"you can’t be exceptional in the marketplace unless ..."

“too many companies focus too narrowly on the details of price, performance, and features when they explain their offerings to customers.
...
I appreciate that leaders who aspire to do big things can’t lose sight of the small things that make such a huge impression inside and outside the organization.
...
Whether you’re building a lovemark or just spreading some love, you can’t be exceptional in the marketplace unless you create something exceptional in the workplace. Your brand is the outward expression of your culture, your culture is the platform that sustains your brand.”

Excerto de: William C. Taylor. “Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways”. Apple Books.

Que rearranjos vão emergir? (parte II)

Parte I.

"Hyundai said it had to shut down all its car factories in South Korea after running out of components from China as disruptions caused by the coronavirus outbreak rippled through the global manufacturing supplychains.
.
The world’s fifth-biggest carmaker by sales said it was searching for new sources of engine wire-harness after problems in the supplies of the core electric componentry from China, as executives at several carmakers and auto suppliers warned plants in Europe and the US are only weeks away from being forced to close.
...
Pressure is building on supply companies to maintain output and protect staff, with parts makers Continental and Thyssenkrupp both holding crisis meetings earlier this week.
.
“We are working closely with our suppliers and customers to minimise any disruptions,” said Continental, which runs 50 sites in China, and makes parts for most main European carmakers."

Entretanto, em linha com o que me contaram ontem ao almoço - "Coronavirus disrupts display panel production in China, spurring supply shortfalls and rising prices"

A pergunta mantem-se no ar. Que rearranjos irão emergir como consequência do crescente proteccionismo, aumento de salários na Ásia, exigências de Mongo e da rapidez/flexibilidade, e desta crise?

Trechos retirados de "Carmakers struggle with supply chain disruption" publicado no FT de ontem.

"dirty secrets are about what’s happening in here"

“How do we get better at anticipating embryonic issues and opportunities before they emerge?’
If emerging trends are always preceded by a tail of weaker signals, then disruptive change is due not so much to the absence of signals, as it is to do with organisations having either (i) poor detection (failure to look in the right spots) or (ii) poor perception (failure to attach relevance to the signals).
Because embryonic issues appear as weak signals lacking statistical significance, the usual supporting mechanism of data is not available. Understanding processes for change is much more important.
...
When looking for sources of future change, the natural inclination is to look externally, to what is happening out there. However, dirty secrets are about what’s happening in here, uncovering the organisation’s enemies within that have the capacity to cause self-implosion. In my experience, most organisations and industries have their share of dirty secrets. And almost without exception, managers are very poor at addressing these issues ahead of a crisis.
While we remain fascinated by the potential for external discontinuities, recent events have demonstrated the disruptive capacity of internal dirty secrets when they are exposed.
...
To confront these internal issues, managers, industry leaders and governments need to ask themselves:
Which practices are the public unaware of, but if they were, it would alter their perception of who we are and what we do?
...
What cultural hypocrisies underpin our operations or performance?
...
What are the frustrations customers have with our products or services?
What roadblocks do our processes or regulations put in the way of the customer’s experience?
What unnecessary margins can others target?
Do we give our customers a reason to stay?"

Leio estes trechos e faço logo a ponte para os factores internos do contexto das organizações na ISO 9001:2015.
Trechos retirados de “Rethinking Strategy” de Steve Tighe.

‘I can’t be real with this person.’

"“Everyone is so intent on expressing their own opinion, or they’re so distracted by technology or by their own thoughts, that it’s making us isolated, misinformed and intolerant. I wanted to raise awareness of the value and great joy of listening.”
...
everyone had a great story to tell if you could be bothered to talk to them properly and listen to what they had to say.
...
“Anyone who has shared something personal and received a thoughtless or uncomprehending response knows how it makes your soul want to crawl back into its hiding place,” she writes. “Whether someone is confessing a misdeed, proposing an idea, sharing a dream, revealing an anxiety or recalling a significant event – that person is giving up a piece of him or herself. And if you don’t handle it with care, the person will start to edit future conversations with you, knowing: ‘I can’t be real with this person.’”"

Trechos retirados de "How to be a good listener: my mission to learn the most important skill of all"

Fugir da comparação pelo preço

Elementos relevantes para apoiar uma reflexão por parte de quem trabalham com OEMs, mesmo que não do sector automóvel. Fugir da comparação pelo preço:

"many automotive suppliers are under the impression that OEMs only choose to buy from them if they offer the best price. Our experience tells us this is only half true, at best. While price is a key criterion for OEMs when selecting suppliers, they also take into account many other criteria, such as plant location and delivery track record. Neglecting these is a surefire way to harm your chances of establishing a business relationship with automotive manufacturers. Suppliers need to understand the entire selection process in order to be truly successful with a targeted OEM. Answering these three key questions will ensure you take the right approach:

• How are OEMs making purchasing decisions?

• Who makes the decisions?

• Which criteria do OEMs consider?

...
Provide your direct contacts with convincing argumentation about your product’s superior quality so they speak up for you in internal meetings. Remember: If the buying team doesn’t have proof that your products are a) more reliable, b) more effective, or c) more efficient than your competitors’, they have no option but to choose solely based on your price."

Trechos retirados de "Avoiding Price Pressure: 3 Tips to Negotiate Successfully With OEM Buying Centers"

"explore the future by doing"

“Co-creating: Crystallizing and Prototyping the New.
.
The aim of co-creating is to build landing strips for the future through prototypes that allow us to explore the future by doing.
.
The prototypes evolve based on the feedback they generate. The “observe, observe, observe” of the co-sensing phase becomes “iterate, iterate, iterate.” This movement is inspired by design thinking and blended with presencing principles to make it relevant to profound shifts in social fields.
...
Outcomes of Co-creating
2. A set of connections with stakeholders and partners that are relevant for taking the prototype to pilot and scale
3. Enhanced leadership and innovation capacities for dealing with disruptive innovation
4. A team spirit that could help change the leadership culture in the company
5. Creative confidence among the team members to take on big and complex projects"
A prototype is a microcosm of the future that you want to create. Prototyping means to present your idea (or work in progress) before it is fully developed. The purpose of prototyping is to generate feedback from all stakeholders about how it looks, how it feels, how it matches (or does not match) people’s needs and aspirations, and then to refine the assumptions about the guiding project. The focus is on exploring the future by doing rather than by analyzing. As the folks at IDEO have put it, the rationale for prototyping is “to fail often to succeed sooner” or to “fail early to learn quickly.”
A prototype is not a plan. It is something you do that generates feedback. But a prototype is also not a pilot. A pilot has to be a success; by contrast, a prototype may fail, but it focuses on maximizing learning.”

1. A set of refined prototypes—living microcosms of the future—that have generated meaningful feedback regarding the guiding questions and objectives of the lab

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

Lidar com as restrições (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

"A recent academic study reported that even in high-performing companies with clearly articulated strategies, only 29% of employees knew what their company’s strategy was. This is no isolated finding – survey after survey reports that employees seem to be in the dark when it comes to their organisation’s strategy, despite claims by senior management that their vision is clear, clearly communicated and well understood.
...
Strategy is all about making difficult choices—what the organisation will do and more importantly, what it will not do.
...
It is amazing how many organisations fall into the trap of not making the required choices. One reason for this is the fact that these are not easy choices to make – ex ante, there are many possible answers to each one of the three questions. Should we target customer X or customer Y? Should we undertake distribution A or B? Should we offer service P or Q? Nobody knows for sure and even though analysis could eliminate some uncertainty, it will never eliminate all of it.
.
As a result, debates, disagreements and politicking will precede these decisions. Yet, at the end of the day, a firm cannot be everything to everybody – it has to allocate its limited resources among the various options. Hence, clear and explicit decisions need to be made. These choices may turn out to be wrong but that is not an excuse for not making the choices.
.
Another reason for the failure to make the necessary choices is the fact that saying ‘no’ to people is difficult and can often create bad feelings in the organisation."

Trechos retirados de "Three reasons why your strategy could fail"

Para reflexão

"À titre de contre-exemple, il cite la Nouvelle-Zélande, un pays qu'il connaît autant qu'il affectionne. «Là-bas, ils sont parvenus à concilier, l'image, la marque et le développement durable tout en disposant de cahiers des charges très ouverts, reprend-il. En outre, ils n'oublient jamais qu'ils font du business et ne s'endorment pas. » Et d'ajouter «Aujourd'hui, l'organisation des filières agricoles en France ne nous permet pas d'avoir une vision globale. Les règlements sont de plus en plus restrictifs, alors que les enjeux mondiaux nous imposent de produire plus. Et pour produire plus, il s'agit de produire autrement. Il faut se remettre en question. J'ai parfois le sentiment qu'ici, le changement effraie. On a peur de tout en France. Le charme de notre viticulture se résume à deux phrases "On n'a jamais fait cela" et "On n'a jamais fait comme ça". Enfin, trop de gens pensent que nous pouvons régler les problèmes de qualité avec des lois, des règlements et de la lourdeur administrative. Nous voulons trop nous protéger et, à la fin, nous nous fragilisons. Nous avons besoin d'un grand débat viticole en France.» 

Trecho retirado de "Coup de colère à Chablis"

Que rearranjos vão emergir?

A economia actual é isto:

Um mecânico italiano que esteve há dias na China a reparar máquinas e agora estava a reparar máquinas em várias empresas de Felgueiras.

Há dias no Twitter ironizei:

ainda bem que o coronavirus não se transmite através dos bens fabricados na China e em exposição brevemente nas prateleiras de Primavera-Verão

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) January 28, 2020

Agora em "When China Coughs, Supply Chains Fall Ill" publicado no Wall Street Journal de ontem:

"As the spread of the new coronavirus in China causes more factory shutdowns, the effect on global industrial supply chains could linger for years. China now makes up more than twice the share of global merchandise exports it did in 2003, when the SARS virus hit. Guangdong province alone exported more in 2018 than China did as a whole 17 years ago.
.
Manufacturers already gripe about the effect of the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls in January or February, on their business as Chinese factories shutter. But the public-health response to the virus this year effectively means extending the holiday. China’s industrial output could be running at a similarly low level for a much longer period.
...
Global supply chains are considerably more complex than they were in 2003, shortly after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Even items with a marginal quantity of Chinese content will be affected as production is halted.
...
The current lockdown is of a scale beyond either SARS, floods in Thailand or the earthquakes in Japan. China’s industrial heft leaves global manufacturers in a quandary with no obvious parallel, even with shutdowns only just beginning. The impact may be felt for years to come."

Já no NYT li "Coronavirus Outbreak Tests World’s Dependence on China":

"Apple is rerouting supply chains. Ikea is closing its stores and paying staff members to stay home. Starbucks is warning of a financial blow. Ford and Toyota will idle some of their vast Chinese assembly plants for an extra week.
...
The mysterious coronavirus that has killed more than a hundred people and sickened thousands has virtually shut down one of the world’s most important growth engines. Desperate to slow the fast-moving virus, the Chinese authorities have extended the country’s national holiday to Feb. 3, and crippled land, rail and air transport. Entire cities have shut down.
...
Automakers like General Motors and Nissan plan to close their factories until the week of Feb. 3 to comply with the longer mandated holiday, while Toyota and Ford said this week that they would close some of their factories a week longer than that because of virus-related disruptions. Companies like G.M., Honeywell, Facebook and Bloomberg restricted travel for employees in China and established their own self-quarantine measures.
...
Wuhan in particular appeals to major companies because it is a major national transport hub. The auto industry, including General Motors, Honda, Nissan and many others, have set up shop there, and many of their suppliers have followed. It is the home to more than one third of all French investment in China.
...
In Thailand, Chinese sightseers spend nearly $18 billion annually, totaling about a quarter of tourist spending.
.
“Chinese tourists are the No. 1 tourists to Thailand,” said Yuthasak Supasorn, the governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand."

Que impacte é que isto pode ter nas cadeias de fornecimento mundiais? Que rearranjos vão emergir?

Lidar com as restrições (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

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

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

• One of the most bankable movie stars in the world

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

• The best CGI houses in the world

• Unlimited time and money

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

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

Lidar com as restrições (parte II)

Na Parte I escrevemos:

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

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

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

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

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

Monitoring risks - Frequency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Each quadrant deserves a different treatment:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Em quem é que eles vão votar?

Ontem ao ler o tweet de resposta:

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

— Gabriel Silva (@GabrielfSilva) January 30, 2020

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

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

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

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

Em quem é que eles vão votar?

Lidar com as restrições

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O futuro do retalho

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

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

Aprender com o futuro (parte III)

Parte II e parte I.

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

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

Impressionante a velocidade a que a coisa se propaga.

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

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

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

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

Espuma dos dias

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

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

Já agora:

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

Fugir da race-to-the-bottom

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outra citação deste blogue é:

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

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

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

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

Lembrei-me da estória dos pêssegos:

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

Aprender com o futuro (parte II)

 Parte I.

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

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

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

— Ben Coates (@bencoates1) January 25, 2020

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

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

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

Demografia e segunda-mão

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

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

Também recordo:

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

E:

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

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

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