Ainda o Evangelho do Valor!

Recordar "Pregarás o Evangelho do Valor" e "Pregarás o Evangelho do Valor - sempre". Depois:

"When QPM decided to raise pricing by 8 percent across the board, they didn't just increase profit by 8 percent, but rather by over 20 percent. How is this possible? Just like Amazon, the lion's share of the price increase dropped to QPM's operating profit margin.
...
If your sales team relies on discounts fifty percent of the time in order to close a sale, and the average discount is 5 percent, then ending this practice is the financial equivalent of a 2.5 percent price increase. If your business operates at a 30 percent operating profit margin, this 2.5 percent price increase means an immediate lift to your bottom line profit of 8.3 percent."

Trechos retirados de "Amazon Just Did Something Brilliant to Increase Its Profits (And Why You Should Copy It)"

Acerca da moral

Em 2010 escrevi em, "Cooperação, moral, religião e a tentação...", sobre o que entendia estar na base da moral nas sociedades humanas. Em 2012 voltei ao tema em "A moral de um pensador".

Foi disto que me lembrei ao ler "Rude Drivers Who Merge at the Last Second Are Doing You a Favor, According to Science". Se um rude driver pode fazê-lo, dois rude drivers podem fazê-lo, três rude drivers podem fazê-lo. Se um rude driver pode fazê-lo, então todos podem fazê-lo.

Aquando da I Guerra do Golfo aprendi que para desbaratar um exército, ou parar um supermercado, basta afectar 30% para a coisa ficar ingovernável.

Há demasiados amadores a jogar bilhar. Como aprendi com Taleb:

"in academia there is no difference between academia and the real world, in the real world, there is"

Por isso, acredito que existe diferença entre ovos de umas galinhas e de outras.

Selecção e subsídios

Com Maliranta em 2007 aprendi aquela frase com que se inicia a coluna das citações:

"It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."
Mas, e como isto é profundo:
"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação.
E o grande finale:
"As creative destruction is shown to be an important element of economic growth, there is definitely a case for public policy to support this process, or at least avoid disturbing it without good reason. Competition in product markets is important. Subsidies, on the other hand, may insulate low productivity plants and firms from healthy market selection, and curb incentives for improving their productivity performance. Business failures, plant shutdowns and layoffs are the unavoidable byproducts of economic development."

Com Taleb em 2018 voltei ao tema:

"Systems don’t learn because people learn individually –that’s the myth of modernity. Systems learn at the collective level by the mechanism of selection: by eliminating those elements that reduce the fitness of the whole, provided these have skin in the game." 

E agora volto a encontrar mais tijolos para a estrutura em "Why Leaders Get Stuck at Average":

"We don’t automatically improve as time passes.  The longer we do something the more likely we are to do it like we’ve always done it.
...
Leading doesn’t make you a better leader. Just like playing golf doesn’t make you a better golfer.
.
The only way to improve performance – in any field – is purposeful practice. (Researchers and authors often use the expression ‘deliberate practice’.)"

E em "A basic theory of inheritance: How bad practice prevails":

"All organizations have “best practices”: habits that they have picked up in the past or mimicked from others. Managers often believe that these must be the best ways of doing things, because otherwise market forces would have eliminated them. The theory in the paper explains why this belief may be wrong. Some enduring practices may be harmful without managers realizing it because it is not necessarily the most optimal practices that survive (just like harmful viruses persist in nature)."

You make the magic!

Recordar "you need to enter their personal story" e "Mambo jambo de consultor ou faz algum sentido?".

A ver a penúltima etapa do Giro de Itália vejo um anúncio da marca de bicicletas Canyon, reparem nesta mensagem:

"We make the bike
...
You make the magic!!!"

Os doutorados emigrados

A propósito de "PME nunca vão criar emprego para doutorados", "Reitores: Lugar dos doutorados é nas empresas, não nas universidades" (BTW, estes dois textos fizeram-me lembrar aquele caso desta semana nos Estados Unidos em que os pais puseram o filho de 30 anos em tribunal para o expulsar de casa) e "Portugal continua a ter doutorados a menos e em situação precária", deixem-me contar-lhes uma estória verdadeira.

Investigador em laboratório universitário resolve testar o mercado e ir a entrevista de emprego em empresa privada. A empresa oferece-lhe 1800 euros por mês brutos. Acham que é um mau salário para alguém com menos de 28 anos e sem experiência fora da universidade?

O investigador pergunta quanto é que isso lhe permitirá ganhar líquido. Fazem umas contas de merceeiro na hora e dizem-lhe que isso equivale a cerca de 1200 euros líquidos por mês.

O investigador sorri e declina a proposta. Actualmente tem uma bolsa de investigação, julgo que de 1280 euros. Bolsa pelos vistos não é considerado salário, é considerado apoio ou subsídio. Por isso, tudo o que recebe é limpo de impostos.

Escusado será dizer que este investigador daqui a uns anos será mais um daqueles que andará pelas ruas a protestar porque não tem Segurança Social e tem precariedade laboral.

Qual é o salário médio do país? Quantas PME poderiam investir 1800 euros num investigador? Assim, para os doutorado, trabalhar para o Estado, ficar ad eternum com uma sequência de bolsas de investigação é quase o mesmo que emigrar para outro país onde se ganha mais, ou se pagam menos impostos.

O que medir?

"Replacing an accounting mindset with a decision-oriented mindset is a great starting point for defining relevant measures. [Moi ici: Recordar "Medimos, para que a informação obtida nos ajude a tomar decisões, ou a tomar melhores decisões."]"

Trecho retirado de "Are we measuring what matters?"

Para reflexão

Mão amiga mandou-me este texto, "Galinhas felizes e tabaco americano", num e-mail com um comentário venenoso a acompanhar.

E recordei esta figura:

E deste texto:

"Algum humano se recusa a comer mirtilhos?
.
Algum humano duvida que comer mirtilhos faz bem à saúde?
.
OK, agora, experimentem fazer um cocktail de sumo de mirtilho, comprando os químicos identificados lá em cima na fotografia e, depois, misturando-os nas proporções semelhantes às do fruto...
.
Quantos humanos se recusariam a beber esse "sumo"?"

Quando estudava na FEUP tinha um livro fotocopiado para a disciplina de IEQ (Introdução à Engenharia Química) com uma receita para a composição de sumo de laranja da Flórida. Nessa receita encontrava-se álcool metílico, uma substância cancerígena e que provoca a cegueira.

E volto ao texto:

"Um conselho prévio, procurem na internet os efeitos daqueles compostos aromáticos listados, por exemplo...
"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together"
O pensamento analítico julga que basta analisar os componentes isolados e, depois, juntá-los para perceber o que é o sistema... só que um sistema é mais do que a soma dos seus componentes."

Esta semana tive a felicidade de comer ervilhas que tive de descascar... venham-me dizer que é o mesmo sabor que comer ervilhas congeladas.

Cooperativa - a unidade económica do futuro?

Ontem, enquanto viajava de carro, já não sei qual a motivação, recordei os temas da série "O que passa-se?" e o que tenho escrito aqui ao longo dos anos acerca da cooperativa como uma unidade de trabalho com muito potencial em Mongo.

Depois, à noite encontrei "Des cafés associatifs pour réanimer les cœurs des villages". Acredito que veremos cada vez mais organizações deste tipo.

A evolução das marcas

"Now that change has become the new normal, brands have to evolve from the power of symbolism and the power of narration to the power of reciprocity. As brands morph from symbols and stories to systems, they need to find new ways to be relevant, useful, and entertaining. They need to create hospitable ecosystems and build upon ideas that welcome and nurture consumer relationships now and in the future."

Trecho retirado de "The Ways Customers Use Products Have Changed — but Brands Haven’t Kept Up"

Democratização da produção (parte I)

"Through the first century of mass production, companies emphasized maximizing throughput by making a relatively small assortment of standard products. Since the late 1980s, however, mass markets have fragmented, and firms increasingly turn out a greater variety of products that respond to specific customer demands in different market segments. This responsiveness to demand has led manufacturing plants to reverse a tradi- tional linear organization oriented to pushing out product and scheduling output on the basis of sales forecasts and, instead, to organize assembly in response to real-time orders—“pull.” This requires sophisticated integration of production planning and scheduling of plant operations and supply chain management.
.
But even with these changes of the past decades, manufacturing today still closely resembles its mass production ancestors. We now stand on the edge of radical changes in this system, as a set of new technologies emerging in laboratories and research centers across the United States promises to completely transform the traditional linear manufacturing organization. First, our ability to synthesize new materials has now advanced to a point where human design of these materials will become as critical a step as fabrication and assembly.
...
Second, the boundary between fabrication and assembly has blurred with the introduction of ultraefficient processes, automation, and even continuous manufacturing in batch sizes of “one.” Third, the product is often not just a physical artifact or widget but an integrated solution that involves bundling of physical products with services and software. Finally, there is a trend toward the systematic return of recycled materials to fabrication or even material synthesis."

Trechos retirados de "Making in America From innovation to Market" de Suzanne Berger

Acerca do contexto

Olhar para este mapa:

É difícil perceber o racional por trás do título... adiante.

 Lembra-se do fragilismo?

"Que países considera serem os mais arriscados?
.
Com base nas métricas que monitorizamos, neste momento estamos particularmente preocupados com economias com elevada dependência de financiamento externo. Esta é uma das razões para o severamente mau desempenho da Turquia, particularmente no lado da moeda." (fonte)

Relacionar com "Défice comercial duplica no primeiro trimestre de 2018" e com as mudanças no perfil das exportações e no perfil do emprego.

A invasão das sapatilhas

Hoje em dia é muito comum ouvir empresários do calçado queixarem-se da invasão das sapatilhas e de como elas estão a dar cabo do seu negócio.

Há dias ouvia alguém do retalho dizer que, para rapazes, só conseguia vender sapatilhas, a menos que estivesse por perto a altura das comunhões ou o Natal.

Pois parece que a coisa vai continuar por mais algum tempo e até reforçar-se, "Sneaker sales are growing as sales of high heels tumble":

"As American fashion has slowly become more casual, so has footwear. That trend has become especially apparent in women's sneaker sales, which have surged 37 percent throughout the U.S. in 2017. Meanwhile, sales of high heels have declined 11 percent during the same time period, according to the NPD Group's Retail Tracking Service.
...
"It's becoming kind of a basic consumer need to have comfort and the desire to be comfort because everybody's so busy and running around all the time," Beth Goldstein, NPD's executive director and industry analyst for fashion footwear and accessories, told CNBC.
.
"Brands that are focusing on comfort are doing better, because that something that women of all ages want," she said. The sneaker trend will likely continue in the double digits for the next few years, Goldstein added, as it becomes more of a lifestyle choice."

Não me admiro!

Quando existiam dinossauros no planeta Terra eu associava a marca Marks & Spencer a tudo menos low-cost. Trabalhava num fornecedor português da marca e associava-a a exigência na qualidade.

Hoje, os fornecedores portugueses da marca queixam-se da exigência paranóica no preço (custo).

Tendo em conta esta evolução:

E a importância do alinhamento entre estratégia, posicionamento da marca e operações, não me admiro com esta evolução "Marks & Spencer confirms expanded store closure programme".

Estratégia a sério implica sacrifício, implica trade-off, não é compatível com ser rico e ter saúde em simultâneo:

"there are no real surprises in Mr Rowe’s new strategy, which includes focusing on the quality and fit of clothing, “sharper” ranges, lower prices but less promotional activity." (fonte)

Estratégias possíveis

Um artigo longo, mas muito interessante, "Your Change Needs a Strategy".

5 tipos de estratégias possíveis em função da situação da organização:

• ‘Planned itinerary’
• ‘River crossing’ ("in certain contexts, we are unable to gain clarity on the means of change. In this case the appropriate change strategy is one we call ‘river crossing’. The end state is clear, but we need an exploratory approach to the path, taking one step at a time while keeping an eye on our destination.")
• ‘Hill climbing’
• 'Scouting and wandering’("There a strategy for change, odd as it may seem, which is organized around neither a clear end state nor clear means. This change is not driven by any immediate moves which seem obviously good, nor by any target state, but by curiosity, of a kind that will be useful in the long run.")
• ‘Escape the swamp’ ("Like ‘search and wandering’, this is not driven by a particular means, and the only clear aspect of the target state is that it must incorporate substantial and urgent change. We can call this ‘escape the swamp’. It applies in pressured situations such as the early stages of a turnaround, where there is limited time or resources to identify specific ends or means, but we are nevertheless driven to change.")

Interessante as possibilidades: ‘River crossing’, 'Scouting and wandering’ e ‘Escape the swamp’.

"imposto revolucionário"

Este texto "Now on Offer at the Supermarket: Freshly Squeezed Suppliers" fez-me pensar num e-mail   que me re-encaminharam recentemente.

Trabalhar para clientes grandes é estar sujeito a "imposto revolucionário".

"O que passa-se?" (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Começa a ser interessante este aumento na frequência de artigos sobre a produção em Mongo e como se afastam do mainstream. Mais um, "Only Digital Manufacturing Can Create The Smart, Customized, On-Demand Products Consumers Want":

"Ask someone to describe manufacturing today, and they’ll probably describe giant machines operating in tandem along an assembly line putting together a product in vast quantities.
.
But as someone who works in manufacturing today, I can tell you that mass production – which has dominated how we’ve made things since the Industrial Revolution – is no longer the predominant manufacturing model.
.
Consumers today want products that are smarter, more customized and available on demand. The only way companies can satisfy this need is by creating a new business model that applies digital manufacturing strategies. Digital manufacturing – which combines software with physical manufacturing – can help manufacturers iterate faster, customize more, reduce lead times and respond more quickly to market changes."

Qual a direção de Mongo?

"Shorter Product Life Cycles: We may not always need the latest and greatest technologies, but we want them.
...
Greater Customization: Creating customized products is neither efficient nor cost effective with current mass production strategies.
...
Consumers want products that are smarter, more customized and available on demand. But consumer product, manufacturing companies and supply chain partners simply can’t meet this demand using the same business model we’ve used for decades. Instead, we need to understand and apply digital manufacturing strategies and embrace new tools that streamline operations."

Melhorar

De "Google Has an Official Process in Place for Learning From Failure--and It's Absolutely Brilliant":

"1. Identify the most important problems.
.
"A postmortem is the process our team undertakes to reflect on the learnings from our most significant undesirable events,"
...
2. Create a record.
.
"Our next step is to work together to create a written record for what happened, why, its impact, how the issue was mitigated or resolved, and what we'll do to prevent the incident from recurring,"
...
3. Promote growth. Not blame.
.
"Removing blame from a postmortem can enable team members to feel greater psychological safety to escalate issues without fear,"
...
The key is to encourage your people not to play "the blame game." Rather, you want them to focus on improvement and learning.
...
Remember, everyone makes mistakes. The question is, not "what if," but instead, what did we learn?"

E de "Toyota’s Secret: The A3 Report":

Aceleração

"Being on trend no longer guarantees sales and profitability in the fashion sector. In minutes, consumers can spot, own, and share a trend on social media, from any corner of the globe. As a result, hits can sell out rapidly, while misses do not move, even with heavy discounting.
.
The traditional product-development model is too slow. How do fashion brands outpace competitors? When we looked at differences between top and bottom performers, we found that top performers routinely use consumer insights very early in the product-design process and can have products ready for purchase in weeks, not months.
.
But established brands have great difficulty doing either well. This needs to change, as up-and-coming brands are breaking the rules and resetting consumer expectations. [Moi ici: Este título diz tudo "The Customer’s Time is The Only Time"]
...
Top performers make speed to market a top priority and get faster and faster. Top-performing companies can deliver product to market in less than six to eight weeks. The typical lead time in the industry is more than 40 weeks—far too long to stay ahead of consumers [Moi ici: Imaginem um empresário, ou um encarregado, habituados a sonhar com um regresso ao passado, às séries grandes, a um ritmo mais lento, ao ler estas linhas...]

Trecho retirado de "The need for speed: Capturing today’s fashion consumer"

E isto também vai ter o seu impacte "What Should French Fashion Do With Its Unsold Clothing?"

BTW,

"Winners have significantly reduced time to market, but they also recognize that not every product requires a speedy supply chain. Leading fashion companies have divided their product lines into the following supply-chain segments, based on sales predictability:
.
Long cycle for basics. Long lead times of six months or more are acceptable for basics and never-out-of-stock items. Optimized sourcing gets the best value for money on these products.
Shorter cycle for the core seasonal collection. Retailers can use advanced visual-recognition tools to identify styles and colors trending on social-media sites.
Express cycle for new in-season products. An even shorter cycle of three to six weeks from design to delivery allows brands to inject novelty or innovation within a single season.
Read-and-react model for new and untested products. Close monitoring of these items during the season (for example, for trending prints and colors) ensures fast replenishment of top sellers and easier cancellation of slow movers.
Test model for the riskiest products. Launching virtual or small test batches of a sharply trending item provides insight into the consumer response before committing fully to a product."

"There has to be enough energy for them to stop something and start something"

"Des: If you’re a startup founder, what’s a single step you can take with Jobs?
.
Bob: The greatest single step you can make is to actually talk to somebody who recently purchased you, and talk to somebody who recently quit you – or quit the competitor that you’re going after. By understanding these switching moments, you’re pulling a thread. And then once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it; you’ll see it over and over again.
.
The first step is always a set of interviews. I’m not talking about surveys. Literally get them on the phone and ask the basic question: why was today the day they signed up for this product? The thing you have to realize is that it’s not random, and you have to dig as hard as you can past the bullshit stuff they’ll tell you upfront. There’s always something deeper, because nobody really wants to switch. Habit is the strongest force of all, and people will just keep doing what they’re doing unless something gets in the way or something better comes a long. There has to be enough energy for them to stop something and start something.
.
Just go talk to your customers. That’s where this all began."

Trecho retirado de "Bob Moesta on unpacking customer motivations with Jobs-to-be-Done"

"The only reliable way to gather this evidence is by exploring what customers did in the past or will do in the present. Asking them what they’ll do in the future, e.g. “Will you use…”, puts you in the land of biases and should be avoided."

Trecho retirado de "Find Better Problems Worth Solving with the Customer Forces Canvas"

"I only care about what was going on in their life"

"Someone might tell you: “I went to give a report, and all of a sudden my bosses went crazy because it wasn’t the right data, and they made me look bad. So I have to find something better.” It’s usually the things they blame themselves for. They don’t say it’s about the product; it’s a separation between their experiences and product. You have to dig deeper than that: it’s really about seeing how products fit into people’s lives.
.
Trying to look at your customer through your product is like looking through a peephole in a fence. You can only see the little interactions they have, as opposed to getting above it all, looking at their life, and seeing how you actually fit in. That’s where the interview takes a turn, because most people always think you’re going to talk about the product. Instead, you’re talking about them.
.
When a lot of companies first start using JTBD they think, “I need you to ask about this feature and that feature.” I don’t care about any of those things. I only care about what was going on in their life that made them say, “Today’s the day.” Those are the pylons and the foundations by which people do things. They don’t think it’s part of your world as a product person, but they are the actual foundations by which you get pulled into their world."

Trecho retirado de "Bob Moesta on unpacking customer motivations with Jobs-to-be-Done"