Já lhe falaram?

Governo alemão reactiva o uso de centrais a carvão. - Fonte.

Governo alemão fala em racionar o consumo de energia. - Fonte.

Governo alemão regressa a austeridade, cortando pessoal e orçamento de 7 ministérios. - Fonte.

E Portugal, já ouviu alguma coisa acerca do futuro a médio prazo?

Já lhe falaram sobre as implicações da ferramenta anti-fragmentação do euro para Portugal? - Fonte

Já percebeu que Mário Centeno gostaria que o prazo do PRR fosse ampliado? - Fonte

E em cima do PRR ainda se constrói um aeroporto e um TGV? 

"Expert opinion"

E termino a leitura de "A New Way to Think" de Roger Martin com:

“The scholar, of course, had an answer. Scholars always have an answer. To him, the greatness of an idea should be judged by a panel of experts who opine on whether the idea is “novel” and “technically brilliant.” However, in the business context, “well executed” means commercially successful. When I pointed out that there is no known correlation between expert opinion on novelty or technical brilliance and commercial success, he simply restated the proposition in a different way: “Creativity is the potential of an idea, and execution is the extent to which that potential is realized.” Of course, there was no definition of potential or how it would be measured in his response. I gave up trying any further.”

Curiosidade do dia

 

"Value Conversations "

"Value Conversations are, well, valuable. This is the best way I've seen to estimate how much value someone receives from a solution. The point of value-based pricing is to charge what a buyer is willing to pay, and the more value they receive, the more they're willing to pay. It has always been hard for a salesperson to estimate a buyer's value from a solution. Here's what's funny. It's often tough for a buyer to know how much value they will receive from a solution. Value Conversations helps you and the buyer understand the R part of ROI.

Great salespeople master this technique. They clearly understand many problems and desired results typical in the industry they serve. They know what's important to their buyers and how they make money. But even though they have all this knowledge in their head, they shouldn't spew it out. Instead, they must guide the buyer while the buyer provides the answers."

Trecho retirado de "Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices" de Mark Stiving

Curiosidade do dia

"Raising labour productivity"

"one problem fills the screen: the country’s anaemic growth rate. A healthier economy would raise people’s living standards; faster growth is the way to square the circle between lower taxes and better public services. Yet the oecd, a club of rich countries, reckons that only heavily sanctioned Russia will fare worse in the g20 in 2023. And whereas average annual gdp growth over the decade preceding the 2007-09 financial crisis was 2.7%, the Office for Budget Responsibility (obr), a fiscal watchdog, predicts the new normal is closer to 1.7%.

...

Zoom out again, and it is clear that Britain’s growth problem is long-standing and getting worse.

In the coming months we will publish a series of articles on how to get Britain growing again. But first it is vital to understand how bad things are. That means focusing on one issue—productivity.

Over the long run productivity growth, or the ability to produce more with less, is all that really matters for rising living standards. Although in theory economies can grow when people work longer hours, at some point that strategy is limited by employees’ health and the number of hours in a day. Raising labour productivity, or the amount workers can produce in an hour, can happen with investment. Or it can happen with greater total factor productivity (tfp), a measure of the overall efficiency with which capital and workers are used. tfp can be traced to factors like better management practices or stiffer competition."

Trechos retirados de "Britain’s productivity problem is long-standing and getting worse"

Isto está tudo relacionado

Isto está tudo relacionado.

"Europe’s productivity problem is partly due to the rise of zombie firms that crowd out growth opportunities for others." [Moi ici: É preciso salvar as empresas, segundo o mantra português]

"On the supply side, the tight labor market may raise productivity growth, providing an extra boost to the economy." [Moi ici: É preciso importar mão-de-obra barata para que se salvem as empresas, é o que se ouve e lê nos jornais]

"Os numeros mostram que 47% dos nossos empresários não terminaram o ensino secundário e isso é chocante." [Moi ici: Alguém impede os que terminaram o ensino secundário de empreender? Por que não empreendem?]

"The talented and more productive choose entrepreneurship. (Asymmetric Information is when one party has more or better information than the other.) In this case the entrepreneurs know something potential employers don’t – that nowhere on their resume does it show resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition, tenacity and having a passion for products." [Moi ici: Quem não termina o secundário e sente que tem capacidades que o seu CV não revela ...]

"If resources flow from low-productivity firms to firms with high productivity, reallocation will be productivity-enhancing even if average firm productivity does not change. If resources flowed instead to low-productivity firms, resources become misallocated. Several studies report increasing misallocation of resources since before the Global Financial Crisis." 

A solução é dar formação

A solução é dar formação grita o coro das carpideiras do costume. Então, qual é a causa do problema? Então, quais os temas dessa formação? Então, quem são os animadores dessa formação? Então, quais são as experiências formativas para essa formação?

Where the rubber meets the road?

Uma fonte: 

"The go-to response for organizational issues is typically some form of reactionary training. The mantra goes like this: Design the training. Deliver it. Move on.

Unfortunately, successful training doesn’t actually work that way. Although it might make you feel like you’re doing something, this method rarely solves the underlying problems. Rather, it becomes an expensive line item. 

...

Still, training remains many organizations’ first line of defense because it’s easier for senior leaders to authorize it instead of spending time evaluating core issues or mentoring colleagues. But a Band-Aid isn’t a long-term solution. Without proper ongoing treatment, the wound won’t heal — and your problem will persist.

...

1. What is the gap you think training will bridge?

Typically, training occurs due to a difference between a desired and actual performance or behavior. You’ll want to define that gap before searching for solutions. For example, if the gap has been caused by new processes, upgraded equipment, or revised policies, formal training could solve the issue.

Just remember that people need to want training for it to be effective. If they’re not affected by the gap you point out, they won’t be invested in fixing anything. [Moi ici: Costumo escrever aqui no blogue que o papel dos empresários não é aumentar a produtividade do país, mas o sucesso do seu negócio] The participants must be curious and want to learn. When they are, they’re more apt to listen carefully, ask questions, and apply knowledge." [Retirado de "More Training Won’t Solve Your Company’s Problems"]

Outra fonte:

"Training has become the panacea for every corporate ill, the default answer to improving productivity, retaining talent, and even taming the wage-price spiral. But it increasingly feels like a substitute for good management. I keep meeting people who are being forced to attend workshops which aren't relevant to their job, or seem like virtue-signalling. As one weary charity worker said to me, "we always have to say the course was wonderful, or we get treated like s**t".

...

An article in Harvard Business Review claims that most organisations don't measure how effective their training is. One trainer describes his sessions as "spray and pray: we don't know what will stick"." [Retirado de "Better management, not endless training, will solve our corporate ills"]

Formas de ver o mundo que se excluem

"continuam centrados na ideia de que o aumento dos gastos é a solução para todos os problemas“, critica a ex-presidente do Conselho das Finanças Públicas, assinalando que “custo de oportunidade dos diferentes gastos é ignorado, implicitamente considerado nulo”. Em suma, em Portugal “os recursos continuam a ser tidos por infinitos”.

Isso também é visível, segundo a ex-quadro do Banco de Portugal, na falta de estudos sobre os “os resultados reais desses gastos”, cuja avaliação “raramente está disponível”.

...

“Quando os problemas continuam, apenas se apela a ‘mais recursos’, a mais impostos, mais dívida e, mais recentemente – pressão europeia oblige – a cortes contraproducentes em áreas que escapam ao escrutínio até os resultados se tornarem ostensivos. Ou até à próxima crise“, finaliza Teodora Cardoso."

Entretanto, na semana passada, durante a leitura de "A New Way to Think" de Roger Martin sublinhei o que ele escreveu sobre os custos e os proveitos das empresas:

"Costs lend themselves wonderfully to planning, because by and large they are under the control of the company. For the vast majority of costs, the company plays the role of customer. It decides how many good or service, and so even severance or shutdown costs can be under its control.

...

The bottom line, therefore, is that the predictability of costs is fundamentally different from the predictability of revenue. Planning can't and won't make revenue magically appear, and the effort you spend creating revenue plans is a distraction from the strategist's much harder job: finding ways to acquire and keep customers."

 Duas formas de ver o mundo que se excluem.

Trechos retirados de "Em Portugal, "aumento dos gastos ea solução para todos os problemas", critica Teodora Cardoso" 

good strategy is ...

"All executives know that strategy is important. But almost all also find it scary because it forces them to confront a future they can only guess at. Worse, actually choosing a strategy entails making decisions that explicitly cut off possibilities and options. An executive may well fear that getting those decisions wrong will wreck his or her career.

...

important truth about planning: it is no substitute for strategy. Planning may be an excellent way to cope with fear of the unknown, but fear and discomfort are an essential part of strategy-making. In fact, if you are entirely comfortable with your strategic plan, there's a strong chance it isn't very good. ... You need to be uncomfortable and apprehensive: true strategy is about placing bets and making hard choices. The objective is not to eliminate risk but to increase the odds of success.

In this worldview, managers accept that good strategy is not the product of hours of careful research and modeling that lead to an inevitable and almost perfect conclusion. Instead, it's the result of a simple and quite rough-and-ready process of thinking through what it would take to achieve what you want and then assessing whether it's realistic to try. If executives adopt this definition, then maybe, just maybe, they can keep strategy where it should be: outside the comfort zone of planning."

Trechos retirados de "A New Way to Think" de Roger Martin.

Depois do hype: O mastim dos Baskerville!

Agora que passou o hype e que as carpideiras já se recolheram, acrescento o meu comentário sobre o relatório do estado da nação publicado pela Fundação José Neves.

 Começo por este trecho que encontrei em “Carlos Oliveira. "Temos empresas demasiado preocupadas com o Estado, com os apoios, com os incentivos"” (BTW, este título remete-me para uma série de postais publicados aqui no blog ao longo dos anos, como este: “O by-pass” ao estado e ao país):

O que faz o governo de turno quando as empresas (como a Sonae, ou a Aquinos) não podem suportar os salários mínimos? Lança um apoio. Recordar “No país do Chapeleiro Louco (parte II)” em 2022, ou “Acham isto normal? Ou a inconsistência estratégica! Ou jogar bilhador como um amador!” em 2009. Recordo “Aspirar por objectivos sem ter coragem para a disciplina que requerem”.

O trecho acima faz-me voltar ao postal da semana passada “Competitividade sem competitividade? Mas o que é ser competitivo?” e à figura:

Enquanto escrevo estas linhas, mão amiga envia-me pelo Twitter este artigo “Grandes marcas de calçado desportivo desviam encomendas da Ásia para Portugal”. Isto é mau? Claro que não, claro que é bom ponto.

No entanto, volto ao tema dos “flying geese”:

Em “The "flying geese" model, ou deixem as empresas morrer!!!” é possível ver o exemplo da história do sector do calçado na cidade de St. Louis nos Estados Unidos. 

Um país com níveis de produtividade superior não pode ser construído com base em sectores competitivos, mas com baixa produtividade.

Estão a ver a consequência imediata desta conclusão? Mata o que se segue:

Este tweet é representativo de parte das conclusões do referido relatório. Se os empresários e os trabalhadores tiverem mais qualificações as empresas alcançarão níveis de produtividade superior. Mais qualificações não permitem mais produtividade? Claro que sim, mas são aquilo a que chamo as melhorias de engenheiro. Recordo de 2009 “Actualizem o documento por favor”. 

A produtividade é um rácio entre entradas e saídas, ou um rácio entre os recursos utilizados e o valor gerado, como ilustro em “Acerca do Evangelho do Valor”:

 

Quando o relatório refere:

“e não há produtividade sem qualificações, pelo que é essencial apostar na formação ao longo da vida, na reconversão e aquisição de competências.

...

Há ainda o problema das qualificações dos gestores, em que quase não se tem visto investimento, com o país a apresentar a maior percentagem de empregadores que não terminou O ensino secundário. "Em 2021, era o caso para 47,5% dos empregadores, praticamente o triplo da média europeia (16,4%).”

Podemos acreditar que a produtividade cresce com mais qualificações, mas esse crescimento é pouco para o que o país precisa, esse crescimento é baseado sobretudo na melhoria da eficiência, na redução das entradas. As melhorias de produtividade que o país precisa são aquelas que são baseadas em brutais aumentos do valor criado. Mais valor criado traduz-se em preços mais elevados. As melhorias de produtividade que o país precisa são baseadas no gráfico de Marn e Rosiello como explico em “Para aumentar salários ... (parte IV)”:

 

E isto leva-nos à lição dos finlandeses que aprendi em 2007:

"It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."
Mas, e como isto é profundo:
"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants."

E isto leva-nos a um pedido que faço aqui no blogue há muitos anos: DEIXEM AS EMPRESAS MORRER!!!

Mais formação para os trabalhadores actuais ou futuros não resolve o problema porque o problema não está na oferta do mercado de trabalho, o problema está na falta de procura para trabalhadores mais qualificados. Mais formação dos trabalhadores num país sem procura por ela promove a emigração. Recordar o postal “Lerolero”: 

“In my experience, well-educated Haitians are very easy to find as taxi drivers in the French-speaking part of Canada. An estimated 82 per cent of Jamaican medical doctors practise abroad. Seventy per cent of all inhabitants of Guyana with a university education work outside the country. North American hospitals vacuum up poor English-speaking countries like Trinidad for nurses, while in many places in the Caribbean Cuban nurses are the ones that keep the health sector functioning.”

Mais formação para os trabalhadores actuais é um tema que sigo no blogue desde a primeira década deste século com as promessas de amor de Sócrates. Recordar o tema da caridadezinha em “Caridadezinha strikes again”:

"The problem is that poverty and unemployment are not much influenced by the qualities and qualifications of the workforce. They depend, rather, on the state of demand for labor. They depend on whether firms want to hire all the workers who may be available and at the pay rates that firms are willing, or required, to offer, especially to the lowest paid."

Neste podcast, “Formação e salários: não podemos nivelar por baixo”, João Ferreira do Amaral pede estudos, sector a sector, para comparar as empresas mais produtivas de outros países com as empresas portuguesas, para retirar ensinamentos. E regresso a 2011 e a uma tarde de Verão em Guimarães a fazer horas para entrar numa empresa, e ao que aprendi com mais uns nórdicos em “Acerca da produtividade, mais uma vez (parte I)”. Comparar sector a sector é, inconscientemente, assumir que as saídas de cada empresa são semelhantes e que as diferenças estão na forma de gerir as entradas para produzir as saídas. O que os nórdicos me chamaram a atenção é que não faz sentido comparar a produtividade de quem faz sapatos que saem de uma mini-fábrica-ateliê a 600 euros o par com quem faz 2000 pares de sapatos por dia a 25 euros o par. Recordo de 2010, “As anedotas”. 

Percebo que a Fundação José Neves e outras entidades se foquem na formação porque é algo que se pode planear e porque é algo que agrada a uma vasta fauna de partes interessadas instaladas no terreno e habituadas a viver da formação.

Então quem vai dar formação aos empresários? Daniel Bessa? Alguém de entre estes outros 24 cromos?

Deixem os empresários que estão a trabalhar em paz. Saúdem o seu esforço. Concentrem-se no que chamo o mastim dos Baskerville. Concentrem-se nas empresas e nos empresários que não existem. As melhorias de produtividade que o país precisa dependem das empresas e dos empresários que não existem. Recordo “Empresários e escolaridade ou signaling”. 

Por fim, volto ao exemplo irlandês. Acredita que o brutal salto de produtividade na Irlanda foi conseguido à custa dos empresários irlandeses? Se acredita que sim, pense outra vez. Recordo, “Tamanho, produtividade e a receita irlandesa”. 

Lembre-se do mastim dos Baskerville.

 

"you must organize around projects"

"a different way of thinking about knowledge work: you must organize around projects, not jobs.

...

Knowledge workers don’t manufacture products or perform basic services. But they do produce something, and it is perfectly reasonable to characterize their work as the production of decisions: decisions about what to sell, at what price, to whom, with what advertising strategy, through what logistics system, in what location, and with what staffing levels.

At desks and in meeting rooms, every day of their working lives, knowledge workers hammer away in decision factories. Their raw materials are data, either from their own information systems or from outside providers. They produce lots of memos and presentations full of analyses and recommendations. They engage in production processes—called meetings—that convert this work to finished goods in the form of decisions. Or they generate rework: another meeting to reach the decision that wasn’t made in the first meeting. And they participate in postproduction services: following up on decisions"

...

Knowledge work actually comes primarily in the form of projects, not routine daily tasks. Knowledge workers, therefore, experience big swings between peaks and valleys of decision-making intensity”

Fez-me recuar a:

• Avaliar projectos (parte II) 
• Provocação para empresas certificadas  complementada com a parte II 
• Tenho de testar isto ...

"A ideia de fazer de cada ano um espécie de projecto, algo único e irrepetível, em vez de uma continuação da rotina de sempre, é capaz de ser útil para mudar mentalidades em muitas empresas."

Trechos retirados de "A New Way to Think" de Roger Martin.

"individuals work with one another"

Dedicado ao meu colega das conversas oxigenadoras:

"Culture. You can only change it by altering how individuals work with one another.

...

So, what is culture and why is it so persistent and limiting to strategy?

There are as many definitions of culture as there are for strategy, but I think of it primarily as a book of rules residing in the minds of employees that guides how they interpret situations and decisions. Culture is what helps a manager understand "how things get done around here,' "what I should do in this situation," and "who must I pay attention to." The rules making up the culture are developed by each person's observations of how people around them react to and explain situations and decisions, particularly those involving extreme outcomes with significant impact for the people involved, even if such decisions or events are unusual.

The strength of a company's culture is determined by the similarity of the mental rule books of the employees. A culture is weak or diffuse if the rule books vary across peopleso that employees' interpretations of a given situation or decision are heterogeneous. Cultures are powerful when the people all have a very similar rule book and consequently interpret and react to the same decision or situation in the same way.

...

Somewhat like a neural network in the brain, culture emerges from the interaction between the environment (the formal mechanisms) and individual behaviors (the interpersonal mechanisms). Because of that, little can be done to change the culture of the organization directly by fiat, and CEOs who make the attempt usually lose their jobs.

...

For a culture to align with changes to the formal mechanisms of the organization, changes are required in the way members of the organization interact.

...

When executives try to change an organization's culture, they often bring the wrong tools to the task-changes to formal processes and systems along with righteous admonition. This approach is doomed to failure because culture depends not on systems and processes or a leader's beliefs but on how individuals react to each other in the context of their rules and relationships. To achieve real culture change, executives should focus on and show discipline in how they structure the human interactions that make up an organization's working day. That requires investing time and committing to repetition. People won't change their ways overnight, but when they do, the consequences are profound and durable."

Trechos retirados de "A New Way to Think" de Roger L. Martin.

Anónimo da província muito à frente

Em Junho de 2011 escrevi Cuidado com a pedofilia. Em Outubro de 2012 escrevi Fornecer a Autoeuropa não é necessariamente uma boa decisão para uma PME portuguesa-tipo.

A mensagem desses postais é:

"Por que é que uma PME-tipo há-de trabalhar com uma multinacional só interessada no preço se tem mais hipóteses de ser bem tratada e ganhar mais dinheiro trabalhando com outras propostas de valor para outro tipo de clientes?

.

As multinacionais do ramo automóvel não são flor que se cheire, contratos leoninos com cláusulas que impõem respeito e medo.

.

O meu conselho genérico para as PMEs é sempre o mesmo: "Fuja dessa gente. Não se iluda com as quantidades... quantos cêntimos é que vai ganhar por peça? Qual o risco que vai correr? Compensa?""

Em Março de 2016 escrevi Um optimista sem ser cor de rosa onde usei esta imagem:

O mundo 1 é para os pandas (chineses, ou empresas grandes capazes de lidarem com margens apertadas e quantidades grandes).

Ontem, li este texto de Roger Martin, "Small is beautiful" onde apanhei:

"This is the typical dynamic in the modern era. There is full price/value discovery, and the goal of big customers is to grind down suppliers to cost plus as tiny a margin as possible through relentless shopping and negotiation. Smaller customers, on the other hand, are more inclined to buy an offer that meaningfully helps them “do more business.”

The problem is that most B2B companies are still in the mode of thinking that big customers are the most important — the key to both growth and profitability. Hence, they still spare no expense to serve them and put their best sales resources against them. However, though they might expect gratitude in return, they get nothing of the sort. Big customers grind down their suppliers and provide zero rewards for the extra resources that suppliers dedicate to them.

Meanwhile, these B2B companies underinvest in SME customers because they think of them as less important than their big customers. 

...

I think the next wave will feature two dynamics. First, B2B companies will figure out that big customers are not good for them and will make the transition to aligning their R&D efforts and their best sales assets behind SME customers."

"The payoff for price increases is massive"

"Sales professionals are ill prepared to talk with customers about price increases because they don't get trained and there are almost no resources to help them develop the skills to do so. 

...

One of the reasons that I hated price increases and believed that I was betraying my customers is that I didn't understand basic business fundamentals. I didn't understand that price increase campaigns are far more effective at generating profit and free cash flow than increasing topline revenue through sales volume increases or acquiring new customers. Nothing else in the business-to-business sales arsenal protects the health of your company like price increases. They protect the enterprise during inflationary periods, produce capital for investment in growth, help improve quality and service delivery, boost stock prices, and protect jobs.

The payoff for price increases is massive. They can drop through as much as 400 percent more profit as increases in sales volume. For example, a l percent increase in sales volume, will produce 3.3 percent in profit. However, a 1 percent increase in price, when sales volume remains stable, delivers an 11.1 percent increase in operating profit. [Moi ici: Recordar Marn e Rosiello]

...

The bottom line is that increasing prices is the single greatest profit improvement opportunity and strategy for B2B enterprises. That is, of course, if you retain your customers along the way."

Trechos retirados de "Selling the price increase the ultimate B2B field guide for raising prices without losing customers" de Jeb Blount. 

Subir preços

"Why Companies Raise Their Prices: Because They Can"

"In 2021, US companies logged their most profitable year since the 1950s, as many took advantage of economies of scale and other more efficient production processes. Yet, firms increasingly held on to the savings they gained from these reduced costs, rather than passing them on to customers in the form of lower prices.

...

markups—the difference between prices charged at checkout and the marginal costs incurred by a company in order to make a product—climbed about 25 percent between 2006 and 2019

...

The researchers came to a startling conclusion: Consumers were 30 percent less price sensitive—meaning less likely to abandon favorite brands and seek cheaper equivalent products—in 2019 than they were in 2006.

...

Meanwhile, company costs have declined over time as firms have squeezed more productivity out of increasingly efficient operations. Since 2006, marginal costs have dropped by 2.1 percent annually on average, the authors estimate. In the latter part of the study period, from 2017 to 2019, firm costs were about 25 percentage points lower versus 2006.

Rising markups come from either price increases or marginal cost reductions."

"Which Companies Can Raise Prices Without Angering Customers?"

"In all, we examined 846 large publicly traded corporations last year through the lens of 34 separate indicators in five categories: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength.
...
To build our ranking, companies are compared in each of the five areas, as well as their overall effectiveness, through standardized scores with a typical range of 0 to 100 and a mean of 50.

...

In our latest research, prompted by concerns over inflation, we explored the correlation between net profit margin-the percentage of profit a company produces from its total revenue-and customer satisfaction for 2021.

Of the 24 industries we looked at, 11 showed no meaningful statistical relationship between the two. Others, however, stood out. In six industries-household and personal products, autos, telecommunications, consumer services, banks and pharmaceuticals-there was a significant positive correlation between profit margin and customer satisfaction.

This means the two variables move in the same direction.

When one goes up, the other goes up; when one goes down, the other goes down. And it implies that, in general, firms in these industries have a fair bit of leeway to raise prices without making their customers disgruntled.

"We call this pricing power,'

...
At the other end of the spectrum are companies in industries with a negative correlation between profit margin and customer satisfaction. Across these sectors, when net profit margin goes up, customer satisfaction goes down-and vice versa.
...
What's more, any company with low customer satisfaction may well have trouble raising prices-regardless of the industry it's in. "It's a delicate calibration,""

Dedicado aos fans do Big Data

Dedicado aos fans do Big Data: 

"Creating great choices requires imagination more than data.

Underlying the practice and study of business is the belief that business decisions must be driven by rigorous analysis of data. The explosion of big data has reinforced this idea. In a recent EY survey, 81 percent of executives said they believed that "data should be at the heart of all decision-making," leading EY to enthusiastically proclaim that "big data can eliminate reliance on 'gut feel' decision-making.

Managers find this notion appealing.

...

Can management decisions really be reduced to an exercise in data analysis? I do not believe that they can, and this brings me to an important truth about data: creating great choices requires imagination more than data.

...

It's important to realize that the presence of data is not sufficient proof that outcomes cannot be different. Data is not logic. In fact, many of the most lucrative business moves come from bucking the evidence.

...

Moreover, the absence of data does not preclude possibility. If you are talking about new outcomes and behaviors, then naturally there is no prior evidence. A truly rigorous thinker, therefore, considers not only what the data suggests but also what within the bounds of possibility could happen. And that requires the exercise of imagination-a very different process from analysis.

Also, the division between can and cannot is more fluid than most people think. Innovators will push that boundary more than most, challenging the cannot.

Breaking the Frame

The imagination of new possibilities first requires an act of unframing. The status quo often appears to be the only way things can be, a perception that's hard to shake."

Trechos retirados de "A New Way to Think" de Roger L. Martin. 

Competitividade sem competitividade? Mas o que é ser competitivo?

Procurem uma explicação simples para relacionar estes temas:

• Sucesso das exportações portuguesas em curso (ver em Quem é este morcão? (parte II) - Dos 15 sectores relacionados com PMEs que sigo mensalmente, quando comparo as exportações dos quatro primeiros meses de 2022 com os de 2019 vejo: 1 sector a crescer mais de 60%, vejo 4 sectores (como a cerâmica e os plásticos) a crescer mais de 30%; e vejo 7 sectores (como os têxteis, calçado, máquinas e óptica) a crescer entre 10 e 30%)
• Economia portuguesa menos competitiva desde saída da troika 

Então, somos competitivos ou não somos? Recordo a lição que aprendi e registei em Mea culpa e Mea culpa (III). Ou então, vejam o exemplo do Uganda, Competitividade, absurdo, lerolero e contranatura.

Competitividade sem competitividade? Mas o que é ser competitivo?

A explicação está nesta matriz do Mea Culpa (parte II):

Querem mais um tema para relacionar com os anteriores:

• Imigrantes com via verde para trabalhar no Pais

Governo de Portugal está a tomar medidas para resolver a "escassez de mão de obra", isto no país em que todos dizem querer combater os salários baixos.

— JoãoMiranda (@joaomiranda) June 15, 2022

• BTW, relacionem com o impacte da travagem da entrada de emigrantes nos Estados Unidos - America's Inequality Problem Just Improved for the First Time in a Generation 

É assim, ou se sobe na escala de valor, ou tem de se importar trabalhadores para manter os salários baixos necessários para manter competitividade sem produtividade.

E coragem para políticos assumirem estas coisas e explicitarem-nas de forma clara e transparente?

What price point?

"We started to test the new Olay product at premium price points of $12.99 to $18.99 and got very different results,” he says. “At $12.99, there was a positive response and a reasonably good rate of purchase intent. But most who signaled a desire to buy at $12.99 were mass shoppers. Very few department store shoppers were interested at that price point. Basically, we were trading people up from within the channel. At $15.99, purchase intent dropped dramatically. At $18.99, it went back up again—way up. So, $12.99 was really good, $15.99 not so good, $18.99 great.”

The team learned that at $18.99, consumers were crossing over from prestige department and specialty stores to buy Olay in discount, drug, and grocery stores. That price point sent exactly the right message. For the department store shopper, the product was a great value but still credibly expensive. For the mass shopper, the premium price signified that the product must be considerably better than anything else on the shelf. In contrast, $15.99 was in no-man’s land—for a mass shopper, expensive without signaling differentiation, and for a prestige shopper, not expensive enough. These differences were quite fine; had the team not focused so carefully on building and applying robust tests for multiple price points, the findings might never have emerged."

Trechos retirados de "A New Way to Think" de Roger L. Martin.

Patience Wins

"A rule in negotiations is Patience Wins! Offer small, incremental discounts. Make the purchasing agent work for whatever they get.

...

Here’s another hint. Executives should not negotiate prices. Executives are smart, driven, strategic people. When an executive gets involved in a negotiation, you can guarantee the deal will close. It will close quickly, probably today. They have the authority to make whatever concession is necessary to win the deal. However, most executives are not patient. Remember the rule. Patience Wins! Yes, executives will close the deal quickly, but they will do so at a lower price than if they were not involved."

Trechos retirados de "Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices" de Mark Stiving.