É por causa de trechos como os que se seguem que digo que Weick escreve poesia:
"When he said, “I don ’ t know,” that was a strong act of leadership, not a weak one. It was strong because it positioned him for the sensemaking that he needed to do, not for the decision making that would come later as a minor by - product of sensemaking. To lead in the future is to be less in thrall of decision making — and more in thrall of sensemaking.
...
Think first of the world ... It is a world that is partly unknowable and unpredictable. It is a world into which people have been thrown. By thrown, I mean that people can’t avoid acting, can’t step back and reflect on their actions, can’t predict the effects of their actions, have no choice but to deal with interpretations whose correctness cannot be settled once and for all, and they can ’ t remain silent. Anything they say shapes both events and themselves. These are the givens that shape sensemaking.
...
It is the combination of thrown-ness, unknowability, and unpredictability that makes having some direction, any direction, the central issue for human beings, and by implication, the central issue for leaders. Sensemaking is about navigating by means of a compass rather than a map. “Maps, by definition, can help only in known worlds — worlds that have been charted before. Compasses are helpful when you are not sure where you are and can get only a general sense of direction”. Maps may be the mainstay of performance, but the compass and the compass needle, which function much like human values, are the mainstays of learning and renewal. If people find themselves in a world that is only partially charted, and if leaders also admit that they too don’t know, then both are more likely to mobilize resources for direction making rather than for performance."
Leio isto e penso na reacção dos governos ao covid-19. Se calhar mais preocupados em passar uma imagem, do que em aprender. Ainda este fim de semana pensava naquela medida de encolher os horários dos supermercados. Porquê? Que consequências gerou? Que bem trouxe? Que mal evitou? Ou vice-versa.
"“I don’t know.” The effective leader is someone who searches for the better question, accepts inexperience, stays in motion, channels decisions to those with the best knowledge of the matter at hand, crafts good stories, is obsessed with updating, encourages improvisation, and is deeply aware of personal ignorance. People who act this way help others make sense of what they are facing. Sensemaking is not about rules and options and decisions. Sensemaking does not presume that there are generic right answers about things like taking risks or following rules. Instead, sensemaking is about how to stay in touch with context.
...
When bewildered people ask, “What’s the story? ” the crucial thing is to get them moving, observing, updating, and arguing about feasibility and plausibility. A powerful means to do this is for the leader to answer the question by saying, “I don’t know what the story is, but let ’ s find out.” That reply is more subtle than it sounds. A plausible story is actually not something that one “ finds.” When the leader says, “let’ s find out,” what the leader really means is, let’s create the story. The good story is not simply lying out there waiting to be detected. Instead, the good story comes from experience that is reworked, enacted into the world, and rediscovered as though it were something external."
O trecho que se segue diz tanto sobre o que vivemos durante este ano e meio:
"“If I make a decision it is a possession, I take pride in it, I tend to defend it and not listen to those who question it. If I make sense, then this is more dynamic and I listen and I can change it. A decision is something you polish. Sensemaking is a direction for the next period.”
When [Gleason] perceives his work as decision making, he feels that he postpones action so he can get the decision “right” and that after he makes the decision, he finds himself defending it rather than revising it to suit changing circumstances. Polishing and defending eat up valuable time and encourage blind spots. If, instead, [Gleason] treats an unfolding fire as a problem in sense making, then he gives his crew a direction for some indefinite period, a direction that by definition is dynamic, open to revision at any time, self-correcting, responsive, and with more of its rationale being transparent."
Trechos retirados de "Making Sense of the Organization, Volume 2 - The Impermanent Organization" de Karl E. Weick.
Esta previsão era fácil. Afinal, o coronavirus apenas veio acelerar as mudanças que já estavam em curso:
"El Covid-19 revierte más de dos décadas de dominio chino en el aprovisionamiento. Por primera vez desde que hay datos disponibles, el gigante asiático ha perdido la segunda posición entre los mayores proveedores de ropa de España, cediendo la plata a Turquía, según datos de Icex España Exportación e Inversiones.
En el primer semestre de 2020, en pleno estallido de la pandemia del Covid-19, China perdió el primer puesto por primera vez desde 2000 (el primer año del que hay datos disponibles en el Icex) en favor de Bangladesh."
Porquê esta tendência?
"Turquía se sitúa como el gran ganador de la reorganización del aprovisionamiento gracias a su proximidad a los principales mercados de consumo europeos. Las compras al país se han catapultado un 45,1% en el primer semestre, hasta 983 millones de euros, ligeramente por debajo de los 1.067 millones del año previo al Covid-19.
...
La búsqueda de la flexibilidad y la escalada de costes del transporte dejan a China fuera del ‘top 2’ de proveedores
...
A la preferencia por los mercados próximos por su flexibilidad y agilidad se suman otros factores que han motivado esta sacudida en el mapa del sourcing: las continuas saturaciones en los puertos de China por las restricciones para frenar el Covid-19 y, sobre todo, la escalada de costes del transporte en la primera mitad de 2021."
Acerca da Turquia, recordar "Come on! Esta gente não analisa os números?" E:
Trechos retirados de "Sacudida histórica en el ‘sourcing’: Turquía arrebata a China la plata de proveedores de España"
Ontem ao final do dia vi
"mas por trás toma decisões deliberadas que a minam, porque se acha mais esperto que os outros, porque acha que pode vender gato por lebre. Há dias estava a pensar num empresário que está a seguir este caminho e pensei nos anfíbios que andam por terra, mas quando sentem perigo fogem para a água a toda a velocidade. Aqui a água é a recordação de um tempo anterior onde se sentia à vontade e tinha bons resultados."
Entretanto, no vídeo apanho Karl Weick a dizer:
14:58 - "if you go into an organization under stress and you're trying to figure out how its operating take everybody who matters or who you're watching see what their position was before the position they are now in and that is how that organization by and large is likely to be functioning take the organization take all of the people who are there pull them down one level, the level at which they were before they got to their new position and that's the way that organization is functioning and it'll make sense out of it surprisingly quickly for you and all it is and it's not trivial is another example of people under pressure falling back on ways of learning that were more familiar with and that they've done for a longer period of time you can"
Impressionante!!!
Fica tudo mais claro...
Abraçar ou resistir à mudança? Esta mudança é a mudança que ocorre no exterior, com maior ou menor velocidade. É independente da vontade das organizações, está-se marimbando para as organizações.
Ao longo dos anos escrevo aqui sobre abraçar ou resistir à mudança. E sobretudo, sobre o papel das lideranças associativas em predispor as mentes para abraçarem a mudança e procurarem oportunidades.
"Human beings are resistant to many kinds of change. However, we are also a species driven by curiosity and programmed to seek out novelty. The difference between embracing and resisting change is rooted in our brain-body hardwiring. Evolution has resulted in a two-channel system, which is responsible for much of our response in times of uncertainty. The Survive Channel is activated by threats and leads to feelings of fear, anxiety, and stress. These triggers activate the sympathetic nervous system and, when working well, direct all attention toward eliminating the threat. By contrast, the Thrive Channel is activated by opportunities and is associated with feelings of excitement, passion, joy, and enthusiasm. These triggers activate the parasympathetic nervous system, allowing our mind to broaden its perspective and collaborate in new ways.Creating smart, fast change means preventing the Survive Channel from overheating while activating the Thrive Channel in sufficient numbers of people, leading to more innovation, adaptation, and leadership.Reflecting on recent stories of organizational change, no single lesson comes across as clearly as one related to leadership — specifically, the need for more of it from more people. Leadership as a behavior, not a position, has the capacity to meet the change challenge of today. There is a strong need to reconstruct the modern organization and create an environment that fosters more autonomy, participation, and leadership.The relative strength of the Survive Channel, combined with the emphasis on reliability and efficiency reinforced by traditional management systems, leads to organizations that generally overheat the Survive Channel and under-activate the Thrive Channel. Organizations that can pivot and change quickly require leaders who can both calm an overheated Survive and amplify Thrive, for themselves and others."
"The very first image that appeared in this book described experience as a ’sea of ceaseless change.’ I argued that organizing is about creating some patterned recurrence into that ceaseless change."
Mais um conjunto de trechos retirados de "Making Sense of the Organization, Volume 2 - The Impermanent Organization" de Karl E. Weick. Particularmente adequados a estes tempos pós-pandemia em que muita coisa, depois de congelada não volta ao que era aquando do descongelamento. Depois, tem uma lição semelhante à dos húngaros perdidos nos Alpes, mas com um papa dos Pirinéus. Quando não se sabe o caminho, começar a caminhar e estar atento aos sinais pode ser a primeira solução para sair da incerteza paralisadora. Ontem vi num noticiário da TV uma pequena reportagem de Verão sobre um projecto, "Maratona de Sabores", que ilustra o papel da acção. Uma casal de Mirandela com experiência na restauração estava fechado em causa por causa do confinamento. Decidiram que em vez de esperarem iriam meter pés ao caminho. Um ano depois estavam com uma empresa com 10 trabalhadores.
"If uncertainty is unwelcome in organizations, equally unwelcome should be the admonition that members should doubt what they think they know. ... In an impermanent world, events may be other than they seem and can abruptly turn otherwise. Doubt is adaptability writ large, but certainty is adaptation to current conditions that is written even larger. Certainty is insensitive to change, and doubt is one of the few means to restore that sensitivity.
...
- If the environment is dynamically complex it is impossible to know and understand everything in advance, therefore you need to be able to doubt your existing insights
- If the ability to doubt is of crucial importance for organizations dealing with dynamic complexity, organizations need to organize their ability to doubt . . . . A spirit of contradiction should be organized.
To organize doubt is to engage in meaningful argumentation. Matters of controversy are deliberately sought and discussed. ... doubt becomes organized when sense-discrediting balances sensemaking, but such balancing is fruitless without action since the real problem is being open to the unknown.
Real openness implies that a system is open to information that it has never thought of before. For this reason, action is an important informer for systems . . . . If presented with the unknown, systems can be confronted with circumstances in which they need to act before they think. New experiences are therefore the source for discrediting.
Action is crucial because doubt, by itself, is dangerous. ... Leaders who legitimize doubt need also to legitimize attempts. That means modulating feelings of fear about what might happen.
...
untested presumptions and unexplored doubts become reality. The resulting pattern of organized relations becomes closed, retained knowledge becomes transformed into complete knowledge, and the current adaptation becomes the final adaptation to circumstances that outrun the pattern.
Inserting doubt into an already impermanent organization seeking certainty is not for the faint of heart. However, if circumstances keep changing, and yesterday’s organizing is partially obsolete, [Moi ici: Pimenta Machado. Rings a bell?] simultaneous doubt and belief directed at current functioning is necessary. To legitimize doubt is to act as if ambivalence is the optimal compromise."
Jordan Petersson reconhece a validade do argumento inicial do pós-modernismo, mas depois malha no pós-modernismo por causa dos seus frutos e outros argumentos. Julgo que Jesus disse, segundo os Evangelhos, que conheceremos a boa árvore pelos seus frutos. Isto faz-me recuar ao paradoxo de Zenão, em teoria o corredor nunca ultrapassará a tartaruga, na prática é o que vemos. Agir é fundamental, depois é estar aberto aos resultados e voltar a agir em função do que se pretende. Por isso, depois destas citações, Weick esccreve que num mundo de incerteza ter uma bússola é mais útil do que ter um mapa.
No Twitter volta e meia aparece um tweet sobre o tema "não era o verdadeiro socialismo".
Por exemplo:
Socialismo aplicado em todo o seu esplendor.
— Tony Júnior (@TonyJnior6) July 22, 2021
Amanhã será conhecido como :”isto não foi o verdadeiro socialismo” ou “o Maduro era de direita”. pic.twitter.com/CmBEjmdaTr
Por cá, a erosão mais ou menos rápida que nos coloca a caminho de ser a Sildávia do Ocidente continua:
c"dropping one’s tools to gain speed in life - threatening conditions is tougher than it looks....Suffering occurs when people become attached to impermanent things that disappear in a changing world. In a world of ceaseless change, no tool, including the tool of an organized form, is indispensable. To take impermanence seriously is to recognize that, ‘In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is acquired; In pursuit of wisdom, every day something is dropped.’ (Lao Tzu). Wisdom is the acceptance that things of the world go away.If we do drop our tools, then what are we left with? Why is wisdom a possible byproduct of dropping? Consider the tools of traditional rationality as expressed in the rational actor model. Those tools presume that the world is stable, knowable, and predictable. To set aside some of those tools is not to give up complete reliance on the tools that are ill-suited to the impermanent, the unknowable, and the unpredictable. To drop some tools of rationality is to gain access to lightness and wisdom in the form of intuitions, feelings, stories, improvisation, experience, imagination, active listening, awareness in the moment, and empathy....tools preclude ways of acting. If you preclude ways of acting, then you preclude ways of seeing. If you drop tools, then ideas have more free play....The reluctance to drop one’s tools when threat intensifies is not just a problem for firefighters....Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility, in short, for many of the dramas that engage organizational scholars. It is the very unwillingness of people to drop their tools that turns some of these dramas into tragedies....Explanations for the Failure to Drop ToolsThere are at least ten reasons why firefighters in both incidents may have failed to drop their tools:1. Listening. There is some evidence that the sheer roar of the fire precluded people from hearing the order to drop their tools and run....2. Justification. People persist when they are given no clear reasons to change....3. Trust. People persist when they don’t trust the person who tells them to change....4. Control. ... knowledge of cause-effect relations...5. Skill at dropping. People may keep their tools because they don’t know how to drop them. I know how absurd that sounds. But think again....6. Skill with replacement activity. People may keep their familiar tools in a frightening situation because an unfamiliar alternative, such as deploying a fire shelter, is even more frightening....7. Failure. To drop one’s tools may be to admit failure. To retain one’s tools is to postpone this admission and to feel that one is still in it and still winning....8. Social dynamics. People in a line may hold onto their tools as a result of social dynamics such as pluralistic ignorance....9. Consequences. People will not drop their tools if they believe that doing so won’t make much difference....10. Identity. Finally, implicit in the idea that people can drop their tools is the assumption that tools and people are distinct, separable, and dissimilar. But fires are not fought with bodies and bare hands, they are fought with tools that are often distinctive trademarks of firefighters and central to their identity. Firefighting tools define the firefighter’s group membership, they are the firefighter’s reason for being deployed in the first place, they create capability, they are given the same care that the firefighters themselves get (e.g., tools are collected and sharpened after every shift), and they are meaningful artifacts that define the culture. Given the central role of tools in defining the essence of a firefighter, it is not surprising that dropping one’s tools creates an existential crisis. Without my tools, who am I? A coward? A fool? The fusion of tools with identities means that under conditions of threat, it makes no more sense to drop one’s tools than to drop one’s pride. Tools and identities form a unity without seams or separable elements."
Ontem, no comentário matinal, Camilo Lourenço disse que não percebia esta reacção da hotelaria, "Hotéis em Portugal sobem preços em 20% na pandemia. 5 estrelas têm o maior aumento".
A sério?! Não percebe?!
Primeiro, não é uma reacção portuguesa:
"Mas a tendência de aumento generalizados dos custos por noite não se ficou por Portugal. O estudo da Mabrian Technologies comparou os preços de 73 mil quartos, anunciado no Booking, Expedia e TripAdvisor, em cinco destinos no Mediterrâneo (Grécia, Itália, Espanha, Portugal e Turquia) e concluiu que a maioria dos países aumentaram os custos face aos valores pré-covid."
Segundo, os custos unitários da oferta aumentaram:
Uns falam em direitos adquiridos.
Quem os suporta?
Ontem comecei a ler um texto que alguns considerarão subversivo, "Making Sense of the Organization, Volume 2 - The Impermanent Organization" de Karl E. Weick.
"Suppose we took seriously the idea that ‘Organization is a temporarily stabilized event cluster’.
...
The shorthand for this transient social order with a slower rate of change is the ‘impermanent organization.’
...
people build recurrence into portions of ongoing experience by means of texts, conversations, and interdependent activity. The result is that the rate of change in these more organized portions is slowed and therefore feels relatively stable. Change is slowed but it does not stop completely. Recurrent patterns can lose their shape, they can become obsolete, and the pattern can shift each time it is redone.
...
Organization resides between smoke and crystal just as it resides between conversation and text. Organization is talked into existence when portions of smoke - like conversation are preserved in crystal - like texts that are then articulated by agents speaking on behalf of an emerging collectivity. Repetitive cycles of texts, conversations, and agents define and modify one another and jointly organize everyday life.
...
If we reinvoke the image of smoke and crystal, attempted anchoring by means of organizing is a move away from the impermanence of smoke toward the permanence of crystal. That movement, however, is slowed and counteracted by conditions such as continuing change, reorganizing, forgetting, and adaptation. All of these limit efforts to establish permanence. Organization, therefore, embodies continuing tension in the form of simultaneous pulls toward smoke and crystal. Under such dynamic conditions of continuous rise and fall, it makes sense to study processes of organizing and to treat organization as a reification in the service of stabilizing an event cluster.
Organizations struggle to preserve the illusion of permanence and to keep surprise at a minimum. People create fictions of permanence by means of practices such as long - term planning, strategy, reification of temporary structures, justification, investments in buildings and technology, and acting as if formal reporting relationships are stable."
E pensei o quanto tanta gente está afastada desta realidade... o quanto tanta gente não percebe que "A estabilidade é uma ilusão!":
"a growing emphasis in organizational theory on ‘the acquired ability to create viable realities from equivocal circumstances and to use informed judgment to negotiate prudent courses of action through the realities created’. The ‘creation of viable realities ’ is a continuing activity which means that no one reality is permanent. The ‘wisdom’ of impermanence lies in not clinging to that which will vanish anyway. It also lies in accepting the necessity to reaccomplish realities that seemed to be stable and in action that reflects an awareness of incomplete information, action that blends knowledge with ignorance.
...
Impermanence forces people to redo patterns that keep falling apart. To organize is to reaccomplish a sequence of acts and get them to recur. Recurrence is the source of order and redoing is the means to preserve that order. Labeling imposes order, but often at a cost. When organizations generalize and compound their abstractions, they put increasing distance between direct perceptions of continuous flow and indirect recasting of those perceptions into discrete conceptions. The benefits of compounded abstractions are that they facilitate shared images and allow collective coping. The cost of compounded abstractions is that people lose sight of differences that make a difference. Discarding is about the practice of dropping one’s tools in order to adapt to changed circumstances. Discarding reverses the compounding of abstractions and moves closer to mindful perception of change. Enacting reiterates the basic notion that people organize and create the environments that provide many of their constraints and opportunities. Enacting resembles improvisation, albeit ‘wary improvisation’ lest the order already achieved be entirely abandoned. Believing recapitulates many of the dynamics already suggested by our quick gloss of the word ‘faith.’ However, believing is more than faith. In the face of ceaseless change, people who organize strive for simultaneous belief and doubt since change is not total. Today’s truth may be partially false tomorrow. [Moi ici: Pimenta Machado sorriu] Finally, substantiating points to organizing as ongoing efforts to hold collective action together despite a relentless flurry of interruption and recovery."
Recordo um texto escrito algures no blogue sobre os terramotos na Indonésia e sobre o impacte que terão no mindset cultural sobre a estabilidade. Vou procurá-lo...
Ui! Não imaginava que fosse de Agosto de 2007:
"Acredito que temos de encarar o futuro como algo a construir e não como algo pelo qual se aguarda. No entanto, a realidade é uma corrente muito poderosa, por vezes imprevisível. Às vezes penso na mente das pessoas que vivem em regiões, como a Indonésia, frequentemente assoladas por terramotos, essas pessoas terão certamente uma visão do mundo bem diferente da nossa independentemente da cultura. Tudo nos leva, tudo nos encaminha para uma enganadora confiança na linearidade dos acontecimentos, e depois, quando menos se espera "PUM"."
Espera... há outro texto, este de Fevereiro de 2007... engraçado, já na altura falava sobre direitos adquiridos:
"Num mundo instável, incerto, com intervenientes a entrar e a sair do campo de jogo, com várias balizas espalhadas, com n equipas, cada uma seguindo regras, mais ou menos iguais, ou mais ou menos diferentes, até que aparece outra com novas regras, verdadeiros cortes epistemológicos. umas equipas a jogar à defesa, outras ao ataque, ainda outras só em certas partes do terreno,...
... ou seja, uma verdadeira confusão. E é imersos nessa confusão que nós humanos arrogantes, criamos as nossas sociedades e instituições.
Vivemos, no dia-a-dia, convictos da estabilidade do mundo, da perenidade dos direitos garantidos, como se o mundo nos devesse tudo. Ainda hoje, as ilhas Molucas, na Indonésia, foram sacudidas por um terramoto. Um terramoto é uma força da natureza que arrasa a nossa crença na ilusão da segurança e estabilidade, e como não podemos culpar, nem os deuses, nem o Outro, o terramoto remete-nos para a afirmação mais famosa do ex-primeiro ministro Guterres "É a vida". É a vida, e a vida não é justa nem injusta, é a vida.
Ao reconhecer cada vez mais que o mundo é uma confusão, é uma "mess" (como dizem os ingleses), há duas opções: ou ir ao sabor da corrente, experimentar uns palpites, deixar-se conduzir pelos acontecimentos, o mundo é que manda; ou, tal como um castor, construir umas barragens, umas ilhotas de estabilidade pontual, construir e voltar a construir, para voltar a construir novamente (ou porque são destruídas pela corrente, ou porque a experiência nos ensinou uma nova técnica de construção, mais robusta).[Moi ici: Pareço Weick]
Daí que quando ouço alguém falar de direitos adquiridos, compreendo cada vez melhor o quão diferentes somos, não só geneticamente mas também quando comparamos cosmovisões."
Dedicado a todos os que há um ano me massacraram porque ousei dizer que a efacec era e é um embuste romanceado pelo nacionalismo parolo https://t.co/GvTfJaQFGi
— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) August 31, 2021
Podem limpar as mãos à parede
Tweet publicado na sequência da leitura de "Da EFACEC".
Não escrevo estas coisas porque tenho mau feitio, mas porque tenho um blogue desde 2004. Comecei a escrever o blogue com o propósito de funcionar como um auxiliar de memória (depois a criação tomou vida própria, mas isso é outra estória). E ter memória é um castigo dos Deuses (diziam os gregos antigos).
Nas notícias:
"Lives of quiet desperation.What is called resignation is confirmed desperation"
"os comentadores do regime alinhavam com o governo e diziam amém a duas nacionalizações. Nem uma voz contra, nem uma voz a desdizer a narrativa oficial sobre a EFACEC ou sobre a TAP.
Mais dinheiro impostado aos contribuintes torrado em delírios da corte lisboeta. Mais pedras no saco às costas das empresas que têm de fazer corridas com empresas de outros países com governos menos atreitos a orgias socialistas.
Isto nunca vai ter fim, este país nem com 5 troikas vai mudar. Ingenuidade pensar que a UE nos ia proteger...
A 1 de Setembro de 2007 no Expresso, Daniel Bessa escreveu:
"... faltou sempre o dinheiro que o "Portugal profundo" preferiu gastar na "ajuda" a "empresas em situação económica difícil"..."
Há dias citei aqui e comentei:
It is axiomatic that a first step in a firm's formulation of competitive strategy is the identification of its major competitors (e.g., Porter, 1980). [Moi ici: Não penso assim, não sigo este axioma. Tenho receio dos Dick Dastardly desta vida, e dos motards. Prefiro imaginar uma paisagem competitiva cheia de picos. Prefiro começar por determinar quem são os clientes-alvo e qual o ecossistema que deve ser mobilizado para os seduzir, satisfazer e desenvolver]
Entretanto, ontem li "Research in Cognition and Strategy: Reflections on Two Decades of Progress and a Look to the Future" de Sarah Kaplan e publicado no Journal of Management Studies 48:3 May 2011, e voltei a pensar no mesmo tema. A autora faz um trabalho muito interessante a descrever a evolução da investigação sobre as categorias de conhecimento. Outra vez um foco na categorização dos concorrentes. Por exemplo:
"Firms from other parts of the UK and other countries, even if they produced fully-fashioned knitwear at similar price points, were seen as being in different businesses or only ‘somewhat’ competitors
...
‘Cognitive oligopolies’ exist because competitors define each other as such.
...
They showed that managers based their categorization of competitors on a hierarchical understanding of the product offerings
...
Managers of larger hotels categorized competitors over a wider range of prices than did those of small hotels
...
The Scottish knitwear study showed how the categorization of different competitors as direct rivals affected the strategic choices and actions of firms."
Enquanto lia isto pensava em como seria se os autores citados tivesse optado por trabalhar com base na categorização dos clientes. À noite fui à minha biblioteca e saquei o meu velho "Managing for Results" de Peter Drucker, publicado em 1986 e fui ao capítulo 6, "The Customer Is the Business" ... continua tão actual e tão fresco:
"Business is a process which converts a resource, distinct knowledge, into a contribution of economic value in the marketplace. The purpose of a business is to create a customer. [Moi ici: O propósito não é o de ganhar aos concorrentes] The purpose is to provide something for which an independent outsider, who can choose not to buy, is willing to exchange his purchasing power. And knowledge alone (excepting only the case of the complete monopoly) gives the products of any business that leadership position on which success and survival ultimately depend.
...
1. What the people in the business think they know about customer and market is more likely to be wrong than right. There is only one person who really knows: the customer. Only by asking the customer, by watching him, by trying to understand his behavior can one find out who he is, what he does, how he buys, how he uses what he buys, what he expects, what he values, and so on.
2. The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a “product.” What is paid for is satisfactions. But nobody can make or supply satisfactions as such—at best, only the means to attaining them can be sold and delivered.
...
3. A corollary is that the goods or services which the manufacturer sees as direct competitors rarely adequately define what and whom he is really competing with. They cover both too much and too little.
...
Because the customer buys satisfaction, all goods and services compete intensively with goods and services that look quite different, seem to serve entirely different functions, are made, distributed, sold differently—but are alternative means for the customer to obtain the same satisfaction.
...
5. The customers have to be assumed to be rational. But their rationality is not necessarily that of the manufacturer; it is that of their own situation."
Recordo, a título de exemplo:
Ainda ontem, ao ler “Research in Cognition and Strategy: Reflections on Two Decades of Progress and a Look to the Future” de Sarah Kaplan e publicado em Journal of Management Studies 48:3 May 2011 sublinhei as seguintes passagens:
“The cognitive perspective suggested that the environment is not purely exogenous and therefore organizational response to the environment is mediated by the interpretations made of that environment by managers. Cognitive researchers pointed out that this is particularly true because of the uncertainties and complexities of the environment that decision-makers faced. … cognitive frames are the means by which managers could make sense of the environment, and such sensemaking shapes strategic choice and action.
…
to address a challenge in the strategic management literature posed by asymmetries within industries. [Moi ici: Outro tema recorrente aqui no blogue, existe mais variabilidade dentro de um sector de actividade do que entre sectores de actividade] There was an emerging critique of the tendency (escalated by the publication of Michael Porter’s 1980 book on competitive strategy and industry analysis) to focus strategic analysis at the industry level. Thomas and others suggested that such a high-level grouping omitted asymmetries within industries that could explain outcomes”
O artigo de Sarah Kaplan parte dos 20 anos da publicação do artigo "Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities: The Case of Scottish Knitwear Manufacturers" publicado no Journal of Management Studies em Julho de 1989”, e que citei recentemente.
O artigo de 1989 refere 17 empresas escolhidas numa zona da Escócia onde se produziam peças de lã clássicas e de elevada qualidade. Sorri ao ler o artigo pois via retratada uma hipótese competitiva que me é muito querida. Estes fabricantes escoceses de malhas definiram seu negócio como a produção de pulôveres de cashmere e casacos de lã de alta qualidade. Elegeram como consumidores-alvo a nata dos consumidores endinheirados e, criaram um modelo de negócio onde lidavam com agentes e lojas focadas nesse tipo de cliente.
Entretanto, em Maio de 2011, no mesmo volume onde Sarah Kaplan publicou o seu artigo, os autores do artigo de 1989 publicaram uma revisitação ao seu artigo de 1989. Nele pode-se ler:
“The question, of course, was whether this focused strategy and definition of the market was a source of competitive advantage or disadvantage. Strategy and organizational theories could no doubt support either conclusion, and our own observations in Hawick provided good grist for considering both possibilities. The Hawick producers were financially successful during the 1980s, and, indeed, we had chosen to study them because of their success. However, a third outcome from our research was the nascent empirical intuition that most of these firms were on borrowed time, and that some had already entered the downward spiral of self-reinforcing decline that Baden-Fuller and Stopford (1992) argued is a central dynamic of a ‘mature’ business. We worked hard in writing the 1989 paper to be as neutral as possible in telling the Hawick story, and thus did not take a stand on the liabilities or advantages of the sector's strong business identity. But, it was pretty clear to us back then that the ‘Hawick Mind’, as we called it, had become more of a liability than a source of spirited innovation in the industry.
The cues were all around us. Hawick Managing Directors spoke proudly about their firms' skill in providing retail customers with flexible small lot production runs. But, when we spoke with these very same customers, they said just the opposite, and remarked that they often had to bargain hard to get their preferred garments delivered on time. And, the production flexibility that managers said existed in the industry was betrayed by the large work-in-process inventories that we observed in many Hawick factories.
…
Unfortunately, our quiet intuition in 1989 has largely been borne out in subsequent industry developments during the past twenty years. The Gross Value Added of output from the Scottish textile sector decreased by half from 1995 to 2005 (Scottish Executive, 2005), with clothing output declining even more. The Borders knitwear industry, in particular, has significantly shed employment in its ongoing efforts to rationalize production and align with a lower revenue base. Between 1981 and 1998, industry employment declined by over 40 per cent, and has dropped even more in the past decade (Scottish Parliament, 2000). Dawson International, the confident leader of the industry in 1989, has divested many of its operating companies and dismantled the vertically integrated production system that was the hallmark of the company's corporate strategy. Iconic Hawick firms such as Pringles, Peter Scott, and Ballantyne have been sold to Asian and Italian rivals, merged with other brands, or taken into administration. Many smaller producers have permanently closed their doors as well. And, as jobs and tax revenue have disappeared, the community of Hawick has struggled to adapt to the changing economics of the region. A 2004 article in The Scotsman referred to the town as a ‘third world economy’ because of the loss of high paying jobs and the displacement of skilled workers (Chisholm, 2004). To be fair, some firms in Hawick are still doing well, and a recent report on local cashmere production suggests that the worst of the decline may be over and that there is still a viable export business for ‘. . . a flexible, innovative and dynamic cashmere industry which is focused on high quality, niche markets’ (Scottish Enterprise, 2007, p. 37). Then again, the report's recommended actions – i.e. ‘effective brand development’, ‘design creativity and flair’, ‘high quality’, and ‘not competing on price’ (p. 38) – were exactly the same goals of the industry twenty years ago.
This last point, we believe, reinforces our fourth, and perhaps most important, observation coming out of the Scottish study: the cognitive and material aspects of the knitwear industry (indeed, all industries) are thickly interwoven. It seems to us that it is this intermingling that makes strategic imagination, innovation, and new ways of acting so difficult, and the downward spiral of mature businesses so problematic.”
E isto faz-me seguir duas linhas de pensamento:
“The cues were all around us. Hawick Managing Directors spoke proudly about their firms' skill in providing retail customers with flexible small lot production runs. But, when we spoke with these very same customers, they said just the opposite, and remarked that they often had to bargain hard to get their preferred garments delivered on time. And, the production flexibility that managers said existed in the industry was betrayed by the large work-in-process inventories that we observed in many Hawick factories”
Esta é uma linha de pensamento triste... a realidade não existe, a realidade é o que seleccionamos, vêmos e pensamos dela, nada mais. Quantas vezes um empresário adopta uma estratégia e, de boa-fé ilude-se porque só tem acesso ao feedback que reforça o seu pensamento. Por outro lado, quantas vezes um empresário adopta uma estratégia facialmente, mas por trás toma decisões deliberadas que a minam, porque se acha mais esperto que os outros, porque acha que pode vender gato por lebre. Há dias estava a pensar num empresário que está a seguir este caminho e pensei nos anfíbios que andam por terra, mas quando sentem perigo fogem para a água a toda a velocidade. Aqui a água é a recordação de um tempo anterior onde se sentia à vontade e tinha bons resultados. O que é interessante, é a falta de coragem para assumir abertamente as escolhas feitas. Parece que aguarda, estilo governo com a TAP quando começou a pandemia, que a evolução dos acontecimentos torne inevitável as escolhas que já fez, mas não tem coragem de verbalizar.
Há dias citei:
"the word ‘strategy’ derives from the Ancient Greek position of ‘strategos’. The image that the Greeks liked to use to convey the skill of a great strategos was that of the kubernetes – the helmsperson on an inshore fighting ship. The kubernetes’ skill lay in his recognizing that because he could not make waves he had to passively accept the currents, but at the same time he was active working the rudders so as to change direction within the parameters of what was possible."
Ontem publiquei um relato sobre a disrupção nas cadeias de fornecimento.
Hoje, durante a caminhada matinal, li "Shipping chaos gives top importers ‘massive competitive edge’":
"The largest importers are paying far lower freight rates than smaller importers, the playing field is becoming increasingly uneven, and foreign ocean carriers are in position to pick the American import sector’s winners and losers.
“We’re seeing a price differential of $15,000 [per forty-foot equivalent unit or FEU] between the lowest short-term price in the [trans-Pacific] market and the top price,”
...
“That implies a huge competitive advantage for established players, which has consequences across the economy and for everyday life, and also, from a point of view of lowering competition and increasing barriers to entry for future competitors.”
Patrik Berglund, CEO of Xeneta, added, “Everybody’s seeing price increases but … being really big is really a massive competitive edge in this market.”
...
“To put this price differential of $15,000 into context, last year, it was $500.”"
Qual o impacte disto no próximo Natal?
Qual o impacte disto nos preços para os consumidores?
Qual o impacte disto no campo de possibilidades para os produtores na proximidade dos centros de consumo?
Como minimizar, ou como aproveitar o dominó de situações gerado por este evento?
Que realidades podem ser criadas?
"The vision for the future of organization studies created for me by La Condition PoMo is contained in the aphorism that 'it is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable'. [Moi ici: Interessante frase... nestes tempos em que dizemos que as empresas não fornecem nem produtos nem serviços, mas recursos que as as pessoas empregam para atingir um resultado nas suas vidas] To date, our field has largely assumed itself to be a supplier of reality. This has produced twin problems. First, the bloody stuff was devilishly difficult to obtain; we have far less inventory than the optimistic prediction of theorists up to about 1970 would have led us to expect. Second, it appears that reality is a highly perishable commodity, at least when the reality pertains to the constructed web of interpersonal, institutional and discursive threads with which organizing is accomplished. In a rapidly changing world, what little reality we have stockpiled will do more good if we are asked to consult to Cadbury's or Ford in 1930 than if we are asked to 'predict and control' the interactions of a Japanese firm engaged in a virtual relationship with Indonesian manufacturers using smart technologies to produce intangible goods for African-Americans living in Montreal in the year 2000."
BTW, o WSJ de sexta-feira passada trazia um artigo, "Your Hot Tub and the Snarled Supply Chain", sobre uma empresa que fabrica banheiras de hidromassagens:
"The global supply chain is an intricate ballet of container ships, airplanes, trucks and trains. The coronavirus pandemic threw it out of whack. This is why you often can’t buy the goods you want.
Hot-tub maker Bullfrog Spas saw demand soar as homebound consumers upgraded their backyards. Yet its supply chain spans thousands of miles across continents and oceans. On a typical day, its Herriman, Utah, factory takes delivery of 40,000 gallons of chemicals, 400 sheets of plastic and up to 60,000 additional components."
É impressionante, o artigo descreve ao pormenor a origem de toda uma série de componentes e subpartes do todo. É mesmo um bailado a convidar uma catadupa de riscos para também participarem. Por exemplo:
"WATER PUMP - Electric motors from China are assembled into water pumps in Tijuana, Mexico, and trucked to Utah. The pandemic has snarled both container shipping and trucking. Bullfrog and its suppliers now have meetings as much as daily, instead of monthly, to figure out solutions."
Ao fim dos primeiros parágrafos o que me veio à cabeça foi a primeira descrição que recordo, talvez de Peter Drucker, sobre o que era a NASA nos gloriosos anos 60, uma organização de reuniões, aqui sem conotação negativa, para alinhar milhares de fornecedores e subcontratados, a NASA se bem me lembro não construia os foguetões, subcontratava a sua construção.
Há cerca de um mês um empresário de calçado contou-me que um cliente na África do Sul optou por transportar a nova colecção de avião e não arriscar com os habituais contentores marítimos.
"CABINET - Material for the exterior cabinets is made near Shanghai, China, moved on container ships to the ports of Long Beach or Oakland in California, and then trucked to Utah.
Port slowdowns in China have stalled the exit of goods, and in California, shortages of staff and equipment have held up unloading. More recently, the crush of catch-up and pre-holiday orders has overwhelmed shippers.
Early this year, a ship carrying the cabinet pieces was held up off the West Coast waiting to unload-often dozens of ships at a time had to wait for port space. Bullfrog paid to transport cabinet materials from China by plane to Utah."
O que é a realidade, o que é concebível? Em que condições o inconcebível se torna realidade? Que implicações terão a vivência destas experiências? Voltaremos a um estado de "aparente equilibrio" ou passará a ser uma doce recordação de um passado que não volta. [Não tem nada a ver com o que escrevi neste postal, mas fica o registo, a propósito de recordações. Na primeira auditoria que fiz a uma empresa de calçado, durante a auditoria à gestão de topo, dou com um dos sócios a contar-me como era bela a vida para eles no tempo do escudo e da desvalorização programada, ("crawling peg" se bem me lembro), a certa altura o sócio ficou com os olhos humedecidos]
Trecho retirado de "Classic Review The Empire Strikes Out: Lyotard's Postmodern Condition and the Need for a Necrology of Knowledge'" de Roy Jacques.
Atrai-me esta percepção que vivemos num mundo assente neste fluido de percepções resultantes de interpretações subjectivas que se objectificam através de acções e comportamentos. Abre muito mais alternativas, aliás, há sempre alternativas. Nós é que podemos não querer tentar algumas delas, mesmo quando as outras falham. No caso das empresas, o dinheiro pode acabar antes de termos tentado a que ia transitoriamente resultar. Já não sei se foi com Kahneman ou Gigerenzer que li sobre como dois adeptos de clubes diferentes, de boa-fé, conseguem olhar para a mesma realidade e ver coisas diferentes. Por isso, um deles escreveu: a realidade é o que vemos, nada mais!
E o que vemos é o que o nosso trajecto de vida nos permite ver. Se estivermos abertos e atentos, podemos intuir novas possibilidades de interpretar a realidade e reformular a actuação.
"In this article we argue that one important link between group-level and firm-level competitive phenomena are the mental models used by key decision makers to interpret the task environment of their organization.
...
material decisions ultimately reflect the intuition and cognitive constructions of decision-makers. At a cognitive level, business competition must be analysed in terms of the mental models of decision-makers and how such mental models lead to a particular interpretation of the competitive milieu.
...
The interpretive approach rests upon four long-standing assumptions. First, activities and structures of organizations are assumed to be determined in part by the micro-momentary actions of their members. Second, such actions are assumed to be based upon an information-processing sequence in which individuals attend to cues in the environment, interpret the meaning of such cues, and then externalize these interpretations via concrete activities. Third, it is assumed that 'meaning' is problematic, and that individuals must construct actively an interpretation by linking received cues with well-learned and/or developing cognitive structures. Finally, individuals are assumed to possess a reflective capability such that they are able to verbalize at least the contents of their interpretations if not the processes through which such interpretations were generated. Taken together, these four assumptions portray human activity as an ongoing input-output cycle in which subjective interpretations of externally situated information become themselves objectified via behaviour.
...
Through processes of induction, problem-solving, and reasoning, decision-makers construct a mental model of the competitive environment which consists minimally of two types of beliefs; beliefs about the identity of the firm, its competitors, suppliers and customers, and causal beliefs about what it takes to compete successfully within the environment which has been identified.
...
Just as mental models are determined by cues from transactions within the value chain, such transactions are themselves partially determined by the cognitive constructions of organizational decision-makers. Beliefs about the identity of competitors, suppliers, and customers focus the limited attentional resources of decision-makers on some transactional partners to the exclusion of others.
...
the strategic choices of individual firms take place within the context of many shared beliefs about how and with whom to engage in transactions in the marketplace.
...
It is axiomatic that a first step in a firm's formulation of competitive strategy is the identification of its major competitors (e.g., Porter, 1980). [Moi ici: Não penso assim, não sigo este axioma. Tenho receio dos Dick Dastardly desta vida, e dos motards. Prefiro imaginar uma paisagem competitiva cheia de picos. Prefiro começar por determinar quem são os clientes-alvo e qual o ecossistema que deve ser mobilizado para os seduzir, satisfazer e desenvolver]
