"We become what we do"

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

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

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

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

No one learns to ride a bike from a manual.

...

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

No change, no art.

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

That’s backward.

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

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

We become what we do.”

Trechos retirados de "The Practice" de Seth Godin.

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

Trecho retirado de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan. 

Giving a shit

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

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

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

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

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

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

Estratégia não é "catequese"

 

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

...

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

...

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

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

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

Ontem, guardei este tweet:

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

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

Um outro tweet mandou-me para aqui:

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

Também li isto logo pela manhã:

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

...

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

...

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

Trechos retirados de "entangled thinking" 

 

Para reflexão

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

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan. 

Tenha medo de ter medo

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

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

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

Tenha medo de ter medo!

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

Abraçar a incerteza

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan. 

BTW, há uma semana ouvi a frase:

Catedrais - puras como a noite, frescas como um celeiro

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

Não guardar para amanhã o que se deve fazer hoje

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

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

Prepare a sua empresa para o choque que aí vem.

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

"Stretching goals"

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

Acerca da estratégia

Relacionar:

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

No primeiro texto Roger Martin escreve:

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

Outro texto:

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

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

"piorar antes de começarem a melhorar"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"analyzing pertinent data and helping inform employee decision-making"

Que dados são usados pela sua empresa para tomar decisões?

Que esforços são feitos para assegurar a qualidade desses dados?

Com que frequência são analisados?

"many leaders use past exceptions as justification to ignore the cost of failure. Reasons for this may vary — from a distrust of analytics to a desire to succeed with a bold, unconventional move — but it can prove costly in the long-run.
.
An illustration of this is professional gambling. Casinos thrive because many bettors believe they are smarter than the odds, and that they can beat the house with bold betting. These are the gamblers who drive the majority of casinos’ profits.
...
When relying on prior experience, consider that memory is inconsistent and fallible. We are more likely to recall extremely unexpected events, rather than more mundane occurrences, thanks to “flashbulb memory.”
...
In a business context, flashbulb memory causes people to remember exceptional results, rather than expected outcomes. For example, an executive may vividly remember taking a chance on an unconventional hire and watching that employee grow into a star performer. They are less likely to remember when they made a safer bet on an obviously qualified candidate who turned out to be exactly as competent as expected, or the risky hires that did not work out. The exception becomes the legend.
...
There’s a huge difference between understanding the importance of data and making it a priority in your organization. Every business needs experts responsible for analyzing pertinent data and helping inform employee decision-making.
...
Instinct still has a place in business, but it should not be the only driver of decision-making. By making data and BI a focal point of your team’s strategic thinking, and using it to craft smart organizational policies, leaders can safeguard their businesses against unnecessary failure, and ensure that the company makes more good decisions than bad."

Trechos retirados de "Are You Using Your Data, or Just Collecting It?"

"Nunca esquecer a vantagem alemã"

"Um mês antes da pandemia, a Adalberto Estampados apresentou em Paris, na feira Premiére Vision, uma coleção 100% sustentável, usando apenas matérias-primas recicladas e orgânicas, e na qual se incluía o primeiro tecido embebido em CBD, um extrato da cannabis com efeitos calmantes, anti-stress e anti-oxidante, ou os tecidos com acabamento termo-regulador, que permite aquecer ou arrefecer a temperatura do corpo. Uma área de negócios de aposta crescente, que ficou em stand by com a covid, e que vai agora ser retomada. Susana Serrano, responsável da empresa, promete lançar, em breve, uma nova gama de produtos na área do wealthcare, muito focada nas áreas do desporto, do vestuário e dos têxteis-lar, mas com uma estratégia muito direcionada” para o segmento digital."

A covid é uma distracção, só veio acelerar o que já estava em marcha. Na onda do que escrevi nesta série, "Quantas empresas (parte X)", o futuro é apostar na subida na escala de valor, não há outra alternativa de médio-prazo. 

Só que essa aposta tem de ser complementada com "working forward to increase the WTP". Nunca esquecer a vantagem alemã.

Trecho retirado de "Têxtil prepara-se para novo embate, sem a almofada das máscaras".

Dois adultos perante os mesmos factos...

To experience a different perspective, you may have to travel a bit more pic.twitter.com/xGoUKbTDRC

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) November 5, 2020

 Este tweet é muito bom. Visualiza como dois adultos podem olhar para a mesma situação e verem coisas diferentes ao mesmo tempo. Recordo sempre o candidato Cavaco Silva.

"a class of people who inflict risk on others without being affected by the outcome"

"PAUL SOLMAN: The no-skin-in-the-game class?

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: Exactly. Decision-makers who can drag you into intervention, can drag you into policies that cosmetically feel good, but eventually, somebody pays a price and it’s not them.

There are two levels. The first one, and the most obvious one, is people who intervene in Iraq, thinking, “Hey, we’re going to bring democracy,” or some abstract concept. The thing falls apart, and they walk away from it. They’re not committed with living or owning the toy. They broke it. They don’t own it. Then, the same people make the same mistake with Libya and then now currently with Syria, the warmongers. In the past, historically, warmongers were soldiers. You could not rise in a senate if you didn’t have war experience. [Today if] you have a class of people who inflict risk on others without being affected by the outcome, that class of people is going to disrupt the system, causing some kind of collapse."

Trecho retirado de "Beware ‘faux experts’ who don’t pay for their actions, Nassim Taleb says" 

"Strategy should be a problem-solving technique"

"Strategy should be a problem-solving technique. That is where its true value lies. Strategy is the act of making a new set of choices designed to solve a problem that was created by the interaction of the existing set of choices with the competitive environment. This means that strategy does not start at a particular time of year or with an esoteric and vague SWOT analysis. It starts with an identification of a gap between the aspirations of the organization and the current outcomes it is achieving. If there is no gap, it is a waste of time to do strategy: just keep doing what you are doing."

 Muitas vezes, com PMEs, o problema na base do desafio de formular uma estratégia é o "working forward to increase WTP"

Trecho retirado de "Strategy as Problem-Solving" 

Até quando o país conseguirá endividar-se?

Contaram-nos o tal de "Vamos ficar todos bem!"

Entretanto, "Portugal no top do aumento das insolvências no confinamento".

Os que vivem do orçamento continuam a querer serrar o pouso a partir do qual vivem. Ainda não perceberam a catástrofe, a palavra é mesmo essa, em que estamos a mergulhar desde Março passado. Bem ou mal há uma quantidade de riqueza gerada no país, este ano essa capacidade foi dramaticamente enfraquecida e o dano ainda não acabou de ser feito. O que é que substitui essa riqueza não criada e não impostada? Mais dívida!!!

Até quando o país conseguirá endividar-se?

"working forward to increase WTP"

 

 "Businesses have an incentive to determine consumers’ willingness to pay for their products or services. By estimating WTP and working backward to determine price, firms can confidently maximize profit margin while capturing as much value as possible from the consumer."

A mim o que me atrai mais é o "working forward to increase WTP".

Quando as empresas se concentram no preço e na eficiência concentram-se na progressiva erosão do WTP quando nada se faz para influenciar a percepção do cliente.

Trecho retirado de "Willingness to Pay: What It Is & How to Calculate"

"“all data and no anecdote” isn’t going to get you very far"

 Um texto, mais um, de Seth Godin, bom para reflexão:

"That’s a criticism, of course. A report, study or testimony that’s all anecdote with no data carries little in the way of actionable information.

On the other hand, if you want to change people’s minds, “all data and no anecdote” isn’t going to get you very far.

We act on what we understand, we understand what fits into our worldview and we remember what we act on."

Que estórias associamos aos produtos e serviços que desenvolvemos e vendemos?

Trecho retirado de “All anecdote and no data” 

O respeitinho excelentíssimo senhor phd doutor engenheiro arquitecto

 

Ao ler esta estória "Polémica no Politécnico por causa da palavra “colegas”" lembrei-me logo da estória dos acidentes de aviação na Korean Airlines relatados por Malcolm Gladwell no livro "Outliers".

"Gladwell did not return a request for comment, but in summarizing his ideas for Fortune magazine in November 2008, he said Korean Air's problem at the time was not old planes or poor crew training. "What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical," he said.

"You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S." he added. That's dangerous when it comes to modern airplanes, said Gladwell, because such sophisticated machines are designed to be piloted by a crew that works together as a team of equals, remaining unafraid to point out mistakes or disagree with a captain.

To Gladwell, this may have explained why Korean Air Flight 801 crashed into a hill while on approach to an airport in Guam in 1997, killing 223 people. In addition to a series of misfortunes, including bad weather, an offline warning system, and outdated charts, the co-pilot was afraid to question the poor judgment of the pilot, wrote Gladwell—a fatal mistake.

Similarly, Gladwell assigned blame for the 1990 crash of Avianca Flight 52 in Long Island, New York, to human error caused by cultural differences. The plane ran out of fuel while circling JFK, leading to 73 fatalities. The pilots of the Colombian airline did not assert themselves enough with air traffic control when communicating that they were running out of fuel, wrote Gladwell.

Gladwell argued that in Colombia, as in Korea, cultural norms tended to dictate that people avoid directly questioning authority—in this case, the authority of controllers who had asked the Avianca plane to keep holding."

Trechos retirados de "Could Malcolm Gladwell's Theory of Cockpit Culture Apply to Asiana Crash?"