"The alternative is to be idiosyncratic, specific and worth the effort and expense"

Um grande postal de Seth Godin!!! Mesmo na mouche!!! Há tempos tive um diálogo parecido com o tema do postal. Uma organização encomendou-me um texto para o seu site, deu-me o tema, deu-me uma lista de palavras-chave a usar para optimizar a pesquisa SEO e deu-me um número de palavras a atingir.

Indiferente, escrevi o meu texto. Depois, começaram-me a chatear com as palavras-chave que tinham de ser repetidas e que não tinha atingido o target de  número de palavras. a partir daí senti-me que entrava no reino do plástico artificial.

"It’s tempting to race to the bottom. The problem is that you might win, and then you’ll have to stay there. Worse, you might try and come in second, accomplishing not much of anything.

Linkbait is a trap, because it brings you attention you actually don’t want.

The alternative is to be idiosyncratic, specific and worth the effort and expense. What would happen if you made something important, breathtaking or wonderful? The race to the top is not only more satisfying, it’s also more likely to work.

And then you get to live there. Doing work you’re proud of, without excuses."

Trecho retirado de "More popular (and cheap, too)" 

Servir quem?

Um excelente conselho de Seth Godin. Como é que a sua empresa o pode  pôr em prática?

"Choose Your Clients, Choose Your Future

The masses aren’t the point. They might be a welcome side effect of your work, but to please the masses, you must pander to average.

Because mass means average.

When we decide that the change we seek to make is dependent on mass popularity, when we chase a hit, we end up sacrificing our point of view. 

On average, every population is dull. The slide toward average sands off all the interesting edges, destroying energy, interest, and possibility.

What’s the difference between Chip Kidd, the extraordinarily successful book cover designer, and someone with the same tools and skills that Chip has?

Chip has better clients.

Better clients demand better work. Better clients want you to push the envelope, win awards, and challenge their expectations. Better clients pay on time. Better clients talk about you and your work.

But finding better clients isn’t easy, partly because we don’t trust ourselves enough to imagine that we deserve them. [Moi ici: E isto requer foco, requer concentração. Pior, requer rejeitar outros potenciais clientes]

Every gig-economy hustler who’s listed on Fiverr or Upwork or 99designs is looking for easy clients. Easy in and easy out, but they’re not better clients than they have now.

Years ago, I produced a record for a very skilled duo. They were incredibly hardworking and committed to their art. In order to survive, they performed three hundred days a year, and they lived in a van, driving each day to a new town, playing at a local coffeehouse, sleeping in the van, then repeating it all the next day.

In most towns, there are a few places like this—if you’ve issued a few CDs and are willing to work for cheap, you can get booked without too much trouble.

These cafés are not good clients. Easy in, easy out, next!

What I helped these musicians understand is that going from town to town and working with easy gigs was wasting their effort and hiding their art. What they needed to do was stay in one town, earn fans, play again, earn fans, move to a better venue, and do it again. And again.

Working their way up by claiming what they’d earned: fans."

Como fugir da mediania? Como fugir da comoditização? Servir quem?  

Trecho retirado de "The practice: shipping creative work" de Seth Godin.

E agora...

 "In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, companies will face a heightened degree of competition as customer demand is depressed due to a reduction of income, persistent unemployment, and looming uncertainties. While everyone desires a V-shaped economic rebound, it will be difficult for companies to overcome the current financial distress once they are locked into a hopeless game of dividing a shrinking pie. More than ever, firms need to create blue oceans of new demand in order to generate revenue, profit, and new growth. It is far more urgent for managers to think like a blue ocean strategist.

...

The pandemic has had a shock effect on economies and businesses and is bound to trigger more changes and disruptions in many industries. Will you go down as a victim of change and disruption? Or are you going to rise above the challenges and reshape the business environment in your favor? [Moi ici: O que deve ser alterado para fazer face às alterações do contexto?] 

...

Most organisations are stuck in the trap of competition. Having accepted their industry structure as a given, executives benchmark rivals and focus on outperforming them to achieve a competitive advantage. The irony is that the more you focus on benchmarking and outpacing the competition, the more your strategy will look like your competitors. [Moi ici: Não esquecer a lição da biologia e das toutinegras de McArthur]

A blue ocean strategist, instead, focuses on how to make the competition irrelevant.

...

What are the factors that you and your industry thought were important but don’t seem to matter so much to your customers in terms of serving their essential needs? What are the factors that they fundamentally value and don’t want to compromise on even during this difficult time? Are these temporary shifts under extreme conditions or do they provide insight into reconfiguring your offerings in a post-pandemic world? Think through these questions and ask yourself, “What would it take to win over the mass of buyers, even with no marketing?” ... Stop looking at what industries are competing on and start looking at what most buyers really value.

...

In a time of sluggish and contracting demand in many industries, fighting for a bigger share of existing customers does not often lead to profitable growth. You need to expand the pie. Again, the pandemic may have exposed and amplified some of the pain points previously assumed by your industry. It is up to you to find creative ways to address them to unlock and attract the mass of noncustomers."

Trechos retirados de "How to Be a Blue Ocean Strategist in the Post-Pandemic World"

"small actions can make a disproportionate impact"

"it is characteristic of complex systems that small actions can make a disproportionate impact. You just don’t know, won’t know, until you try. And try again.

...

What makes people and institutions abandon old bad habits and acquire new, better ones? Some argue that pressure eventually produces a tipping point, while others maintain it’s all about the cogency or timing of the message. When large corporations and institutions require strategic change, investors and participants demand a theory of change that promises to contain or define their risk. But the test of a good theory is that it can predict—and what we know about complex systems is that, while aspects of them may repeat, they are inherently unpredictable. So theories of change in highly dynamic systems might purport to offer certainty, where it often proves most illusory. The value of experiments is that they disrupt apathy, acknowledge ambiguity, and give people hope."

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future" de Margaret Heffernan.

"test out the future"

"it is characteristic of complex systems that small actions can make a disproportionate impact. You just don’t know, won’t know, until you try. And try again.

...

What makes people and institutions abandon old bad habits and acquire new, better ones? Some argue that pressure eventually produces a tipping point, while others maintain it’s all about the cogency or timing of the message. When large corporations and institutions require strategic change, investors and participants demand a theory of change that promises to contain or define their risk. But the test of a good theory is that it can predict—and what we know about complex systems is that, while aspects of them may repeat, they are inherently unpredictable. So theories of change in highly dynamic systems might purport to offer certainty, where it often proves most illusory. The value of experiments is that they disrupt apathy, acknowledge ambiguity, and give people hope.

...

Experiments are pragmatic ways to test out the future, but to have real impact requires that other people contribute.

...

traditional management is addicted to grand plans. However much executives claim to want, and to support, innovation and so-called transformation, much of their enthusiasm runs tepid to cold. They want safety and certainty, not the creativity and risk that come with experimentation. The irony is lost on no one: the more they demand certainty, the more they constrain their chance to discover a safer future.

...

Nowhere has this constraint been more obvious than amid the bloodbath of retail, where companies seem to have taken to heart Hilaire Belloc’s line: “always keep ahold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse.” So afraid are they of failure that they plan shop closures and layoffs with meticulous efficiency—while failing to be inventive enough to keep those businesses alive. Market analysts may call this creative destruction but it’s hard to find much that’s creative about it. Experiments and innovation are almost nowhere to be seen."

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future" de Margaret Heffernan.

Bolha azeiteira e outras - resposta

Ontem o JdN publicou um artigo, "Produção de azeite afunda e há lagares fechados" que ilustra um padrão comum a todos os ramos da economia.

Existe um status-quo (produção tradicional de azeite).

Aparece um outsider com custos de produção muito mais baixos (produção intensiva e super-intensiva de azeite).

“o preço do azeite a granel está tão baixo que “o que se gasta com a apanha e a transformação é o que se recebe pela venda” do produto acabado.

...

A quebra de produtividade fará com que “áreas significativas de olivais tradicionais” não sejam colhidas nos próximos meses, porque “os custos de colheita superariam a valorização da produção”.

...

“Quando o preço está como agora, nos dois ou 2,50 euros (por quilo de azeite virgem extra a granel), os olivais tradicionais, que requerem muita mão de obra, têm muita dificuldade em fazer a colheita, transformar em azeite e ainda ter margem para vender”, ressalva."

Qual é a reacção tradicional?

Pedir apoios e subsídios, culpar os outsiders, procurar competir pelo preço mais baixo sem ter estrutura para tal, pedir para bloquear os outsiders, ...

Qual é a abordagem que eu proponho?

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"[Moi ici: Li algures e fixei para sempre]

O que propus para o vinho? O que propus para as PMEs tugas ameaçadas pela China? O que proponho numa situação em que quem não tem estrutura de custos para tal não pode competir pelo preço mais baixo?

Subir na escala de valor?

"Há outros casos, de pequenos olivicultores, “que se transformaram em produtores de nicho”, e que têm prémio porque conseguem pôr no mercado edições pequenas com marcas próprias, explica o proprietário da Herdade Maria da Guarda. “Mas os que trabalham sem marca têm tido muita dificuldade, porque os preços estão em mínimos de mais de 10 anos”. Os stocks acumulados de campanhas anteriores em grandes produtores como Itália ou Grécia explicam a inundação que vive o mercado.”"

Recordar a antologia "Azeite e Trás-os-Montes"

"Covid-19 will push ..."

Aquela mensagem de que o coronavirus não mudou nada, apenas acelerou o que já estava em marcha... 

"Challenging the location of production

The global economy is highly dependent on China. China’s share of global trade in some industries exceeds 50%—in the global trade of telecommunications equipment, for example, China’s share (by volume) was 59% in 2018. China’s importance in global trade and supply chains has grown ever since it was accepted into the World Trade Organisation in 2001. This led to the latest wave of globalisation as multinationals took advantage of the trading opportunities that China offered, both in terms of production and as a source of demand for their products. However, as a result of Covid-19, it is likely that this period of globalisation will not only come to a halt, it will reverse.

...

Covid-19 will push more companies in other sectors to relocate parts of their supply chains. By building quasi-independent regional supply chains in the Americas and Europe, a global company will provide a hedge against future shocks to their network. [Moi ici: Uma tendência em curso já já alguns anos]

For those companies that have this luxury already, they have been able to shift production of key components from one region to another as lockdowns and factory closures resulting from coronavirus have unfolded. Supply chains are difficult to set up and even more difficult to move, especially in the automotive sector. As more firms make this decision, therefore, the shift to regionalised supply chains will be an enduring outcome of this crisis.

...

For the sake of efficiency, multinationals tend to optimise the logistics process of their supply chains to minimise storage costs. However, in a world of increasing uncertainty and ongoing risk, a sole focus on the efficiency of transportation and production will leave firms vulnerable to shocks. In the current crisis, companies are seeing greater value in storing inventory in strategic locations from where it can be easily accessed and delivered to customers."

Trechos retirados de "The Great Unwinding - Covid-19 and the regionalisation of global supply chains" do The Economist.

"Simply begin. But begin."

As oportunidades multiplicam-se à medida que são aproveitadas. 

A mensagem de Seth Godin que aprecio anda à volta disto: esquecer as desculpas e começar, e experimentar e experimentar e experimentar. Quando era miúdo, talvez com 6 ou 7 anos, vi um filme na televisão que me impressionou. No Japão do tempo dos samurais um oleiro fazia as suas peças e cozia-as num forno. Depois, avaliava cada peça cozida e partia quase todas, e eu não percebia porquê. Só muitos anos depois é que concluí que era por causa da sua reputação, porque cada peça levava a sua marca pessoal. 

"Start Where You Are

Identity fuels action, and action creates habits, and habits are part of a practice, and a practice is the single best way to get to where you seek to go.

Before you are a “bestselling author,” you’re an author, and authors write. Before you are an “acclaimed entrepreneur,” you’re simply someone who is building something.

“I am _______ but they just don’t realize it yet” is totally different from “I’m not _______ because they didn’t tell me I was.”

The only choice we have is to begin. And the only place to begin is where we are.

Simply begin.

But begin.

Imogen Roy helps us understand that effective goals aren’t based on the end result: they are commitments to the process. That commitment is completely under your control, even if the end result can’t be.

But the only way to have a commitment is to begin.

....

Because creative people create.

Do the work, become the artist. Instead of planning, simply become. Acting as if is how we acquire identity"

Trechos retirados de "The Practice" de Seth Godin

ele acha mesmo que o futuro do calçado português é a robotização?

Ando a ler um livro perigoso para muitos, "Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future" de Margaret Heffernan.

O livro desmonta todas as crenças no determinismo... seja ele histórico ou do ADN:

"the truth about complex systems is that trying to simplify them doesn’t guarantee that they become more effective; it risks making them less effective. They function best when they are robust, throwing off a vast array of insights and understanding whose value may be realized over time. That means they can look wasteful, producing more than what is needed. But when you don’t know what’s needed, you’re safer with more.

...

Robustness, not efficiency, is ... protection against the unpredictable. In a complex system like science, the fundamental robustness of the ecosystem is variety, [Moi ici: Como não recuar a 2007 e a Hamel e Valikangas] because it facilitates a rich range of insights and discoveries—like penicillin—whose value can emerge even when unplanned. The big danger in confusing a complex system (like science) for a complicated process (like loading bags on planes) is that, in striving for efficiency and predictability, the robustness of the system, its creativity and ability to withstand adversity, is killed off.

...

The thought that you’ve captured all the data is what leads to error. No single, efficient process, profile, or narrative will prove robust enough for an environment characterized by change.

...

The temptation to try to simplify complex systems is how you get them wrong; just like profiling, just like any kind of model, what gets left out or what changes can turn out to be vital. This is why intelligence organizations frequently use multiple teams to examine and analyze the same data in real time: because doing so can tell more than one story. That variety might look inefficient but it imparts adaptability and responsiveness, essential qualities when you know you can’t predict what the future holds."

Pesquisei o link de Hamel e Valikangas em busca do seu conteúdo poético, mas também encontrei:

"No jornal Público de ontem, encontrámos um texto assinado pelo Gestor do Programa Operacional Sociedade do Conhecimento, do que retirámos alguns trechos:

"Portugal tem pela frente a batalha da mudança estrutural."

"Tudo tem que ser diferente. A aposta nos factores dinâmicos de competitividade, numa lógica territorialmente equilibrada e com opções estratégicas claramente assumidas, é um contributo central para a correcção das graves assimetrias sociais e regionais. Falta por isso em Portugal um verdadeiro "choque operacional" capaz de produzir efeitos sistémicos ao nível do funcionamento das organizações empresariais." 

Um Costa e Silva em 2007...

Engraçado porque comecei a escrever este texto motivado por um texto que li no JdN de ontem, "A matriz tecnologias/sectores no processo de reindustrialização", de Luís Todo Bom.

"No caso dos sectores tradicionais, em particular, no têxtil e no calçado, esta nova imersão tecnológica deve ocorrer, com prudência, por passos, em particular no processo de robotização, para que não se verifique, no curto prazo, uma redução substancial do emprego nestes sectores que são, ainda, de mão-de-obra intensiva.

Estranhei que o meu amigo António Costa Silva, engenheiro como eu, com sensibilidade para as novas tecnologias, não tenha proposto esta matriz, no seu estudo prospectivo, no capítulo da reindustrialização.

Espero que as organizações da sociedade civil, em particular as associações empresariais horizontais – AIP e AEP, e o Fórum para a Competitividade –, em articulação com as empresas líderes de cada sector, possam aceitar este desafio, iniciando-se, assim, um processo de reindustrialização que permita aumentar significativamente a competitividade e o valor acrescentado dos nossos produtos industriais."  

Meu Deus... como se pode ser tão top-down? Que conhecimento é que um lesboeta de gabinete tem da realidade das empresas de têxtil e calçado? E aquele "processo de robotização" ... ele acha mesmo que o futuro do calçado português é a robotização?

"We become what we do"

Comecei a ouvir o último livro de Seth Godin durante as viagens de carro para fora de Gaia. Seth Godin é um autor que escreve para os humanos de Mongo, os humanos que fogem do século XX e abraçam a arte em todas as suas facetas.

BTW, recordar o que escrevemos aqui ao longo dos anos sobre a arte e o eficientismo. Por isso, apelar à arte fere o mindset assente no século XX.

"For the important work, the instructions are always insufficient. For the work we’d like to do, the reward comes from the fact that there is no guarantee, that the path isn’t well lit, that we cannot possibly be sure it’s going to work.

It’s about throwing, not catching. Starting, not finishing. Improving, not being perfect.

No one learns to ride a bike from a manual.

...

Art is what we call it when we’re able to create something new that changes someone.

No change, no art.

...

It’s a form of leadership, not management. A process without regard for today’s outcome, a commitment to the journey.

You were born ready to make art. But you’ve been brainwashed into believing that you can’t trust yourself enough to do so.

You’ve been told you don’t have enough talent (but that’s okay, because you can learn the skill instead).

You’ve been told you’re not entitled to speak up (but now you can see how many others have taken their turns).

And you’ve been told that if you can’t win, you shouldn’t even try (but now you see that the journey is the entire point).

Art is the generous act of making things better by doing something that might not work.

...

“If we believe that it’s not our turn, that we’re not talented enough, we’ll do whatever we can to make that story true. We’ll sit back and wait to be chosen instead. [Moi ici: Algo que li recentemente como sendo o efeito Forer]

That’s backward.

Most of the time, the story we live by came from somewhere. It might be the way we were raised, or it could be the outcome of a series of events. Burn yourself on the stove and you might persuade yourself that you should go nowhere near a stove. Grow up in a home with low expectations and it’s possible you’ll begin to believe them. The story we tell ourselves leads to the actions we take.

If you want to change your story, change your actions first. When we choose to act a certain way, our mind can’t help but rework our narrative to make those actions become coherent.

We become what we do.”

Trechos retirados de "The Practice" de Seth Godin.

“Or consider the Forer effect. This is the strong tendency that subjects show to believe feedback from personality tests, regardless of whether those results are bogus.”

Trecho retirado de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan. 

Giving a shit

O meu amigo Trevor manteve uma conversa com um dos meus gurus profissionais, Tom Peters. A certa altura Tom aborda o tema “giving a shit”. 

Giving a shit é quando a chefia se relaciona com os subordinados como seres humanos, não porque seja bom ou mau para o negócio, mas porque ambos são seres humanos. Depois, discorre sobre algo que já tenho lido em várias fontes: as pessoas despedem-se, ou pior, demitem-se de estarem presentes mais do que de corpo, mais por causa das chefias do que por causa de outras condições.

Vem isto a propósito deste título "Covid-19: Centro Hospitalar Médio Tejo suspende férias a todos os profissionais". O título fez-me recordar uma conversa telefónica que tive com o Aranha no final de Setembro ou princípio de Outubro acerca da chefia da mulher, que é enfermeira na zona Centro do país, ter cortado as férias ao pessoal, mas mantido intactas as suas santas férias de Natal, aproveitando mesmo para fazer uma ponte entre o Natal e o Ano Novo.

Este é, para mim, um dos testes da liderança. Julgo que já escrevi aqui sobre ele por causa de um livro de Simon Sinek, “Leaders eat last”.

O que se pode esperar de alguém que é incapaz de perceber o impacte das suas decisões na moral dos trabalhadores? 

Não estou a alinhar com aquela postura de catequese em que se diz que a função A é tão importante quanto a função B. Não acredito que todas as funções sejam igualmente importantes. Todas podem ser necessárias, mas algumas são mais importantes que outras, mas não estou a falar de funções, estou a falar de pessoas.

Estratégia não é "catequese"

 

"The heart of strategy is a matched pair — a place to compete where a company designs an approach that enables it to win. Sadly, most strategic plans do not do so. Rather, they make lists of initiatives which the company will pursue. You’ve seen the lists: improve cost structure, increase innovation, get closer to customers, rationalize IT systems, etc. Because strategy is seen as a collection of initiatives, often these get referred to as ‘strategies.’ I.e., “We have five strategies. They are a, b, c, d, and e.” No. A company doesn’t have five strategies: it has one. A strategy is an integrated set of choices that positions a company to win.

...

Lots of people (bless them!) read Playing to Win and find the five-box strategy cascade compelling. But for many, the instinctive reaction is to simply put their list of initiatives into the How-to-Win (HTW) box and call it a Playing to Win Strategy. In general, the items on the list are truly laudable.[Moi ici: Quantas vezes vejo isto...]

...

When you see your strategy development effort producing a list of laudable initiatives, keep pushing the thinking until you have a plausible theory of competitive advantage. Your goal should be loftier than just improving. The goal should be to be become better than anybody else: that is, to win — in your chosen space. And when you get to the point of a plausible theory of winning, do a thorough reality check on your Capabilities and Management Systems so that you can move forward with confidence that your strategy is real and actionable, not just a hope, because hope is not a strategy!"

Trechos retirados de "From Laudable List to How to Really Win" 

"we have to think for ourselves every day and help make our networked society smarter"

Ontem, guardei este tweet:

Se há coisa que me preocupa desde o início da declaração da pandemia é a pressão para que não haja espírito crítico ou dúvida metódica sobre nada do que se escreve ou diz sobre o vírus, medidas de contenção ou profilaxia.
As certezas não eram bem-vindas na ciência que conhecia.

— Miguel E. (@PilotInComm) November 17, 2020

Um outro tweet mandou-me para aqui:

"Feynman says we learn from science that you must doubt the experts: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says ‘science teaches such and such’, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it”"

Também li isto logo pela manhã:

"If this pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s that experts disagree, nobody has all the answers, and we are mostly making things up as we go. In a crisis it is important to act but even more importantly to learn as we take action. Add in the human factor that some people are always trying to take advantage of any situation and we start to float in a liquid surround of misinformation, propaganda, half-truths, and sometimes utter crap of the post-truth machines. 

...

As of yesterday our government started to promote the wearing of non-medical masks in public. Last week our public health experts said that people did not know how to wear masks properly so they should not wear them. Overnight we have become professional mask wearers, as we are all expert hand-washers.

...

I am not saying that we should ignore all expert advice. However, we have to think for ourselves every day and help make our networked society smarter. An expert is merely one node in an entangled knowledge network."

Trechos retirados de "entangled thinking" 

 

Para reflexão

 "I’m haunted by the headline about 47 percent of jobs vanishing by 2035, not just because nobody can make reliable forecasts that far out. Not just because it feels more like PR than anything else. But because it was so quickly absorbed as fact. Instead of appearing unknown, debatable, and uncertain, suddenly the future looked foreclosed. In that guise, it becomes propaganda. When we trade the effort of doubt and debate for the ease of blind faith, we become gullible and exposed, passive and irresponsible observers of our own lives. Worse still, we leave ourselves wide open to those who profit by influencing our behavior, our thinking, and our choices. At that moment, our agency in our own lives is in jeopardy."

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan. 

Tenha medo de ter medo

 Ao escrever o último postal, quando procurava o link para o postal onde inicialmente citei "for at least the next couple months every organisation in the world is a startup" encontrei esta imagem daqui:

Entretanto, esta manhã assisti à Missa e durante a leitura do Evangelho ouvi uma das duas parábolas que para mim definem o cristão, a Parábola dos Talentos (Mt 25, 14-30).

O medo do terceiro servo paralisou-o. O medo não ajuda a construir! 

Tenha medo de ter medo!

Interessante que os poderes instituídos sejam tão amigos de criar medo!

Abraçar a incerteza

 "To be able to do and know so much, and yet not to be able to predict what we crave to know, is painful and frustrating. So we perpetuate the age-old search for sources of certainty. That leaves us susceptible to pundits and prophets: experts and forecasters who claim superior knowledge. But the more famous they are, the more likely they are to be wrong. Other models prove unsatisfactory, too. History doesn’t always repeat itself but often misleads us with aesthetically pleasing analogies that underweight critical differences."

Esta foi uma das grandes lições que aprendi na minha vida profissional. Talvez em 2005 ou 2006. Aprender a viver e a tomar decisões na incerteza, não só pelo pouco que se sabe, mas pelo pouco que se sabe que não se sabe, e pela incapacidade de sempre analisar correctamente o que se sabe. Há que fazer escolhas e apostar nelas enquanto nos parecem as melhores. Um dos critérios é o de visualizar as piores consequências da escolha: se fizer esta escolha e a coisa der para o torto, tenho possibilidade de fazer uma nova experiência ou isso põe em causa a continuidade da organização?

Quando se abraça a incerteza, embora me tenha parecido estranho na altura, abre-se a porta a um mundo de novas possibilidades. Lembro-me deste sentimento ao abordar com as PMEs o desafio chinês, na transição entre as metades da primeira década deste século. E agora, encontro esse sentimento escarrapachado na introdução de um livro:

"Accepting that the future is unknowable is where action begins. Experiments are ideal for complex environments because they yield clues about where you are; they are the best thing to do when you can’t see where to start. Scenarios expand and explore the terrain, revealing a range of possibilities—good and bad—that also enlarge our capacity to understand ourselves and each other. The work of artists endures because they dare to imagine what they can’t see and allow their minds to leave predetermined paths; we may not all be artists, but we need their independence and stamina. [Moi ici: E o que é que tenho chamado ao trabalho dos empreendedores nas PMEs? Recordar "Em que lado do teste do lápis está a sua empresa?"] Cathedral projects whose ambition defies master plans show how much more can be achieved with a collective sense of meaning."

Nestes tempos de 2ª vaga Covid que estão a destruir ou depauperar tanto do tecido económico português, em que a normandagem continua a pensar no que é importante para eles, vai ser preciso voltar a apelar à veia artística, de pouco valerá o conselho de quem não queima pestanas para pagar os compromissos assumidos, de quem não tem a pele em jogo. A Toyota serve-me de exemplo, é sempre possível parar de cavar o poço e começar a subir.

Ainda mais verdadeiro que durante e após a 1ª vaga: we are all startups now! (excepto a normandagem, claro)

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan. 

BTW, há uma semana ouvi a frase:

Catedrais - puras como a noite, frescas como um celeiro

Uma frase que vem do tempo em que não havia luz eléctrica e as pessoas não saiam de casa à noite.

Não guardar para amanhã o que se deve fazer hoje

"Acresce que Portugal é um dos países mais endividados do mundo e um dos que apresenta a maior proporção de moratórias face ao crédito total concedido, cerca de 22%. Este é o enquadramento perfeito para se criar um cenário de crise sistémica na banca e, atendendo a que o fim das moratórias não coincidirá, com certeza, com o fim da crise económica, é expectável, se não mesmo provável, que as restrições de liquidez enfrentadas pelas empresas sofram novo agravamento, e assim, aquando do termo das moratórias, não consigam fazer face ao seu serviço de dívida. 

Neste sentido, parece-me crítico que empresas e instituições financeiras comecem, desde já, a enfrentar esta realidade"

Prepare a sua empresa para o choque que aí vem.

Trecho retirado do caderno de Economia do Expresso de hoje, da autoria de Nuno Nogueira da Silva. 

"Stretching goals"

"there is something galvanizing and inspirational about a big stretch goal, as President John F. Kennedy knew in 1961, when he announced that the United States would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, even though the longest time any American had spent in space was barely 15 minutes.

The business leader’s job is to set an ambitious target that will bring out the best in a company’s teams and achieve what may seem impossible at first. ... We’re often capable of more than we know, and an outlandish target that prompts gulps at first can inspire a team to focus on how it can be achieved.

“Our job as managers and leaders is to instill the belief that whatever core mission you’re pursuing is possible and valuable,”

...

“You can either create a circumstance where you build this positive vortex where everything right out of the gate is leading you toward more and more success, where you’re more motivated to not miss, or you can become trapped in what I call a cyclone of doom. And they start with these very small, seemingly innocuous decisions almost out of the gate and then they build on one another. So, you’re either heading down or you’re heading up.”

Amid the pandemic, there are countless cyclones of doom. The challenge for leaders is to create a positive vortex. It is as simple — and as hard — as that."

Trechos retirados de "Stretch or safe? The art of setting goals for your teams" 

Acerca da estratégia

Relacionar:

• The Big Lies of Strategy
• What Gets in the Way of Great Strategy?
• The Death Of Strategy
• Your Strategy Should Be a Hypothesis You Constantly Adjust

No primeiro texto Roger Martin escreve:

"The last thing I’m not nuts about is the popularity of a couple of self-referential frameworks for ‘doing’ strategy. One is ‘emergent strategy’. Henry Mintzberg — one of the finest management scholars of all time — came up with the notion that strategy is more ‘emergent’ than we might like to think. What he observed was that with strategy, companies may think that they’re going to predict and organize the future, but often, when you look backwards, your actual strategy changed and shifted, based on emergent conditions in the marketplace. This is a great insight.
.
Unfortunately, some strategic planners have taken it to mean that ‘You shouldn’t bother planning ahead’. That is not what Mintzberg meant, and it is an unhelpful view of the world. What he meant is that the world will forever be emergent, and as a result, waiting until ‘what to do next’ becomes crystal clear is like waiting for Godot. He will never show up. You have to make some choices."

Outro texto:

“Your strategy is a hypothesis. Your strategy is about the future. It is a promise
Under uncertainty you cannot provide fully fact-based support for your strategy hypothesis and so educated judgment is critical. There will be performance trade-offs between your strategic options
The success of your strategy depends on the commitment and efforts of your relevant stakeholders. Conflicts of interests, values and perceptions of your stakeholders are inevitable; therefore, you need persuasion and influencing (politics) to align your stakeholders behind your new strategy”

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

"piorar antes de começarem a melhorar"

"The COVID-19 operating environment requires that managers reexamine their collective thought processes and challenge their own assumptions. Failure to do so will create the risk of serious errors. Here are some of the pitfalls managers will likely encounter:

Optimism bias. Since managers and their organizations have never seen anything like this crisis, existing heuristics learned from years of management might not apply. One common problem is that managers experience optimism bias, both individually and collectively. They will be inclined to bring forward the date of an expected revenue rebound or minimize the duration of expected business closure. Simply, managers cannot or will not believe how bad the situation could get, and the organization ends up planning for a much milder scenario than transpires."

Li este trecho ontem ao final do dia. Depois, apanhei este artigo "Números de beneficiários do subsídio de desemprego deverá cair 4% em 2021":

"O Governo estima que o número de beneficiário do subsídio de desemprego caia 4% em 2021, com a melhoria da economia e a recuperação do mercado laboral."

Pessoalmente acredito que as coisas vão piorar antes de começarem a melhorar. 

Trecho retirado de "When nothing is normal: Managing in extreme uncertainty"