Curiosidade do dia

A clubite revela-se nestes pormaiores:

"o que é que Vítor Constâncio está lá a fazer".

Trecho retirado de "Belém acha "inacreditável" ameaça de BCE e Vítor Constâncio"

"You ain't seen nothing yet"

Ao ler "A idade como tendência":

"Os dias de casting de modelos na casa dos 20 anos e tamanhos pequenos ou, ainda, de tez branca, parecem estar a chegar ao fim, com as marcas de moda a começarem a ser mais representativas, especialmente quando se trata de usar modelos numa faixa etária diferente. A necessidade de mudança vem, ironicamente, dos números.
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Aqueles com mais de 60 anos constituem o grupo em maior crescimento nas populações dos países ricos e o seu número deverá aumentar mais de um terço até 2030, de 164 para 222 milhões. Os consumidores mais velhos são também os mais ricos, graças à inflação dos preços de imóveis e às suas reformas generosas."

Subitamente lembrei-me de um texto escrito aqui no blogue em 2006, "Spray maritimo que precede o splash da onda":

"Um dia, os noticiários da TV, as passagens de modelos, os anúncios de TV, os enredos dos filmes, ... serão protagonizados por gente com mais de 60 anos. Serão o espelho da sociedade..."

Apetece repetir as palavras de Reagan:

"You ain't seen nothing yet"

"imagining a preferred future and then stepping backward toward the present"

Trechos que parecem retirados deste blogue:

"We’ve been trained to think of the future as a linear extension of what we know, typically imagining change as a 10 percent improvement (or decline) from what we see around us.
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Technological, environmental and political changes will likely disrupt your business. How can you prepare for a different, even unimaginable world that will arrive faster than projected?
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Once you’ve identified your preferred future, you can start to identify key activities and milestones that would help create that future.
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Backcasting is the act of imagining a preferred future and then stepping backward toward the present, repeatedly probing what has to happen to enable each step.
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Backcasting is anchored in an aspirational future state rather than being constrained by limitations of the current state. This allows people to create their own richly detailed stories of the future and leads naturally to the discussion: “How can our product/service do that?”"

Trechos retirados de "How Leaders Dream Boldly to Bring New Futures to Life"

Recordar temas como "Começar pelo fim" ou "Mais uma vez e sempre: Começar pelo fim!!!" ou "future-back" approach to strategy" ou "Transformar uma empresa em 3 passos"

Turn, turn, turn

Tudo é transiente, tudo é transitório, tudo é passageiro.

As estratégias são sempre passageiras, mais tarde ou mais cedo o mundo muda e as estratégias para lidar com ele têm de mudar sob pena de ficarem obsoletas.

Interessante como a transformação de um mercado de nicho num mercado maior acabou por tornar inadequada uma estratégia até então bem sucedida. O caso da Whole Foods, "How Whole Foods Can Emerge from a Slump", deve servir de aviso para quem trabalha para nichos que estão a crescer fortemente.

Conspiração (parte II)

Parte I.

A conspiração continua. Desta vez via "To change the game, change the business model":

"Change the interaction and you’ll find a different business model.
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Seen from a traditional business perspective, businesses are just business models competing against each other; it’s why we have all this sameness out in the world. But what if you shift your perspective, look at things differently and change the components of the business model?"

Curiosidade do dia

Então a culpa dos nossos males foi da troika, "Troika "cortou" a felicidade dos portugueses".

Assim, é difícil aprender a não voltar a cometer os mesmos erros.

PS: Há os que acreditam em pagar a dívida, trouxas, segundo outros.

Conspiração

Parece uma conspiração ... depois de "Cuidado com as explicações generalistas simplistas" encontro outro trecho que me fez regressar à tal reunião:

"You can dollarize anything!
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I am always excited when I hear stories about companies that have transitioned from being a product-focused company deriving over 8o percent of their revenue from unit sales to a service-oriented one deriving over 8o percent of their revenue from consulting and other services. And this happens all within the same industry with the same customers! These companies accomplish this because they understand the value of all the things companies do, and they offer clients economically attractive alternatives. ... Similar to what you would do in product development or in reverse-engineering, you are using a cross-functional team to understand how much it would cost you to deliver a particular service. Then you try to understand the cost that a customer incurs when they perform that service themselves. These services could be maintenance, application decisions, plant or supply chain management, or any other areas that a company could potentially outsource. If you can document a way to offer that service more economically (cost savings) or do it better (creating a revenue opportunity), you have the ability to conduct a rational, value-based talk with customers."

Trechos retirados de "Dollarizing Differentiation Value: A Practical Guide for the Quantification and the Capture of Customer Value"

Viemos de longe e o que nós andámos para aqui chegar! (parte II)

Há dias o @nticomuna chamou a atenção para este desempenho a nível do turismo (dados do INE):

Recordar "A alternativa de qualidade" e, sobretudo, "A economia não é um jogo de soma nula".

Até que enfim que leio opiniões mais avisadas do sector da hotelaria:

"CEO do Vila Galé assume que o alojamento local completa oferta turística.
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"Não sou nada radical e acho que há espaço para todos. O alojamento local tem o seu papel. Em alguns sítios não existiam hotéis e por isso vieram colmatar uma lacuna de falta de alojamento. E outros vieram captar um público que prefere aquele tipo de alojamento", diz o hoteleiro, sublinhando: "Enquanto hotéis temos é de perceber o que está a atrair as pessoas para o alojamento local em algumas situações em detrimento dos hotéis.""

Quase que apetece repetir o título "Viemos de longe e o que nós andámos para aqui chegar!"

Talvez seja explicado por aquela teoria que defendo: infelizmente, na maioria das associações, quem chega ao seu poder são os elementos mais conservadores, os que têm mais a ganhar com o manobrar das relações com o poder regulador/legislador.

Recordar "o poder, para o bem ou para o mal, das associações" e, sobretudo, "O poder das associações e nas associações"

O truque do numerador

Julgo que percebo o porquê da relação de amor-ódio com a produtividade referida aqui:

"I have a love-hate relationship with ‘Productivity’. On the one hand, productivity, in the right circumstances, is an essential part of being an efficient business and delivering value to your customers. Its measurement is also invaluable in assessing the effectiveness of your efforts to improve. However, far too many businesses believe that they can increase productivity simply by focusing on productivity – manipulating the inputs and outputs of the productivity metric."

Julgo que o autor considera produtividade e eficiência como equivalentes. Na equação da produtividade:

O truque está em perceber que nada nos obriga a manter constante o numerador. Quando percebemos que não estamos prisioneiros de um numerador constante, percebemos que produtividade pode ser mais do que eficiência, pode ser eficácia, pode ser aumento do preço unitário. O truque é tão importante que resolvi fazer da sua divulgação uma das minhas missões mais importantes.

Recordar "Acerca da produtividade, mais uma vez (parte I)" (Agosto de 2011)



Trecho retirado de "We need to stop confusing productivity with business performance"

Que faz o quê no ecossistema

Fiquei contente por descobrir em "Dollarizing Differentiation Value: A Practical Guide for the Quantification and the Capture of Customer Value" coisas que escrevo aqui no blogue desde sempre e que não vejo muito replicadas:

"Finally, we have the common situation where you sell through distribution. This could be sales through an industrial distributor or solutions provider, but the most challenging situation is when you sell to consumers via a retailer. These B2B2C situations require two distinct value propositions and value stories, which means you have to expend twice the effort. You can't afford to skip one of these dollarization and story creation efforts if you want to know the full size of your value pool and take advantage of it. The retailer will require the kinds of argumentation you have created in this process so far: rational, fact-driven, professional, and fully dollarized, as I explain in figure 7.10. 

The consumer story may also be dollarized, but it will depend heavily on an emotional component, too. You are using your stories to manage and influence perceptions. Getting close to consumers changes how you extract information, manage differentiation, and do the dollarization. Start by talking to customers first, getting their vocabulary, and getting the facts or a range of facts. But keep in mind that the benefits are often emotional in a way that may defy straightforward dollarization.
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Your strongest position comes when you can demonstrate a "pull" effect for the retailers, which means you can document that your value stories to consumers are driving demand in general—in the best case, demand at that particular retailer. The same kinds of communication challenges exist in any multichannel situation, as described in figure 7.11. You have to understand who does what in your ecosystem, [Moi ici: Até o termo ecossistema é um termo com marca registada aqui no blogue!!!] and therefore who is a recipient of messages and who is both a recipient and a multiplier. You need to understand who you are talking to and what kinds of value messages they want to hear on their own terms."

Recordar postais como:

• "People, not businesses, buy products" (Novembro de 2016)
• Balanced Scorecard (parte V) (Agosto de 2016)
• Trabalhar o ecossistema (Abril de 2016)
• Sem uma estratégia clara, come on... BSC? (parte II) (Julho de 2014)
• O sucesso no novo mercado interno também passa por esta mudança (Janeiro de 2013)
• Arquitecto de paisagens competitivas (parte III) (Junho de 2012)
• Arquitectar a co-criação de valor a nível do ecossistema da procura (Julho de 2011)
• Como é o ecossistema da sua organização? (Abril de 2010)

Curiosidade do dia

Imagem retirada de "Schäuble: quem nos avisa nosso amigo é"

You are supposed to win deals

A fazer lembrar um poema de Brecht este texto "So Good It Sells Itself":

"Your product is not so good that it sells itself. If it were, you would be unnecessary.
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Your product may be far better than your competitors’ products.
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Your product may be different from anything on the market now.
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Your product may produce better outcomes.
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Your competitors believe their product is better than yours.
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The reason you want a product that is so good that it sells itself is so that you don’t have to sell. You want to make selling easy, and you believe—mistakenly—that your product, your service, and your solution is what is supposed to win deals. The very opposite is true: You are supposed to win deals."

Cuidado com as explicações generalistas simplistas

Nos últimos anos temos lido aqui e acolá acerca do regresso do vinil, do regresso da cassete, do regresso da livraria, do regresso dos jogos de tabuleiro.

Há dias numa reunião alguém defendia uma tese muito interessante, contrária ao senso comum do mainstream, acerca da decadência, ou antes, acerca das causas da decadência nas vendas de um produto supostamente vítima da internet.

Lembrei-me logo dessa reunião ao ler:

"IN GRANITE CITY, ILLINOIS, a sleepy town of 29,000 where the laws of time seem not to apply, a just-opened Family Video storefront beckons customers with signs promoting the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Inside, long rows of DVDs line aisles festooned with placards offering two movie rentals for a dollar, and at the register a smiling cashier greets regulars by name.
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Hoogland insists that Family Video had no trouble competing with bigger players, [Moi ici: Blockbuster e Movie Gallery] and he sees few parallels between those companies and his own. “Everybody thought the reason they went away was because of digital,” he says. “But in reality that wasn’t the case. They weren’t very well-run businesses. They had a lot of debt, leases that were poorly negotiated, and they also were sharing revenue with studios quite a bit. They made a lot of poor decisions.”
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Family Video has taken a different approach. Instead of accepting discounted movies in exchange for agreements to split revenue, as Blockbuster did, it has opted to buy films outright and keep 100% of rental proceeds, which has paid off in the long run. Hoogland has also kept his stores entirely company-owned, and he keeps costs down by making many of the items needed for new locations in-house—everything from shelving to point-of-sale software. Most important, though, the company owns just about all the real estate underpinning its stores. As a result, Hoogland has been able to adapt now that sales are beginning to fall. He has shrunk the square footage of many of the video stores, put up drywall and leased out space to other companies, like Subway and H&R Block.
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He has also experimented with ventures of his own, using his properties to launch 11 fitness centers, an electronics-repair chain called Digital Doc and 149 Marco’s Pizza franchises (making him the brand’s single largest franchisee)."

O digital reduz a procura mas essa redução pode ser atenuada com uma gestão inteligente e fazendo da loja uma plataforma para vários negócios.

Trechos retirados de "The Last Video Chain: The Inside Story Of Family Video And Its $400 Million Owner"

Estratégia executada por um portfolio de projectos

Esta ideia:

"What makes the strategic journey unique is that it’s perpetual – you never actually reach your destination. It is a highly uncertain journey where the terrain is constantly shifting and there are more things outside of your control than within them. It is much more like an explorer’s journey through the wilderness than it is a highway trip. More and more it is a journey where following the familiar, well-trodden path can get you hopelessly lost before you even realise that you are off course.
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Projects are the perfect vehicle for today’s strategic journey
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In the Tao Te Ching, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. When talking about a strategic journey, strategic improvement projects are the most effective way to take those steps. Through these projects, and a project-mindset, we can take decisive action toward our strategic goals… one step at a time.
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Most importantly, they are short-duration, hard-hitting activities that can be carried out by a relatively small cross-functional team. They should be targeted on a single specific outcome that delivers strategic value – either on its own or as one phase in a longer program – rather than on low-value activities."

É seguida por mim há vários anos:

"Quando falo de sistemas de gestão tento passar a ideia de que o sistema de gestão ideal traduz-se num portfolio de iniciativas, num portfolio de projectos, alinhados por uma estratégia. Tudo o resto é treta de consultor e de auditor, para justificar honorários.
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Só as iniciativas, quando implementadas, quando executadas, mudam uma organização. Tudo o resto, estratégia, mapa da estratégia, balanced scorecard, indicadores, metas,... não passa de conversa de café, enquanto não começarmos a mudar a realidade!!!" (Junho de 2007)

E:

"Um sistema de gestão concebido desta forma, é na essência uma estrutura móvel, um portfolio de projectos de melhoria," (Fevereiro de 2007)

Trechos retirados de "Why projects are the key to bringing your strategy to life"

O efeito de Mongo na imprensa

Mais um efeito de Mongo, agora na imprensa:

"SCHOLARS of mass media long ago established the theory that part of a society’s bond comes from the shared experience of consuming the same news. We shape our worldview, our opinions — however different they are from one another — after reading about and watching many of the same things. We gain a sense of community, however false or fleeting.
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Even as social media and algorithms started changing all that, there remained media giants like The New York Times that gave millions of readers around the world a unified news experience.
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Or at least that’s how it used to be. By midyear, The Times will begin an ambitious new effort to customize the delivery of news online by adjusting a reader’s experience to accommodate individual interests. What readers see when they come to The Times will depend on factors like the specific subjects they are most interested in, where they live or how frequently they come to the site."

Por um lado, a tribalização das sociedades. Por outro, a customização, a personalização, a chegar a todo o lado.

Trecho retirado de "A ‘Community’ of One: The Times Gets Tailored"

Curiosidade do dia

""Então, nós somos um país e um povo soberano, podemos admitir que uma agência financeira diga se estamos bem ou se estamos mal?", indagou o secretário-geral do PCP, vincando que "quem tem de ver isso e quem tem de afirmar é o povo português". "É o nosso país e não essa agência de notação", vincou o líder comunista."

Um país perde a soberania quando se comporta como um agarrado, incapaz de largar o vício do endividamento. As agências de notação financeira trabalham sobretudo para os credores para que o seu dinheiro não seja emprestado a quem representa risco elevado. Assim, as agências de notação financeira funcionam como uma espécie de porteiro que deixa ou não os agarrados entrarem no Casal Ventoso da dívida.

Por fim, o mais engraçado ainda é isto:

o tipo q quer sair do euro e reestruturar a dívida acha q os credores ñ devem ser aconselhados a verem-nos como lixo https://t.co/kGc6XPlO8w

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) March 18, 2017

Trecho retirado de "PCP diz que não é admissível uma agência financeira determinar o estado da economia nacional"

Qual o potencial de valor capturável?

"The difference between your positive and negative value differentiation is a surplus that I refer to as the value pool. In this case the value is the difference between what you provide and what your reference competitor offers."

Olho para a figura e recordo um autor que ainda esta semana citei numa empresa, Larreché, e:

A originarão de valor, a única que não tem limites, promove a expansão da diferenciação positiva.
A captura de valor tem a ver com a maior ou menor proficiência na actução comercial.
A extracção de valor é interna e tem tudo a ver com a eficiência.

"The first challenge, again, is to figure out the mental frames that your customers (end users, OEMs, distributors) use when they think about your products or services. These lead to your value drivers, and you should have at least three but normally no more than five. Having too few gives you less flexibility in negotiations (fewer levers) and may also indicate that you don't completely understand the customer's business and its complexity. Having too many will muddy your story and blunt the impact of your most important arguments. It may also indicate that you don't understand your customer's business because you can't distinguish with confidence what truly matters to them and what is mere noise.
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Once you have set priorities, you need to think about how to build your value story. What drivers do you start with? I recommend focusing on the biggest bang or the most compelling hook and concluding with a strong value proposition in terms of dollars-and-cents impact. ... When people struggle with these steps, the most common root cause I notice is that they have made their models too complicated. Take a close look at the value drivers you have chosen and their associated impacts. Do you really need to put the tiny marginal savings there? Just because you have created a value model and a value story doesn't mean that the craft of sales and selling has fallen by the wayside. You use the first two drivers to sell them and hook them; then you can switch to a customer conversation.
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Storytelling is essential to making sure customers understand and embrace your story. Even the strongest numbers can't speak for themselves. Use the ratios and then the dollars so that the logic is transparent and intuitive for the customer. Use dramatic, round numbers and skip the decimal points. Your arguments need to be robust, but too much detail is a clear distraction when you are telling a story. That is why this task requires some emotional intelligence as well. If you have too much value, or fail to engage the customer in a conversation, you can lose credibility."

Trechos retirados de "Dollarizing Differentiation Value: A Practical Guide for the Quantification and the Capture of Customer Value"

Papel vs realidade

Imagem retirada de "Why projects are the key to bringing your strategy to life"

Acerca da venda consultiva

"To maximize the power of consultative selling, we have to move beyond a simplistic view of solution selling. It’s not about grilling the buyer but rather engaging in a give-and-take as the seller and buyer explore the client’s priorities, examine what is in the business’s best interests, and evaluate the seller’s solutions.
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Avoid checklist-style questioning.
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 their sales calls felt mechanical and staid. While they gleaned some good information about clients’ needs, allowing them to dovetail the products they were selling into the conversation, there was little buy-in from the prospects they were talking to. There was no sense of shared understanding or that the client had confidence that the seller would be able to help them grow their business.
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Avoid asking leading questions. Nothing falls flatter in a sales call than a question that is clearly self-interested, or makes the seller the master of the obvious.
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Avoid negative conversational behaviors. When sellers are myopically focused on persuading a prospect or winning a piece of business, it creates a negative vibe in the relationship."

Trechos retirados "Sales Reps, Stop Asking Leading Questions"

Habituem-se!

Isto, "Hoteleiros sobem salários para atrair trabalhadores mais qualificados", é um prenúncio!

As duas tendências, Mongo e o reshoring, associadas à evolução demográfica vão obrigar as empresas a ter de pagar mais e mais no futuro.

Por isso, soa-me cada vez mais estranho que um suposto Forum para a Competitividade continue encalhado no "problema dos salários". O que é preciso é concentrar mais esforços para uma de duas coisas: aumentar a eficiência ou subir na escala de valor.

Recordar Bruce Jenner e as fiambreiras. É preciso pensar estratégia!