segunda-feira, julho 26, 2021

"Focus is about saying no"

"Success has always depended on the ability to set boundaries. Or as Steve Jobs famously put it, "Focus is about saying no."
...
"Good boundaries can positively impact everything from our energy levels to our sense of esteem, to our bank accounts and the quality of our relationships." Many people struggle to set them."

Trechos retirados de "5 Signs You Need to Work on Setting Boundaries, According to a Psychotherapist"

domingo, julho 25, 2021

Comunicar a estratégia

Primeiro, "the message should explain the why behind the choices"

Agora:

"When tasked with describing a strategy, executives will often turn to the many off-the-shelf templates for strategy description that are available online and elsewhere. Avoid this at all costs. Useful as some of these templates are for stimulating thinking and initial discussions, the cookie-cutter style of them is obvious and can convey the implicit message that the organization’s leaders have not thought hard about the strategy. More importantly, the generic nature of such tools leaves little room for the distinctive elements of an organization’s strategy to be identified and communicated. What is needed is a strategy message that reflects the distinctive elements of the organization’s approach, and one that captures the hard-won insights generated by the iterative application of the three activities of strategy mapping, logical formalization, and constructive argumentation.

...

Formulating a strategy argument is an act of thinking; communicating it is an act of rhetoric and persuasion.

...

Focus first on the content of the message. Ideally, a strategy message should hit all of the essential core elements of the strategy, the high-level abstract aspects of the strategy that convey its essence and also seem relevant to people throughout the organization.

What does this mean? It means that, above all, the message should clearly convey the core logic by which the organization succeeds. Recognizing that there are a number of different ways to do this effectively, we believe that the best messages contain four elements:

1. a concise description of the strategic opportunity;

2. a forthright acknowledgment of the primary obstacles to success;

3. an articulation of the logic by which the organization will overcome those obstacles; and

4. a clear connection between the strategy and the organization’s actions.

...

Opportunity. An effective strategy message needs a clear description of the value creation opportunity pursued by the organization. How does the organization create value? This includes relatively high-level statements of the purpose of the organization, such as answers to the question “How does the organization make the world a better place?” But most importantly it should include a clear statement of how the organization creates economic value. Who are the organization’s customers, and how do the company’s products and services generate willingness to pay among them? What are the critical assets and activities required to create this value? Why does (or will) the organization have a superior ability to create value relative to others?

Obstacles. A convincing strategy message is clearheaded and realistic about the obstacles to realizing a strategic goal. In many strategy messages we have seen, organizations are good at describing the enticing potential of the value creation opportunity, but are less than frank and transparent about the challenges associated with capturing that value. As a result, many strategy messages come across as wishful thinking or as suggesting that success will be easy. But the realities of market forces in modern economies mean that sustainable success is hard-won. Failing to acknowledge the obstacles to capturing value does not make them go away. Moreover, the audience for a strategy message—both internal and external—is often well aware that these obstacles exist, so there is little to be gained by sending a message that does not acknowledge the elephant in the room. Doing so suggests the leadership is out of touch with reality.

Logic. The strategy message should provide an explanation for how the organization will overcome the obstacles it faces and realize the opportunity. It is here that the core logic of the organization’s strategy argument takes center stage, ... It is here that people see the connection between actions and consequences and begin to perceive the mechanisms through which the organization will succeed. This is perhaps the most important content dimension because it explains why certain behaviors are important. It is also the dimension most often missing in the strategy messages we have reviewed.

Action. Strategy messages are often communicated in conjunction with strategic decisions, whether large or small. Such decisions present an opportunity for leaders to illuminate the logic of a strategy, and thereby reinforce people’s understanding of how the strategy works. More generally, effective strategy messages use actions as concrete manifestations of the rather abstract ideas embedded in the strategy argument. Because actions are concrete, they provide a firmer basis for people to grasp how the strategy works."

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R.

sábado, julho 24, 2021

Sim, a culpa é mesmo do Passos!

Em Junho passado escrevi aqui:

"E pensa que só acontece aos outros? E como é na sua empresa? Ainda na passada quarta-feira ao telefone tive uma conversa surrealista, parecia um case-study acerca do que são custos afundados. A diferença é que numa empresa o que acontece com ela fica com ela, o mesmo já não se passa quando o decisor é um ministro."

Agora:


Esta semana tive de fazer mais de 1000 km. Tive oportunidade de ouvir mais rádio do que o habitual. Todos os dias nós ouvimos decisões governamentais que estão erradas comparando com economia 1o1, mas não há escrutínio, e quando há é logo apelidado de direita raivosa.

Há os cobardes que pedem aos outros para serem os testas de ferro que eles não conseguem ser... eu vou aguardando, tendo a sorte de viver num mundo que faz o by-pass a Lesboa e às suas quadrilhas:

"Sou um pessimista-optimista. Acredito que enquanto continuarmos assim vamos, como comunidade, enterrar-nos cada vez mais por mais dinheiro que venha da UE para alimentar as elites e o seu património. O meu optimismo vem de pensar no day-after... quando a nossa comunidade estiver preparada. Porque não se pode ter razão antes do tempo, ou alterando o que diz Joaquim Aguiar, os eleitores têm sempre razão, mesmo quando não a têm. Quando a nossa comunidade estiver preparada e retirarmos os pesos, vamos poder fazer o que fez a Toyota ou o que fez a Estónia e a Letónia. Sem espertices saloias, mas com trabalho e com verdade.

Entretanto, vou descobrindo ilhas de não-funcionários e de não-espertos que me vão mantendo a sanidade mental neste mundo de zombies."


Frankenstein laboral

A propósito de "Estas são as 11 mudanças que PCP e PS querem fazer à lei laboral

Recordar a Irlanda

sexta-feira, julho 23, 2021

"the message should explain the why behind the choices"

"An effective strategy message communicates the essential, core elements of the strategy. Someone who hears it or reads it should be able to walk away with a clear mental image of how the organization works, and how it intends to succeed. That is, the message should explain the why behind the choices the organization made. How much detail is provided, as well as which details are shared, depends on the audience in question, of course. The message for the general public may be articulated at quite a high level, while internal audiences and important external stakeholders might receive more detail and insight.

That may sound simple, and in many ways it is—but the potential impact is powerful.

...

a clear basic strategy message communicates the organization’s primary goals to its employees. It conveys the basic value proposition to customers, so that they understand why the organization should be preferred. Finally, it tells potential suppliers, regulators, and other stakeholders what kind of organization they are dealing with and what to expect from it during interactions. A good strategy message sets goals and expectations for the organization, and it provides guidance to others about how to behave.

Unfortunately, organizations typically do a poor—often terrible—job of communicating their strategies, even when they may have a well-defined one that they rely on regularly for guidance. Strategy is, instead, one of the most misused and misunderstood words in the business world. CEOs will routinely say something like, “Our strategy is to win” or “Our strategy is to be No. 1” or “Our strategy is to outdo our rivals” or “Our strategy is to always work harder.”

Strategy messages of this sort typically confuse goals and determination with a plan for how they will win, and how the hard work will pay off. It is like saying that your strategy for winning a football game is to score more points than your opponent or for winning a race is to run the fastest time."

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R.

quinta-feira, julho 22, 2021

A "Request For Improvement"

How many improvement actions are developed each year in your quality management system?

One of these days, I was part of a team presenting a procedure to top management, describing how a process works. One of the top management’s members said something like:
 
“The secret is here! This process is extremely important, and we continue to have a lot of problems with it! We need to improve this process!!!”

As a consultant I jumped into the occasion and recommended following this improvement journey included in a form called "Request For Improvement":


These were my guidelines for the process manager to start the improvement project:

1. Background
Here describe examples, or performance measurement results that illustrate how much the current process is not the most suitable and why it needs to be improved.

We must not start an improvement project based on the abstract desire to improve. We should start with an account based on numbers or stories that tell us what is wrong, what needs to be changed.
At this stage, we do not indicate causes, solutions, or guilty. Just facts!

2. Current situation
Draw a flowchart describing the process.

Is there any type of product, or customer, where process failure occurs more often? What products? Which customers? What are the failure situations?

So far we only work with facts.
Does what was collected allow us to focus attention on specific stages of the process?

3. Set targets
Remember the typical weight loss photos about the before and after? Based on the "Current situation" and the "Background" information we have the before stage. The after stage is the challenge we took on here in 3, and which will be rated at 7. The goal(s) and success criteria(s) must be in the same units as in 1.

4. Root cause analysis
Now start using theory and your knowledge of the process. Why is it we fail more in these products? Why is it we fail more with these customers? Why is it we fail more with these failure motives? List as many theories as possible.

Select the most likely theories and assess the possibility of making a test to validate them. Validated theories, theories that can be manipulated by us and have an impact on the frequency of failures, are root causes.

Considering the determined root causes, if we eliminate or reduce them, what level of performance can we aspire to? Is it in line with the challenge set in stage 3?

quarta-feira, julho 21, 2021

Deixem as empresas morrer!

Recordar Deixem as empresas morrer! 

 



terça-feira, julho 20, 2021

Em Mongo, cuidado com o "plástico"

 “Las marcas o son activistas o no serán”

Leio isto e penso em tanta coisa escrita aqui no blogue ao longo dos anos:

E penso nos gigantes que querem ser tudo para todos e serão vistos, sentidos como fake pelos apaixonados:

A marca pró-Trump será banido pelos anti-Trump e vice versa. A marca pró-Brexit será banida pelos anti-Brexit e vice versa. E isto a um nível cada vez mais granular.

"Las marcas o son activistas o no serán. No hay posición para que una marca no tenga un punto de vista como tendría una persona sobre la sociedad, sobre el planeta e incluso, si quiere, sobre la política de un país. Aquí hay tres grandes ejemplos de marcas de moda. Una es Nike, con Black Lives Matter y, antes, con Colin Kaepernick. Las dos otras son Patagonia y Levi’s. Ambas se posicionaron a favor del voto en las elecciones donde Trump optaba a la reelección. Clarísimamente las marcas tienen que tener una posición clara sobre todo aquello que afecta a la sociedad, a los países donde intervienen y, sobre todo, al planeta. Y en moda, la sostenibilidad y la trazabilidad serán primordiales en el futuro próximo, si no lo son ya actualmente."

segunda-feira, julho 19, 2021

Curiosidade do dia

"O fator mais relevante nas novas medidas em Espanha, admite, nem é a redução de impostos sobre as receitas para 15% (Portugal já dá às PME redução para 17% nos primeiros três anos até 25 mil euros de receitas taxáveis). "É mais relevante uma medida há muito pedida por quem cria emprego em Portugal que pode ajudar já a curto prazo". Qual? "A redução do custo da criação do emprego, em específico, os impostos e contribuições para a Segurança Social". Henriques dá um exemplo: a maioria das empresas tecnológicas que a Bridge In ajuda a entrar no país tenta contratar engenheiros informáticos que recebem salários cinco a dez vezes superiores ao salário mínimo nacional, ou seja, "pagam taxas de IRS perto dos 35%, mais 34,75% da TSU". Resultado? "Cerca de 70% do custo da criação de emprego são impostos" e admite que "as simulações já estão a desincentivar algumas empresas a investir em Portugal".

O gestor admite que o país, com uma população envelhecida, precisa da receita dos impostos para "o importante Estado Social", mas lembra que "o governo deve entender o momento em que o mundo se encontra e as potencialidades que o país tem para acolher empresários e empreendedores globais"."

Trecho retirado de "Espanha atrai startups e nómadas digitais. E Portugal? “Custo do emprego é entrave” 



Como é que é na sua empresa?

"you want constructive arguments to be the default in your organization. In addition, after a productive argument, you want the organization to turn to action, so the people in the organization need to be able to move on, even if the decision made was not the one they would have preferred. Once people walk out of the room, will the plan be put into action, or will the discussion drag on? These goals require attention to broader issues of organizational design, in particular the organization’s dominant values and norms’i.e., its culture.

...

Intel executives believe that any major decision should be able to withstand the most searing criticism that could be leveled against it’and they want to hear those criticisms before the decision is made rather than after the fact. Accordingly, employees are encouraged to disagree and to make sure that their voices are heard before the decision is made. Intel’s strong engineering-oriented culture, with its commitment to facts and reason, helps ensure that these are constructive arguments that do not devolve (too often) into arguing blue.

That’s the Disagree part. The second part, “Commit,” signifies that while you could and should argue vociferously up to the point the decision is made, the arguing should stop once the decision is made. After the decision is made, Intel employees are expected to get on board with the decision, to commit themselves to making it work’no matter what their earlier positions had been in the argument leading up to the decision. So, in essence, Disagree and Commit is a set of ground rules about the process of arguing around major decisions, including expectations about appropriate behavior before and after the decision, and the timing of those behaviors.

...

The leader’s job is to design and maintain a culture where debate and argument occurs regularly and constructively. To that end, the norms listed here provide a good start, but they need to be adapted to any specific organization. Norms about arguing also need to be examined in conjunction with other organizational norms, to ensure that they do not stand in contradiction to each other."

Como é que é na sua empresa? Que liberdade de opinião? Que clima para discussão? Que confronto de ideias?

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R.

domingo, julho 18, 2021

Custo de oportunidade, again!

Há dias, talvez sexta-feira, via Twitter encontrei este texto, "What do economic scholars consider powerful economic knowledge of importance for people in their private and public lives? Implications for teaching and learning economics in social studies" de Niclas Modig.

"Based on Young’s notion of powerful knowledge, acquiring disciplinary knowledge emerging from an economic epistemic community is expected to make an important difference for people when dealing with economic issues in their daily lives. In this regard, this article’s author asked Swedish scholars of economics at higher education institutions what they considered to be the most important economic concepts that people would need to acquire and understand

...

People need economic knowledge to make well-informed decisions when facing economic questions in their private and public lives. However, research from different parts of the world has shown that adults, students and youngsters alike often lack economic knowledge 

...

According to research, the lack of economic knowledge is even pervasive amongst social studies teachers, who are responsible for providing basic economic education [Moi ici: Eheheheh!]

...

The results are drawn from an online questionnaire (see Appendix 1) sent to all identified (419) economists in all 48 higher education institutions in Sweden, except nine economists at the author’s own university. 

...

Two items (questions 10 and 11) in the questionnaire are of particular importance, focussing on what the economists consider to be the most important concepts in economics for people to acquire and understand. Both questions were open ended, making it possible to list an unlimited number of concepts for each question. The concepts were summarised based on frequency and then sorted into broader categories;

...

As shown in Figure 3, opportunity cost is the largest category when the individual (74) and the citizen perspectives (60) are merged, with a total of 134 occurrences, followed by interest, with 51 occurrences (33 from the individual perspective and 18 from the citizen perspective), and marginal concepts, with 49 occurrences (33 from the individual perspective and 16 from the citizen perspective)."

Posto isto, como não recordar João Duque em "Produtividade e tretas académicas" (Junho de 2020):

“Para começar, acho que podemos ir à lista de importações e começar a fazer o que importamos. Se conseguimos passar a fazer ventiladores, porque não outras coisas?”[Moi ici: Até sinto vergonha alheia ao reler isto!]

Ou a estória de reduzir a importação das conservas, "Como se pode ser tão burro e cometer sempre os mesmos erros???"

Recordo a frase de Napoleão:

E recuo a 1986/87 quando tinha cerca de 22 anos, um mundo pré-China, um mundo em que nós eramos uma china, ""um atestado de desconhecimento da realidade" (parte IV)"[Fevereiro de 2016).

Por fim, recordo Abril de 2014 com "Acerca do custo de oportunidade".

"Martha Stewart, let us agree, can iron shirts better and in less time than anyone else in the world. So, does it make sense for Martha Stewart to iron her own shirts? No!" 

sábado, julho 17, 2021

Produtividade é muito mais do que organização

“Comparando agora Portugal com a EU-14, o deficit de produtividade aumenta à medida que os produtos ou serviços são menos básicos e é mais possível fugir ao trabalho manual através da organização. [Moi ici: Come on, é muito mais do que organização. O erro é comparar produtividades e pensar que estamos a comparar numeradores iguais e, portanto, que as diferenças decorrem de denominadores diferentes. Um erro crasso!!!

Por exemplo nos metais básicos a produtividade portuguesa é 74% da dinamarquesa. Mas já nos produtos fabricados de metais é 40%. [Moi ici: Quando comparamos produtos básicos, comparamos produtos suficientemente parecidos. Aqui a questão da organização, da diferença no denominador, explicará parte da diferença. Contudo, nos produtos fabricados isso já não é suficiente porque sendo os produtos diferentes, o numerador é bem diferente

Face à Áustria, nos metais básicos a nossa produtividade é 50% e de apenas 33% nos produtos metálicos fabricados. As percentagens repetem-se face a outros países: EUA, 42% e 31%; ou Suécia, 54% e 37%, respectivamente.

Como se repetem em outras indústrias. Por exemplo na indústria farmacêutica (onde além dos genéricos e subcontratação de fabricação de químicos, há os medicamentos de marca) a produtividade de Israel é 2,6 vezes a nossa e a da Irlanda 7,5 vezes (já corrigida para retirar o efeito das multinacionais que usam a Irlanda apenas por razes fiscais).

Ou seja, à medida que os sectores são menos intensivos em trabalho (onde os ganhos de produtividade são mais difíceis) e mais intensivos em know-how, a produtividade portuguesa "derrapa" crescentemente face à Europeia.”

Primeiro, dois exemplos da metalomecânica, a Vipp dinamarquesa e a Marlin Steel americana. Exemplos que ilustram o que está em causa com casos concretos. Como escrevi em 2006:

"Na semana passada, ao procurar explicar o conceito de produtividade a um grupo de operários, um deles saiu-se com este exemplo: "O que está a dizer é que se pegarmos num metro quadrado de chapa e o utilizarmos para fazer um guarda-lamas de uma motorizada, teremos mais rendimento do que se o utilizarmos para fazer pás, ou enxadas." Eloquente!!!"

Segundo, alguns postais que ajudam a explicar estas diferenças de produtividade:


Podemos vender trigo, ou vender farinha, ou vender bolos, ou organizar festas de aniversário com palhaços e tudo. Subindo na escala de valor, aumentamos a produtividade.

 Aumenta-se muito mais a margem com o aumento de 1% no preço do que a reduzir 1% o custo fixo ou o custo variável.

Como é que se aumentam os preços sem perder clientes? Subindo na escala de valor, trabalhando na willingness to pay (WTP) dos clientes. O erro é trabalharmos para o output da nossa organização em vez de trabalhar para o outcome do cliente.(Abril de 2020)
A típica empresa portuguesa está no estágio da extracção de valor. O mais básico de todos.

Trecho retirado de "Qual o antónimo de Luxemburgo?" publicado no semanário Vida Económica de 16 de Julho de 2021.



sexta-feira, julho 16, 2021

Acerca da formulação da estratégia


 "when formulating a strategy argument, it is often best to start by stating the conclusion that one is trying to support with the argument."

Relaciono isto com o meu velho concreto versus abstracto. Como conseguimos fazer do que temos uma estratégia vencedora?

"Notice that in stating our conclusion, we did so in the present tense. This may seem somewhat odd at first, because (when we were formulating this argument) we were trying to develop an argument about a future outcome. As a result, some may think that the argument should be stated in the future tense or future perfect tense—this would be more accurate grammatically, and would more appropriately acknowledge the provisional nature of our argument. Nonetheless, we strongly advise formulating strategy arguments in the present tense, for two reasons. First, using the future tense makes the logic itself much more difficult to develop and harder to deal with, and we think little is gained. Second, when using the present tense, our conclusion becomes a concise statement of the future we want to see. In fact, one trick for formulating a strategy is to imagine that one has reached that future state, and then think of the process of formulating the argument in the same way as we approached the strategy identification for Southwest and Walmart. In other words, imagine that you will achieve the same level of success as those companies and have been asked to explain why."[Moi ici: Como não recuar a 2007 e pensar em ""imagine o futuro. Tire a foto do futuro. Não vai para lá... JÁ LÁ ESTÁ! Agora, pinte o quadro.""]

"Strategy formulation should be primarily about forging a logical argument for how the firm will accomplish a desired goal. Clear strategy arguments allow leaders to confidently chart a path through an uncertain future. Developing such arguments forces executives to surface and state their assumptions about the future and helps them to identify what needs to happen for a proposed course of action to succeed.

■ When formulating a strategy, concentrate on the logical validity of the argument: Do the premises necessarily imply the conclusions? Validity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for great strategies. Avoid debates about soundness—whether or not the assumptions about the future are accurate predictions. Novel strategies demand more speculation than analyzing an existing strategy and less reliance on established facts.

■ Focusing on validity pays off by surfacing the requirements for success, by being able to identify what needs to happen for the strategy to work. Knowing necessary future conditions allows executives to undertake appropriate actions or investments and monitor important environmental conditions. Identifying the things that have to be true for the strategy to succeed also gives executives insight into how to measure and track progress toward the goal and assess the strategic health of an initiative" 

Recordar "Fazer uma excursão até ao Futuro Imaginado

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R.

quinta-feira, julho 15, 2021

Curiosidade do dia

Há dias desabafei no Twitter:

Hoje ao ouvir o noticiário das 18h numa rádio ouvi esta estória, "Peixes-dourados gigantes encontrados no Estado norte-americano do Minnesota": 



"validity today, soundness tomorrow"

"When setting a strategy for an organization, what we want—ultimately—is one that is based on a sound argument: the logic of success must in the end turn out to be internally and externally consistent. But when assessing a strategy for the future, we have difficulty determining whether or not all of our assumptions are true. We cannot know whether the strategy argument is sound until the future has happened.

...

If we insist on trying to establish the soundness of our argument at the outset, then we run two risks. First, we may waste countless hours debating things that ultimately can only be known in the future, until either someone gives up or collective delusion sets in.

...

A second risk is that—faced with this uncertainty—we may seek comfort in the known. But in doing so, we may end up so conservative in our assumptions that we miss out on the ability to formulate bold and creative strategies. Firms facing disruption certainly cannot afford to restrict themselves to assumptions that they are highly certain will hold in the future. Nor can entrepreneurs. 

...

We recommend a simple, useful mantra in formulating and assessing strategies for the future: validity today, soundness tomorrow. In other words, when formulating a strategy, concentrate on the internal coherence or validity of the argument: do the conclusions follow from the premises as stated? Avoid fights about whether or not the premises are accurate predictions, and instead concentrate on whether the premises necessarily imply the conclusion. The soundness of any given strategy argument can only be discovered as you enact the strategy and monitor its progress. Because validity is a precondition for soundness and therefore success, the work put into formulating valid strategy arguments pays off in the execution stage, both by eliminating strategies that have no chance of success (because they are invalid) and by making clear what the critical assumptions are and what the consequences might be if they turn out not to be true.

If, by articulating a valid strategy, we can specify in exact terms the premises or conditions that need to be true for the strategy to succeed, then we have laid out a set of things (patterns, trends, beliefs, breakthroughs) that can be watched, monitored, and evaluated as the strategy is put in place. This monitoring involves continuously assessing the soundness of the strategy argument. If some of the assumptions begin to look as though they will turn out to be false, then we know that our strategy may be in trouble. Eventually, the strategy argument needs to be both valid and sound to yield sustained strategic success."

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R.

"Every firm is unique"

"Every firm is unique; it has its own unique history. So we cannot predict the impact or effect of a particular strategy or initiative on your firm, because we know nothing about the specific situation, and no one knows exactly what will be the ultimate impact of any change on the wider system. Your firm has evolved over time to look like it does today. Its value system can be viewed as a set of interconnecting routines. Routines are patterns of action and interaction that are involved in the three value activities of sourcing, operations and selling."

Trechos retirados de: Paul Raspin. “What's Your Competitive Advantage?”

quarta-feira, julho 14, 2021

"The essence of great strategy formulation ..." (parte III)


Parte I e Parte II

"By respectfully engaging with one another’s ideas and arguments, participants begin to see alternatives to their own way of thinking’or indeed recognize that apparent differences are only superficial’and arrive at a common way of thinking.
If people at the start of a decision-making process have different opinions and points of view, then arriving at a common understanding requires at least some of them to change their minds. Arguing constructively, and in particular focusing on elaborating causal arguments, is more likely to cause such changes than a simple exchange of viewpoints. In fact, simply providing reasons for one’s viewpoint is likely to harden people’s points of view and lead to a stalemate.
...
When managers arrive, through disinterested dialogue, at a common understanding of the situation and an agreed-upon argument to justify their decision, they are more likely to act coherently 
...
If strategic management does not change the way organizational members think, and so act, strategy can only have any real impact through coercion. Without changing ways of thinking, organizational members continue to see the same problems as they always did, and they continue to solve these problems using the same beliefs as before"

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R. 

terça-feira, julho 13, 2021

"The essence of great strategy formulation ..." (parte II)

Parte I.

Por que é importante discutir, argumentar sobre estratégia:

"Better Arguments

The most important reason to argue about strategy in groups lies in the quality of the decision itself. One reason is that the quality of information that is used to inform the decision-making process affects the outcomes, and groups with a diverse range of members can have access to more information than any one individual. Arguing in groups produces better-quality decisions when the process brings in people with varied information and beliefs and these contrasting views are pitted against each other. People working in different parts of the organization will, due to their differing responsibilities, hold different insights. Each possesses a partial view of the firm’s situation, its challenges and opportunities. A process that surfaces and respects these differing perspectives is less likely to make avoidable mistakes, as each argument’s assumptions’the argument’s external consistency’is challenged from a variety of different viewpoints.

...

Buy-In

Strategic decisions involve allocating resources toward some activities and not others; in many cases, they involve reallocating effort from old initiatives to new ones that seem more promising or urgent. 

...

If managers walk away from a strategic decision feeling like losers, their commitment to the initiative will suffer. This is particularly true if they feel they lost unfairly. And a “technically correct” decision that has limited buy-in is unlikely to succeed.

...

Changing How People Think

Perhaps the most powerful benefit of arguing constructively comes from changing how people think. As we have noted, managers from different parts of the organization approach any given strategic decision from their own vantage point, rooted in their roles and their prior experiences."

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R.

segunda-feira, julho 12, 2021

Diferente do mainstream publicado

Let that calmly sink in:

"Overall, the available evidence does not support the idea that there are serious skill gaps or skill shortages in the US labor force. The prevailing situation in the US labor market, as in most developed economies, continues to be skill mismatches where the average worker and job candidate has more education than their current job requires."

Para quem ao longos dos anos escreveu sobre a caridadezinha [Moi ici: Recordar "The Predator State" e a caridadezinha ]:

"It is not clear what the apparent rise in employer complaints about skill problems represents in part because of the poor quality of information presented as part of the complaints. No doubt some component of the complaints is simply an effort to secure policy changes that lower labor costs. It may well be that some component of the complaints represents real problems associated with changes in employer behavior, such as greater outside hiring and associated increases in employee turnover and reduced training and internal development. Some of these changes might be driven by the behavior of other employers. For example, increases in turnover may be driven by the hiring practices of other employers, and smaller employers who in the past had been able to meet their skill needs by hiring skilled apprentices away from larger employers may find that there is no one to hire when those apprenticeship programs are gone. Efforts to hire skills rather than build them from within would create much more specific and variable job requirements across employers that would vastly increase not only the difficulty in hiring but also the experience of having to raise wages above current levels in order to find appropriate candidates.

The implications that follow from the above conclusions are important to consider."

Espero que Mongo implique antes o regresso ao século XIX, "Por que é que os jornalistas não colocam perguntas impertinentes?"

"The view that emerges from these arguments is one where responsibility for developing the skills that employers want is transferred from the employer onto job seekers and schools. Such a transfer of responsibility would be profound in its implications. Schools, at least as traditionally envisioned, are not suited to organize work experience, the key attribute that employers want. Nor are they necessarily good at teaching work-based skills. Those skills are easiest and cheapest to learn in the workplace through apprentice-like arrangements that one finds not only in skilled trades but also in fields like accounting and medicine. Unlike in the classroom, problems to practice on do not have to be created in the workplace. They exist already, and solving them creates value for others. Observation and practice is also easiest to do where the productive work is being done, and employment creates incentives and motivation that typical classrooms cannot duplicate." 

Tantos temas tratados de forma diferente do mainstream publicado. 

Trechos retirados de "SKILL GAPS, SKILL SHORTAGES AND SKILL MISMATCHES: EVIDENCE FOR THE US" de Peter Cappelli.

domingo, julho 11, 2021

"The essence of great strategy formulation ..."

A sua empresa tem uma estratégia? Quantas pessoas foram envolvidas na sua formulação? Houve discussão?

"we think that reasoning about strategy is best done by arguing, and specifically by arguing in groups. 

...

The essence of great strategy formulation and strategic management involves arguing constructively’when the strategy is being developed and as it is being implemented. Good strategists and executives who achieve long-term success encourage constructive arguments in decision-making groups, whether they do so consciously or not. Without constructive arguments among multiple stakeholders, strategy is often vacuous, and in the worst case may involve gambling the future of a company without even realizing it. As Gary Pisano warns: “For any proposed program of reasonable complexity, lack of debate is actually a worrisome sign.”

...

Vigorous argument should be encouraged and celebrated, provided that people are arguing constructively, not arguing blue."

Trechos retirados de “Arguing for Organizational Advantage” de Sorensen, Jesper B.; Carroll, Glenn R.