Skin in the game

A propósito de "Oliveira Martins: Gestores devem ser responsabilizados no âmbito dos swaps" e do comentário do João Pinto ontem:

"ainda no domingo passei pela IP4 (e depois pela estrada nacional, que vai dar a Amarante), na zona do Marão, e vi as obras do túnel do Marão que agora estão suspensas.
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Não percebo a razão da construção do túnel e daqueles viadutos todos. Portugal é mesmo um país rico. Quando estiver construída a nova estrada (a do túnel), haverá três alternativas ao trânsito (IP4, nacional e nova estrada), numa estrada onde não há engarrafamentos nem condutores para as 3 vias.
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Triste, muito triste..."

A leitura deste artigo "Skin in the Game as a Required Heuristic for Acting Under Uncertainty" de Constantine Sandis e Nassim Nicholas Taleb, onde se pode ler:

"The idea of skin in the game is crucial for the well-functioning of a complex world. In an opaque system there is, alas, an incentive for operators to hide risk: to benefit from the upside when things go well without ever paying for the downside when one's luck runs out. There is no possible risk management method that can replace skin in the game —particularly when informational opacity is compounded by informational asymmetry viz. the principal-agent problem that arises when those who gain the upside resulting from actions performed under some degree of uncertainty are not the same as those who incur the downside of those same acts.
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First, consider policy makers and politicians. In a decentralized system, say municipalities, these people are typically kept in check by feelings of shame upon harming others with their mistakes. In a large centralized system, the sources of error are not so visible. Spreadsheets do not make people feel shame. The penalty of shame is a factor that counts in favour of governments (and businesses) that are small, local, personal, and decentralized versus ones that are large, national or multi-national, anonymous, and centralised. When the latter fail, everybody except the culprit ends up paying the cost, leading to national and international 'austerity'.
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We believe Skin in the game is the heuristics of a safe and just society. Opposed to this is the unethical practice of taking all the praise and benefits of good fortune whilst disassociating oneself from the results of bad luck or miscalculation.
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We are not only responsible for known characterizations of our actions and their effects but also for those that we ought to be aware of (even if we are not). Our ignorance does not always relieve us of responsibility for things we have done, because others can claim that, as rational beings we should have known what we were doing even if we did not. Such is the knowledge involved in putting other people's lives at risk with no skin (of our own) in the game."

Escala de profundidade (parte II)

Parte I.
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Três mensagens importantes que os media não costumam sublinhar:

"Sexy Isn't Significant - Unless you plan on attracting venture capitalists or going public someday, don't worry if your business isn't sexy or exciting. ... There are great companies all over the world making products that you and I have never heard of. They are located in industrial parks, near airports, in the back of parking lots, and in the basements of buildings. They might not be growing at all. But it doesn't matter. As long as they're profitable. And they have solid and loyal customers.
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Profitability Is More Important Than Growth - For the last six years my company's revenue has been flat. But the company has been profitable. I visit and speak to hundreds of businesses every year, including the ones in my own neighborhood, that are in the same boat. But we're doing fine.
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It Doesn't Matter What You Sell, as Long as You're Good at It - In Philadelphia there are about a half dozen small companies that provide "blacksmith services." No, this isn't the 18th century. I don't think being a blacksmith is a growth business. But there's a market for it. Maybe you make dogs' wigs, "fresh face pillows," or rent yourself out as a temporary friend (and yes, there are real businesses that do this). It doesn't matter. As long as the market is big enough, and you're excellent at doing it, your small business can earn you a decent living. And if you run it the right way, it can do even more than that.
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So don't listen to the experts. Don't think you have to be in a growing industry. Don't worry if your friends and family laugh at your idea. Do your research. Make sure the opportunity is there. And be serious about running your business profitably. There's money to be made everywhere. Even in the newspaper business. Just ask Warren Buffett."

E lembro todos os experts que acham que as Qimondas é que são o negócio do futuro. Pois, continuo à espera.

Acerca do PIB

"GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports), or
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GDP = C + I + G + ( X - M )"

Prefiro um PIB com um crescimento nulo ou raquítico, a um PIB com um crescimento claro e (in)sustentado em mais despesa do Estado.

Bottom-up

Sobre Detroit mas aplicável à nossa realidade, "There's No Formula for Fixing Detroit, and That's a Good Thing":

"central Detroit is already in the midst of fresh start, a revitalization that feels far more organic and durable than past top-down efforts like the construction of the Renaissance Center in the late 1970s and the arrival of casinos in the late 1990s (although the casinos do appear to pay the bulk of the city's bills at the moment).
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At the moment, this renaissance is almost completely disconnected from what's going on in the rest of the city.
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The most thought-provoking thing I've read about Detroit in the past week was a blog post by The Century Foundation's Jacob Anbinder sketching out four possible government policy fixes: (1) let property owners (about half of whom aren't paying their taxes at the moment) choose what their taxes are spent on, (2) make city workers live in Detroit (less than half do, and this is something Mayor Bing has already been talking about), (3) let wealthier municipalities temporarily take over parts of Detroit for economic development purposes, which is allowed under Michigan law, and (4) do away with the region's ridiculous public transit divide in which the suburbs and the city run separate and disconnected bus systems. Are these the right prescriptions? I don't know. But bold experimentation certainly has to be part of the picture.
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Does all this add up to a formula for fixing Detroit? No — and you may have noticed that I completed avoided the topic of fixing Detroit's schools, which is clearly crucial yet diabolically hard. But to a certain extent the lack of formula is the point. A fresh start for Detroit means entering uncharted territory — and that's exciting."

Escala de profundidade (parte I)

"Why Warren Buffett Bought A Newspaper"
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Um excelente artigo!!!
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Em linha com o que escrevemos aqui há anos sobre a importância crescente da proximidade.
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É engraçado ver as coisas em perspectiva, as empresas regionais foram "comidas" ou "eliminadas" por empresas nacionais, com sede em Lisboa ou no Porto. (Lembro-me logo do IP4)
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Depois, as empresas multinacionais "comeram" as nacionais ou as nacionais evoluíram para multinacionais e centralizaram-se em Lisboa.
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Depois, por motivos  eficientistas saíram de Lisboa e foram para Madrid ou outras paragens.
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Assim, está livre, à espera de ser ocupado, um espaço de proximidade, um espaço que não pode ser escalado em número de clientes, um espaço de autenticidade que pode criar uma interacção que cria escala de âmbito, que cria escala de profundidade.
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Apetece dizer, Deus dá nozes a quem não tem dentes.
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Continua

E volto ao contexto e ao nuclear

Volto ao capítulo IV do livro "The End of Competitive Advantage", leio:

"Run Nonnegotiable Legacy Assets for EfficiencyJust as you need to reconfigure existing structures to go after new opportunities, so too you need to deal with the assets tied up with those existing structures. In many cases, they are still important to your organization, but they are no longer growth opportunities. The watchword here is to extract as many resources as you can from running these activities, because they no longer represent opportunity.
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The eroding differentiation of legacy assets can sneak up on you if you aren’t strategically alert. In past work, I’ve commented on the fact that what was once exciting and sexy about a product, service, or other offering that companies provide eventually becomes a commoditized nonnegotiable attribute. That means that customers expect something similar from all providers. The dilemma is that these things are often highly expensive table stakes. Not offering them to customers enrages them, but offering them, even offering them exceptionally well, does nothing for you competitively.
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Because you have to do them but they don’t add to margin or gain you market share, the mantra for delivering them has to be to focus on cost savings. The slide from exciting to nonnegotiable means you need to change how you run the assets that deliver expensive nonnegotiable attributes.
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There are a number of ways in which nondifferentiating activities can be made more economical. One is to centralize them under a shared-services model to end duplication of things being done in many places. Another is to create absolutely standardized processes rather than continue to support dozens of idiosyncratically designed ways of working. Remember, the activity or thing in question is not delivering a competitive advantage, so it really can’t justify being highly customized—it’s common in the industry. Simplification—such as eliminating handovers, automating portions, or making some of a process user generated—is a further source of cost savings. And of course outsourcing makes sense as well, particularly if the activity is not part of your competitive secret sauce."

 E não consigo deixar de recordar as minhas reflexões sobre os processos de contexto e processos críticos:

• "Dealing with Darwin"
• "Como descobri que não é suficiente optimizar os processos-chave." (parte I, parte II e parte III)
• "Processos contexto e Processos nucleares"

Expulso o bode expiatório...

Leio "Nova medida “Comércio Investe” acaba com o Modcom de José Sócrates" e "“Comércio Investe” prevê apoios até 35 mil euros para modernizar lojas de rua".
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Depois, no outro prato da balança, só das leituras de ontem, ponho:

• "The Retail Revolution Is Here";
• "The destruction of traditional retail"

Depois, ainda acrescento a este prato os marcadores: "evolução do retalho"; "batota" e "vendas retalho".

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Depois, visualizo o presidente da Confederação do Comércio e a sua narrativa sobre a causa dos problemas do comércio em Portugal...

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Expulso o bode expiatório... não se seguirá a bonança, a mudança é mais profunda.

Curiosidade do dia

"A actividade industrial nas oito maiores economias da Zona Euro expandiu-se inesperadamente no mês de Julho, um crescimento ténue mas que leva os economistas a acreditarem que a Zona Euro está a sair da recessão. Números acima do esperado na Alemanha e França ajudaram o indicador a subir para os 50,1 pontos, uma décima acima da fasquia que sinaliza a fronteira entre contracção e expansão.
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“A recessão na Zona Euro parece, dois anos depois, estar a chegar ao fim”, escrevem Ralph Solveen e Jorg Kraemer, economistas do Commerzbank. “Não saíram ainda as leituras nacionais para outros países, mas podemos derivar destes números (...) que podem surgir mais provas de que a recessão está a chegar ao fim também na periferia”, acrescentam."

Trecho retirado de "Acabou a recessão na Zona Euro, dizem os economistas"

Por motivos mesquinhos

O capítulo IV de "The End of Competitive Advantage" de Rita McGrath, intitulado "Using Resource Allocation to Promote Deftness" foi o que mais me impressionou.

"If you want to shape the way an organization behaves, an extraordinarily robust conclusion from academic research is that the resource allocation process is key. Firms built to thrive under transient-advantage conditions handle resources differently from firms designed for exploitation. In an exploitation-oriented firm, reliable performance, scale, and replication of processes from one place to another make a lot of sense because you can operate more efficiently and gain the benefits of scale. Resources, therefore, are directed to support these goals, and changing these resource flows is painful and difficult. A transient-advantage-oriented firm, on the other hand, allocates resources to promote what I call deftness - the ability to reconfigure and change processes with a certain amount of ease, quickly."

A parte que impressiona começa aqui:

"In a typical firm, resources are controlled by powerful existing businesses, and the powerful people are those who dominated the last-generation competitive advantage. That means that new opportunities are often force-fit into an existing structure, if they survive at all.
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In a typical firm, every effort is made to squeeze as much operating margin out of existing assets as possible. In a transient advantage firm, people realize that the competitive life of an asset may be different from its accounting life, and move to retire those that are no longer competitive before they desperately have to.
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a core implication of transient advantage is that what is good for a particular business may not be good for the organization as a whole. In a traditional company, people who had lots of assets and staff reporting to them were the important people in the company.
This idea was reinforced by systems such as the Hay Group’s point allocation, in which more pay and power were assumed to go to those managers with bigger operations. Indeed, just recently I was chatting with the head of talent development for a major publishing firm, who believes that this way of rating people is their single biggest obstacle to becoming a more nimble competitor. The bigger-is better mind-set is deadly in an environment in which advantages come and go. If people feel their authority, power base, and other rewards will be diminished if they move assets or people out of an existing advantage, they will fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo."

Uma empresa pode perder o futuro por motivos mesquinhos, pela ostentação de status.
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E isto, de certo modo, também está relacionado com o que vejo em algumas PMEs. Empresas com uma certa dimensão e, por causa da evolução do mercado, têm uma rentabilidade medíocre por causa da sua constituição generalista. Encolher uma empresa, sobretudo num meio onde não somos anónimos como numa pequena ou média cidade, é visto como algo embaraçante ou mesmo vergonhoso. Assim, em vez de encolher a empresa e especializarem-se, continuam a manter uma estrutura desenhada para outros tempos.

Um lamento interessante

"Texts on strategy and innovation are full of great ideas of new things that leaders should do. But, lamented a senior executive I was with recently, “There aren’t any textbooks on what to stop doing!” In a world of temporary advantage, stopping things - exiting declining advantages - is every bit as critical as starting things. Activities need to stop because they can no longer demonstrate good growth potential, or perhaps competitors have made them a commodity, or perhaps they simply have few growth prospects."

Ora aí está um lamento interessante.

Trecho retirado do capítulo III "Healthy Disengagement" do livro "The End of Competitive Advantage" de Rita McGrath.

Acerca da qualidade dos empresários portugueses

"“how do you set your price?”
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The response is mind-boggling.  More than half of the firms surveyed just take prices from their competitors.  A quarter use cost-plus, which is a terrible tool too.  But at least it relates to some kind of real number from inside your own firm.  18% guessed.
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Eighteen percent guessed!
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And just over 20% based their price on data gathered from their own customers.
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At a minimum then, 70% of firms put no strategic thought at all into how they set prices, which, arguably, is one of the most important metrics in your business."

Da próxima vez que ouvir alguém dizer que os empresários portugueses são os piores do mundo, pense nestes números.
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Trecho retirado de "Here is Why Business Model Innovation is Powerful"

Obrigado Álvaro!

Só para me situarem, para mim, sempre considerei Vítor Gaspar como um socialista.
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Assim, dou o meu agradecimento a Álvaro Santos Pereira pela sua passagem pelo ministério da Economia.

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Um 'alien' vindo do Canadá foi sempre uma chatice para os rentistas deste país, aguentou mais tempo do que eu pensava.

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O ideal para mim era nem haver ministério da Economia mas havendo, que cause os menores estragos possíveis. E, com Álvaro Santos Pereira os estragos foram minimizados.
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Acrescento assim o nome de Álvaro Santos Pereira à curta lista de ministros aos quais tirei o meu chapéu, o outro é Jaime Silva.
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Este artigo do DE de hoje "O guião de Pires de Lima para a Economia" ilustra bem como, mais uma vez, os putos chegaram ao porta-moedas da mãe e preparam-se para gastar o que encontraram e comprar a fiado:
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1 - Reduzir cortes salariais na Função Pública - mais défice
2 - Salário mínimo de 500 euros - mais défice e mais desemprego
3 - Baixar IRS - mais défice
4 - Desburocratizar (A ministra Cristas já foi informada?)
5 - Financiar as PME - mais défice
6 - Reduzir IRC - mais défice
7 - Empreendedorismo e capital de risco - mais défice
8 - Investigadores nas empresas pagos pelo Estado - mais défice
9 - Diplomacia Económica - Recordar sempre o grito "Espanha! Espanha! Espanha!"
10 - Turismo prioritário - os projectos com dinheiro do BES agradecem
11 - Menos custos de contexto - com mais défice, como vão querer baixar custos de contexto?

Claro que sou adepto das medidas 3 e 6 mas sei que têm de ser realizadas ao mesmo tempo que se corta na despesa forte e feio.

Resistência popular

Havemos de chegar ao ponto em que os antifragilistas. para combater os embaixadores das desertificações

"nova legislação aprova "os interesses da fileira do eucalipto", desregulando todas as condicionantes que existiam para as plantações de rápido crescimento e burocratizando as plantações de carvalhos, sobreiros e outras espécies”"

Terão de recorrer à criação maciça na varanda, ou à importação de

 
Importante este ponto:

"uma vez que esta espécie apenas ataca eucaliptos, todos eles cultivados e introduzidos em Portugal, deveria ser considerada como uma praga agrícola ou praga florestal introduzida e não como uma espécie invasora. A definição de espécie invasora referida em cima é vaga quando fala em ecosistema não definindo este termo. Os eucaliptais, em rigor, são plantações e esta espécie ataca apenas uma cultura, também ela introduzida, não se conhecendo nenhum efeito negativo sobre quaisquer espécies ou habitats naturais.
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Achamos pois, que esta espécie não deveria estar incluída na lista de espécies invasoras."

Curiosidade do dia

"O "compromisso de salvação nacional" estava fadado ao fracasso por inconveniência dos partidos, mais até que dos seus líderes. É esta inércia militante que impressiona. Há uma espécie de anacronismo intelectual nos partidos, que falam de um país que não soa ao nosso mas ao deles, que falam de dívida como se não existisse e de dinheiro como se houvesse.»"

Trecho retirado do editorial de hoje do JdN

Recordar o caso da ferramenta

No caso da ferramenta, a culpa não é da ferramenta, a culpa é do que fazemos com ela.
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A culpa não é da caneta, é do que resolvemos escrever com ela.
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Assim, não sou tão radical quanto este artigo "Six Sigma Is Draining Employees’ Creativity"
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O Six Sigma não é para empresas que vivem da criatividade.
O Six Sigma é capaz de ser muito útil numa cozinha McDonald's.
Acham que a McDonald's quer criatividade nas suas cozinhas?
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Recordar "Não culpem a caneta quando a culpa é de quem escreve!"

Acerca de Mongo

"3D printing will explode in 2014, thanks to the expiration of key patents"
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"Catching Up to 3D Printing"

"Not only does digital production promise to transform the relationship of designers with the people who use their work, it will do the same to their rapport with manufacturers. Eventually, there could be a sophisticated 3D printing facility in every village and town, where local people can source customized products or repair existing ones, as their ancestors did at nearby blacksmith’s forges. Doubtless, tech savvy entrepreneurs are already planning to open them.
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In this scenario, designers will be less dependent on finding manufacturers that are willing to realize their ideas; they will be able to produce their own prototypes and to become increasingly entrepreneurial in selling their work directly to consumers. “Design Beyond Production,” an exhibition running through Aug. 18 at the Z33 design center in the Belgian city of Hasselt, is exploring that phenomenon."

Pessoas, não estatísticas

Este artigo "Beware the Cannibal In Your Product Line" permite várias linhas de reflexão, escolho apenas uma:

"2. Analyze individuals, not averages
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If you want to measure incremental volume with any accuracy, you need individual-based modelling techniques that take into account the individual spending patterns of each person who will buy the new product, rather than drawing general assumptions from average numbers. As a simple example, the impact of somebody who buys an existing product on a weekly basis and switches about half of their purchases to a new product is far greater than a shopper who buys an existing product only monthly, but ditches it entirely in favor of the new product. Effective individual-based modelling doubles the accuracy of incremental sales predictions when compared to aggregate calculations (see chart)."

Recordar o que já escrevemos aqui há anos sobre olhar os clientes na menina-dos-olhos, sobre evitar a miudagem. Cuidado com os fantasmas estatísticos. (Recordar isto e a Mónica e a Maria)

Cão morde homem

Come on!

"By now, most economists agree that the surge of Chinese imports into the U.S. has taken a toll on American workers.
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But a new study suggests that the brunt of the blow of competition from cheap Chinese imports is borne by low-income U.S. workers."

Como é que isto pode ser novidade?
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E como temos escrito tantas vezes aqui no blogue:

"The effect of China trade on U.S. manufacturing built momentum during the 1990s and accelerated around the time China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the economists said." 

Por isso é que tenho escrito aqui sobre a decapitação a dois tempos  das empresas de bens transaccionáveis a operar em Portugal.
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Como é que isto pode ser notícia?!?! É uma evidência.

Trechos retirados de "China Imports Punish Low-Wage U.S. Workers Longer"

Curiosidade do dia

"They each sported the obligatory hallmarks of business success: expensive Italian suits, carefully manicured hairstyles and company-issued smartphones resting on dark leather compendiums. You could almost smell the overhead. As the meeting progressed, it was clear that these Ivy-schooled individuals were slick, sharp, and well-structured.
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As the percentage of U.S. adults involved in start-ups hit a record 13% in 2012, the White House proclaimed that "entrepreneurs are the engine of our economy". But the three-hundred-pound-diet-coke-drinking-pepperoni-pizza-eating-founder in the room is that, in the minds of most American adults, entrepreneurship remains the domain of misfits: an odd pursuit of unwashed nerds that were unwilling or unable to secure real jobs and build "respectable" careers."

Trechos retirados de "Praise Entrepreneurs, Not Cubicle Capitalists"

Uma outra logística

Como há muito tempo começámos a escrever neste blogue:

"Imagine global networks of additive manufacturing machines that are attuned to local markets and can be reconfigured in real time as demand patterns change. Such a network would take supply chain agility to new levels. Or distribution centers that store and supply product blueprints rather than physical products, located “in the cloud” or in server farms.
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Of course the world can be altered further if home-based 3D printing becomes the norm. In this world, every home is equipped with a printer capable of making most of the products it needs. Supply chains that support the flow of products and parts to consumers will vanish, to be replaced by supply chains of raw material."

Acredito que será mais a cadeia de fornecimento das fábricas para as prateleiras a desaparecer, porque a cadeia de fornecimento para a casa de cada um crescerá mais e mais (home delivery), à custa do transporte entre o designer-produtor e o cliente. Depois, numa segunda fase, maior avanço tecnológico, talvez o designer envie o projecto para ser produzido em casa do cliente.
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De qualquer forma, será um mundo novo, e o design vai ser um trunfo importante.
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Trecho retirado de "Does 3D Printing Doom the Supply Chain?"