Junho de 2019)
• Demografia e clientes-alvo (Janeiro de 2020)

Talvez nesta Europa, ainda mais envelhecida que os Estados Unidos, e para onde exportamos tanto do nosso calçado, este factor também seja relevante para se juntar à lista:

• Comoditização da posição baseada na flexibilidade e rapidez;
• Deterioração do actual modelo de negócio baseado nas feiras;
• Envelhecimento dos antigos clientes-alvo.

Aprender com o futuro (parte I)

Depois de ter visto os vídeos apresentados em "Generative Listening" fui em busca da bibliografia de Otto Scharmer e fixei-me em dois títulos:

• Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges
• The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications

O primeiro título tem tudo a ver com as conversas oxigenadoras... e também com o tema do calçado e do têxtil precisarem de uma nova abordagem, para ultrapassarem um modelo que parece que ficou fora do seu prazo de validade. Daí o "leading from the future as it emerges"... o futuro agir como a causa... o retorno ao bom velho Ortega y Gasset "O meu presente não existe senão graças ao meu futuro".

Entretanto, optei pela leitura do "The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications" porque aparece como um resumo das ideias do autor. Ontem de manhã, apesar da chuva, mergulhei numa caminhada e leitura:

“We live in a moment of profound possibility and disruption. A moment that is marked by the dying of an old mindset and logic of organizing. And one that is marked by the rise of a new awareness and way of activating generative social fields. [Moi ici: Mais tarde o autor descreve o significado deste termo] What is dying and disintegrating is a world of Me First, bigger is better, and special interest group-driven decision making that has led us into a state of organized irresponsibility. [Moi ici: Até aqui o bigger is better a levar tareia. A malta que se reúne nos Encontros da Junqueira continua mergulhada no século XX]
What is being born is less clear. It has to do with shifting our consciousness from ego-system to eco-system awareness—an awareness that attends to the well-being of all.  [Moi ici: Tudo acerca dos ecossistemas do negócio e da regra de maximização do bem comum]
...
 [Moi ici: Corro o risco de usar e abusar do exemplo de Zapatero que ainda há dias referi em "O paradoxo dos peritos", mas reparem no trech que se segue] My first insight is quite elemental. There are two different sources of learning: (1) learning by reflecting on the past and (2) learning by sensing and actualizing emerging future possibilities.
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All traditional organizational learning methods operate with the same learning model: learning by reflecting on past experiences. But then I saw time and again that in real organizations most leaders face challenges that cannot be responded to just by reflecting on the past. Sometimes past experiences are not particularly helpful. Sometimes they are the very obstacles that keep a team from looking at a situation with fresh eyes.
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In other words, learning from the past is necessary but not sufficient. All disruptive challenges require us to go further. They require us to slow down, stop, sense the bigger driving forces of change, let go of the past and let come the future that wants to emerge.
But what does it take to learn from the emerging future? When I started to ask this question, many people looked at me with a blank stare: “Learning from the future? What are you talking about?” Many told me it was a wrongheaded question.
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Yet it was that very question that has organized my research journey for more than two decades. What sets us apart as human beings is that we can connect to the emerging future. That is who we are.   We can break the patterns of the past and create new patterns at scale.
...
Let me say this in different words. We have the gift to engage with two very different qualities and streams of time. One of them is a quality of the present moment that is basically an extension of the past. The present moment is shaped by what has been. The second is a quality of the present moment that functions as a gateway to a field of future possibilities. The present moment is shaped by what is wanting to emerge. [Moi ici: Ah! Ortega y Gasset] That quality of time, if connected to, operates from presencing the highest future potential. The word presencing blends “sensing” with “presence.” It means to sense and actualize one’s highest future potential. Whenever we deal with disruption, it is this second stream of time that matters most. Because without that connection we tend to end up as victims rather than co-shapers of disruption.”

Lembram-se de Boyd e da rapidez? Quando não se conhece o futuro, quando se procura aprender com o futuro que está a emergir, a rapidez é fundamental, e as organizações são tanto mais rápidas quanto mais colaborativa for a aprendizagem de todos e por todos. Não chega o líder iluminado.

Continua.

Generative Listening

Depois de escrever o último postal, "Start moving in some general direction", fiquei a matutar no postal de 2007, "Liderança = energia + movimento":

"The plan (or map) will not of itself actually tell them the route to take: the job of the leader in this situation is one of instilling some confidence in people to start them moving in some general direction, and to be sure that they look closely at cues created by their action, so that they learn where they are and where they want to be. When there is uncertainty or, more properly, equivocality in the environment, intelligent choices may be difficult; such situations put a premium on the robustness of the adaptive procedures rather than of the "map", the strategy or the organization."

Depois, fui ver um filme que o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras me mandou. Gostei tanto dele que ainda fui à procura de outro:

"Start moving in some general direction"

Em 2014 desenhei esta figura para o postal "3 momentos na evolução do sector do calçado"

Sábado ao ler "Technology Reemergence: Creating New Value for Old Technologies in Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970-2008" de Ryan Raffaelli, publicado por Administrative Science Quarterly 1–43 (2018) encontrei este outro gráfico:

A introdução merece ser aqui registada por incluir tópicos queridos a este blogue:

"This article uses a study of the Swiss mechanical watch industry to build theory about how a legacy technology, instead of being supplanted by a new dominant design as current theory would predict, is able to reemerge and achieve new market growth. The introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch in the 1970s made mechanical watches largely obsolete, but by 2008 the Swiss mechanical watchmaking industry had rematerialized to become the world’s leading exporter (in monetary value) of watches.
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Watchmakers redefined and combined values of craftsmanship, luxury, and precision to create new meanings and values for mechanical watch technology; repositioned the mechanical watch as an identity and status marker; temporally distanced themselves from the period of the discontinuous quartz technology by recalling their founding and more successful past and connecting it to the future; and used conceptual bridges such as analogies and metaphors to help employees and consumers understand the new meanings. They redefined market boundaries by reclaiming the competitive set, rebuilding the community of mechanical watchmakers, and mobilizing groups of enthusiast consumers who valued the mechanical watch. For mechanical watchmakers, reemergence culminated in competitive and consumer differentiation that ushered in reinvestment in innovation and substantive and sustained demand growth for the legacy technology."

E recordo uma frase citada aqui no blogue pela primeira vez em 2013:

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable" 

"Schumpeter (1934) argued that the forces of creative destruction overturn existing market structures and force the dismantling of old technologies, as well as their applications in products, processes, and practices. For decades, scholars have linked industry evolution to technology cycles in which a dominant technology is displaced by a new one that initiates a new regime. Prevailing theory emphasizes technological displacement, assuming that older technologies disappear when newer ones arrive: ‘‘The dying technology provides the compost, which allows its own seeds, its own variants, to grow and thrive’’.
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Yet displacement is not inevitable. Market demand for some legacy technologies—products such as sailing ships, vinyl records, fountain pens, and streetcars—declined and then reemerged. This study examines the possibility that demand for some legacy technologies may not die away but persist in a generative form that permits sizeable market expansion. Existing scholarship, however, leaves little room for a legacy technology in a field or industry to reemerge. [Moi ici: Como não recordar a tríade]
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this paper examines how a legacy technology, and the organizations and community that support it, achieves substantive and sustained market growth following the introduction of a new dominant design."

O artigo merece mais uns comentários, mas para já voltemos ao calçado e à situação actual. Quer pela comoditização da sua posição baseada na flexibilidade e rapidez, quer pela deterioração do actual modelo de negócio, as empresas precisam de voltar a fazer como os soldados com o mapa falso, meter os pés ao caminho, e descobrir/construir o caminho.

Give me a break!

Custa-me escrever este tipo de artigo em que digo mal de quem pede a baixa de impostos, mas tem de ser.

No postal "I wonder..." que escrevi em Julho de 2008 criticava um hotel de 5 estrelas que cobrava 449€ por noite e que tinha uma promoção em que pagava as portagens de auto-estrada aos clientes. Criticava esse hotel por não conhecer os seus clientes-alvo. Em Janeiro de 2012 dava um exemplo de um outro hotel com uma outra abordagem, muito mais adequada aos seus clientes-alvo.

Ontem à noite li este artigo "IVA no golfe mais baixo pode atrair mais turistas para Portugal". Uma pessoa lê estes artigos e pensa:

- Esta gente é parva? Não, esta gente quer fazer de nós parvos!!!

Ora vejamos, comparem o início e o final do parágrafo:

"Os praticantes de golfe são dos turistas que gastam mais nos países por onde passam e a atividade desportiva ajuda também a combater um dos desafios que o turismo em Portugal enfrenta: a sazonalidade. Mas, neste campeonato, Portugal – que tem mais de 90 campos de golfe – não joga em pé de igualdade: “Há países que têm um IVA mais baixo para o golfe, como Países Baixos, Suécia e Polónia. É uma atividade em que os países concorrem uns com os outros; tens de concorrer com Espanha, Turquia e outros. A diferença na taxa do IVA entre as várias geografias faz uma grande diferença no preço”

E mais à frente:

"Portugal foi eleito em 2018, pela quinta vez, o melhor destino de golfe do mundo. O Algarve – onde estão localizados perto de metade dos campos – é o melhor destino do mundo para este desporto em 2020"

E ainda:

"Estes jogadores “ficam talvez por uma semana, em bons hotéis e gastam dinheiro em alimentação e museus. Os golfistas são dos turistas que gastam mais em termos mundiais. É por isso que a indústria do golfe é tão interessante. Os espanhóis entenderam isso muito bem, fazendo pacotes combinados para darem um IVA mais baixo. Talvez fosse uma boa ideia para Portugal”, diz Klootwijk" 

O senhor Lodewijk Klootwijk, secretário-geral da Golf Course Association of Europe (GCAE), não é obrigado a saber, mas ao menos a associação podia ter algum apoio de assessoria em estratégia.

Dois tópicos: Quem são os clientes-alvo do turismo de golfe em Portugal? Qual o posicionamento do golfe de Portugal?

Vamos aos clientes-alvo:

• Acham mesmo que um cliente-alvo que escolhe bons hotéis e gasta muito está preocupado com o IVA?
• Acham mesmo que o melhor destino de golfe do mundo tem de ter um IVA baixo para captar turistas ricos?

Acham que o turista que faz golfe na Holanda escolhe a Holanda por ter um IVA mais baixo? Acham que o turista que faz golfe na Holanda em Janeiro e o que faz golfe em Portugal em Janeiro usam o IVA como critério?

Give me a break.

Costumo dizer que os maiores inimigos do liberalismo são alguns liberais, pedem coisas que não só são impossíveis no imediato como metem medo aos não liberais, e o que devia ser um processo evolutivo acaba por nunca acontecer. Também posso dizer que os maiores inimigos da descida dos impostos são os argumentos usados pelos defensores das descidas de impostos.

Pedofilia empresarial de topo

Lembram-se disto:

Agora atentem nisto, retirado do artigo "As AppleMorphs, A Cost-Cutter Rises" publicado a 24 de Janeiro último no Wall Street Journal:

"To understand Apple Inc.'s evolving place in the tech world, consider that one of its most important executives today is a guy whose job is badgering suppliers to get costs down.
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Tony Blevins, vice president of procurement, will stop at little to get a favorable deal. He has paraded manufacturers past competitors in Apple's lobby and spurned a UPS contract by sending it back to UPS executives through FedEx. He persuaded subcontractors not to pay a chip maker that Apple was in litigation with, depriving the chip company of $8 billion, according to court documents and people who recall the case."

Isto é pedofilia empresarial de topo.

PME cuidado com a pedofilia empresarial quando lidam com uma empresa muito maior.

Isto não augura nada de bom. Quando o momento chegar, muitas facas sairão debaixo das túnicas...

Quanto mais esta cultura ascender na hierarquia, menos espaço haverá para os criativos na hierarquia. É assim que começa o hollowing, que acaba em carcaças ocas de aristocratas arruinados.

Fugir do plancton

Ao longo dos anos tenho seguido notícias sobre a Procter & Gamble. Por exemplo, em Agosto de 2014 escrevi aqui "Porque não somos plankton...". Uma corporação que ao longo dos anos se tem livrado de muitas marcas.

Acerca deste tipo de empresas, tenho escrito sobre a suckiness dos gigantes.

Por isso, foi com interesse que li este artigo no Wall Street Journal de ontem, "P&G Continues to Ride the Shift to Premium Products":

"“We’re looking, as we innovate, to be able to modestly [increase] price and still build value,” he said. “These results required us to overcome several challenges,” he said, citing global economic and political volatility and intensifying competition.
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P&G’s turnaround has been driven by higher prices, new products and a leaner portfolio of brands. The company has shed mass-market beauty brands and led the industry in a move to raise prices to offset commodity costs and fatten profit margins."

Muito interessante e significativo perceber que um gigante deste calibre descobriu o poder da subida de preços, o Evangelho do Valor.

Gente não fragilista

No Jornal de Negócios do passado dia 23 de Janeiro no artigo "Jesus salvou têxtil, ficou sem a Zara e ganhou Boss e Hilfiger" sublinhei:

"A Círculos & Contrastes, que acabou por falir, tinha um único cliente, a gigante espanhola Inditex, cuja confiança teve de ser reganhada pela nova Tamanho e Tantos. “Tivemos de começar tudo do zero com a Inditex, da qual continuamos completamente dependentes”, lembrou Jesus, que divide a meias o capital da empresa com o seu “sócio e amigo” José Teixeira.
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Entretanto, a líder mundial de venda de roupa a retalho começa a desviar massivamente encomendas para fornecedores mais baratos. “A Inditex, que começou a abandonar Portugal, podia sair a qualquer momento, pelo que começamos a fazer o desmame e a arranjar novas soluções”, recordou o co-CEO da empresa.”

Um bom exemplo. Uma equipa de gestão que não se iludiu com o presente e preparou o futuro. Algo que me fez recordar:

“For the unprepared organisation, periods of significant transition are typically marked by confusion (‘What’s happening?’), uncertainty (‘What should we do?’) and reprisals (‘Who’s to blame?’). Caught by surprise, managers tend to react with hasty, inadequate responses that merely demonstrate their misreading of the situation, or else they are struck by strategic inertia, frozen by their inability to fully comprehend what is happening.”

Só revelam que não são fragilistas, que não acreditam que os astros se vão alinhar para que tudo corra bem. Gente que avalia os riscos do contexto

1. Factor externo negativo - Desinvestimento da Inditex em Portugal
2. Factor interno negativo - Dependência importante da Inditex
3. Risco - Perca de um volume importante de vendas e a sobrevivência da empresa

e aje em conformidade.

Trecho retirado de “Rethinking Strategy” de Steve Tighe.

Uma transformação

"Two decades ago, we sought knowledge by laboriously searching in bulky paper-based encyclopedias or dusty journals in libraries; today we have knowledge on-line at our fingertips at the tap of an app.
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Two decades ago, a car was a metal machine with a couple of electric controls: today, a car is a multifunctional entertainment center on wheels, with which we can even hold conversations.
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Two decades ago, a telephone was a mechanical contraption attached by wire to a physical system: now, a telephone is a handheld multifunction device that connects us to the world and serves an infinite array of complex purposes.
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Two decades ago, an office was a physical building that contained people and machines: now, an office is a software network with people scattered around the planet interacting with it."

E em que medida é que as ofertas da sua empresa se transformaram? Em que medida deixaram de vender substantivos e passaram a vender resultados na vida dos clientes?


Trecho retirado de "How Software Developers Sparked Management Transformation"

Coragem!

"When Jobs was brought back to Apple in 1997, the company was struggling. It only turned a corner when he axed 70% of the "pretty good" projects to focus on the 30% that were incredible.​
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What he did next took real guts.
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Greatness Lies in the 30%
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Regarding the "pretty good" 70%, Jobs continued to say in the interview that "we've pared a lot of that back, so we could focus the same amount of original resource even more on what was remaining -- and add a few new things in."
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In case you're confused, he axed 70% of Apple's projects because he knew that "pretty good" is the enemy of great. With 100% of the former budget for innovation going toward the 30% of "incredibly good" projects, those initiatives could reach their full potential instead of being dragged down by the weight of the "pretty good" ones."

É preciso coragem!!! Não querer estar em todo o lado. Dá um sentido concreto à lição de que o contrário de uma estratégia não é uma estratégia estúpida, é simplesmente uma outra alternativa.

E a sua empresa, quer ir a todas?

Trecho retirado de "Steve Job Used This Simple Rule of Success to Reinvent Apple When the Company Was on the Ropes"