Alguns flashes sobre o futuro:
Ouvi o elogio de JMF ao Norte a partir da perspectiva que concordo. Deixo no entanto aqui o desafio: sendo uma região tão bem sucedida em termos económicos, porque é então uma das mais pobres de toda a UE?
— pvsalvador (@pvsalvador1) July 6, 2022
Uma excelente pergunta.
Julgo que a razão está ilustrada nesta figura:
Figura usada em:
Muitas empresas da região Norte conseguem ser competitivas, mas não são produtivas (aqui no sentido de produtividade que gera margens superiores). Conseguem ser competitivas porque os clientes não compram simplesmento de acordo com o preço mais baixo, também valorizam a rapidez, a flexibilidade e algum design. No entanto, como estão em sectores tradicionais, os preços conseguidos nunca conseguem libertar margens superiores porque o preço unitário nunca pode atingir um valor que os consumidores não são capazes de suportar em loja. O que José Manuel Fernandes e muitos economistas defendem é que estas empresas precisam de crescer para serem mais produtivas, só que isso não é possível. Empresas maiores nestes sectores tradicionais já não competem com base na flexibilidade e rapidez, mas no preço custo puro e simples. Isso requer outro tipo de organização interna, outro tipo de hardware da produção, outro tipo de actividade comercial para outro tipo de clientes.
Por mais que se pressione estas empresas tradicionais a aumentarem a sua produtividade, os ganhos possíveis serão sempre baixos e não permitirão colmatar o gap com a média europeia. Porque os ganhos necessários dependem do crescimento do numerador na equação da produtividade (recordar o Evangelho do Valor).
Quer dizer que estamos condenados a estes níveis de produtividade? Não, mas para mudarmos de paradigma temos de ter outros agentes económicos, temos de, sem atacar as empresas existentes, criar as condições para que outras apareçam para que esta evolução ocorra:
"With the world’s consumption-led economies taking responsibility for more and more of their own production and becoming more and more insular, there simply won’t be many economic opportunities for working-age adults living in export-led systems, much less postgrowth systems. Even if such weakening countries survive, their workers will have a choice between steadily higher tax rates to support their aging populations, or leaving. Expect a lot of the world’s remaining labor—especially its high-skilled labor—to soon be knocking on America’s door."
O problema não é o irs, o problema sãos os trinta e tal % que o ponzi da segurança social come
— Carlos P da Cruz 🇺🇦 (@ccz1) October 22, 2021
Na parte II ilustro como o autor aborda o tema do colapso demográfico. Nesta parte III sublinho os trechos que se seguem:
"More products. More players. Bigger markets. More markets. Easier transport. More interconnectivity. More trade. More capital. More technology. More integration. More financial penetration. More and bigger and bigger and more. A world of more.
Ever since Columbus sailed the ocean blue, human economics have been defined by this concept of more. The world's evolution within the idea of more, this reasonable expectation of more, is ultimately what destroyed the old economies of the pre-deepwater imperial and feudal systems.
...
Geopolitics tells us the post–World War II and especially the post–Cold War economic booms were artificial and transitory. Going back to something more “normal” by definition requires . . . shrinkage. Demographics tells us that the number and collective volume of mass-consumption-driven economies has already peaked. In 2019 the Earth for the first time in history had more people aged sixty-five and over than five and under. By 2030 there will be twice as many retirees, in relative terms.
...
Combine geopolitics and demographics and we know there will be no new mass consumption systems. Even worse, the pie that is the global economy isn't going to simply shrink; it is being fractured into some very nonintegrated pieces, courtesy of American inaction.
...
We aren't simply looking at a demographically induced economic breakdown; we are looking at the end of a half millennium of economic history.
...
First, everything is going to change. Whatever new economic system or systems the world develops will be something we're unlikely to recognize as being viable today. We will probably need far higher volumes of capital (retirees absorb it like sponges), but we'll have far less of it (fewer workers means fewer taxpayers). That suggests economic growth and technological progress (both of which require capital as an input) will stall out.
...
Second, the process will be the very definition of traumatic. The concept of more has been our guiding light as a species for centuries. From a certain point of view, the past seventy years of globalization have simply been "more" on steroids, a sharp uptake on our long-cherished economic understandings. Between the demographic inversion and the end of globalization, we are not simply ending our long experience with more, or even beginning a terrifying new world of less; we face economic free fall as everything that has underpinned humanity's economic existence since the Renaissance unwinds all at once."
Já repararam que no discurso ambiental este tema não é referido? No cenário central, até 2080 Portugal perde 2 milhões de habitantes. Ao mesmo tempo que o número de idosos crescerá mais um milhão de pessoas e a população em idade ativa (15 a 64 anos) diminuirá de 6,6 para 4,2 milhões de pessoas. O tipo e quantidade de consumo vai cair.
O autor, americano, julgo que vítima da doença anglo-saxónica foca-se muito na produção em massa. Teremos menos produção em massa e mais Mongo. Por isso, este capítulo designado "The end of more". Teremos menos globalização e mais blocos económicos.
Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
No mesmo dia em que leio "Costa diz a empresários alemães que Portugal é de confiança com estabilidade política e contas certas", leio também:
We are proud of our 🇪🇪 tax system. Simple, transparent and with few exemptions. https://t.co/EetSMXWbAZ
— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) July 6, 2022
Sim, 35º em 37 países (corporate tax rank)
"Globalization was always dependent upon the Americans’ commitment to the global Order and that Order hasn’t served Americans’ strategic interests since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Without the Americans riding herd on everyone, it is only a matter of time before something in East Asia or the Middle East or the Russian periphery (like, I don’t know, say, a war) breaks the global system beyond repair . . . assuming that the Americans don’t do it themselves....A central factor in every growth story that accompanies industrialization is that much of the economic growth comes from a swelling population. What most people miss is that there's another step in the industrialization cumurbanization process: lower mortality increases the population to such a degree that it overwhelms any impact from a decline in birth rates . but only for a few decades. Eventually gains in longevity max out, leaving a country a greater population, but with few children. Yesterday's few children leads to today's few young workers leads to tomorrow's few mature workers. And now, at long last, tomorrow has arrived....No matter how you crunch the numbers, China in 2022 is the fastest-aging society in human history....The country's demographic contraction is now occurring just as quickly as its expansion, with complete demographic collapse certain to occur within a single generation. China is amazing, just not for the reasons most opine. The country will soon have traveled from preindustrial levels of wealth and health to postindustrial demographic collapse in a single human lifetime. With a few years to spare. Nor will China die alone. The time-staggered nature of the industrialization process-from Britain to Germany to Russia and northwestern Europe and Japan to Korea to Canada and Spain combined with the steadily accelerating nature of that process, means that much of the world's population faces mass retirements followed by population crashes at roughly the same time. The world's demographic structure passed the point of no return twenty to forty years ago. The 2020s are the decade when it all breaks apart.For countries as varied as China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Ukraine, Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria, the question isn't when these countries will age into demographic obsolescence. All will see their worker cadres pass into mass retirement in the 2020s. None have sufficient young people to even pretend to regenerate their populations. All suffer from terminal demographics. The real questions are how and how soon do their societies crack apart? And do they deflate in silence or lash out against the dying of the light?...Economic development, quality of life, longevity, health, and demographic expansion are all subject to the whims of globalization. Or rather, in this case, deglobalization."
"Globalization brought development and industrialization to a wide swath of the planet for the first time, generating the mass consumption societies and the blizzard of trade and the juggernaut of technological progress we all find so familiar. And that reshaped global demographics. Mass development and industrialization extended life spans, while simultaneously encouraging urbanization. For decades that meant more and more workers and consumers, the people who give economies some serious go. One outcome among many was the fastest economic growth humanity has ever seen. Decades of it....The American-led Order is giving way to Disorder. Global aging didn't stop once we reached that perfect moment of growth. Aging continued. It's still continuing. The global worker and consumer base is aging into mass retirement. In our rush to urbanize, no replacement generation was ever born.Since 1945 the world has been the best it has ever been. The best it will ever be. Which is a poetic way of saying this era, this world-our world-is doomed. The 2020s will see a collapse of consumption and production and investment and trade almost everywhere. Globalization will shatter into pieces. Some regional. Some national. Some smaller. It will be costly. It will make life slower. And above all, worse. No economic system yet imagined can function in the sort of future we face....The coming global Disorder and demographic collapse will do more than condemn a multitude of countries to the past; it will herald the rise of others."
O que nos disse Welch em 2006 quando veio a Portugal? Lembram-se disto?
"Afirmou também que« os gestores que apenas gostam de números e que não querem saber de pessoas – mas elas existem na empresa! – são uns idiotas»."
E o que praticava? Ver "How Jack Welch Revolutionized the American Economy":
"He “instituted a series of mass layoffs,” and enthusiastically industrialized even this process by rating every employee and then each year firing the lowest-rated 10 percent."
Recordar:
Em 2009 escrevi aqui no blogue sobre as espécies que vivem à boca das fumarolas - Fake recoveries, os 3 amigos e a linguagem de carroceiro. Há dias em "Expert opinion" citei este trecho:
"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"
Agora, encontro mais um exemplo da Big Man Economy tão querida das elites portuguesas, "Banco de Fomento vai capitalizar 12 empress de "interesse nacional", incluindo a de Mário Ferreira". Empresas tão boas, ou com projectos tão bons que nem têm acesso a capital da banca comercial.
Lembram-se das campeãs nacionais e as empresas PIN?
“Perhaps the oddest thing of our soon-to-be present is that while the Americans revel in their petty, internal squabbles, they will barely notice that elsewhere the world is ending!!! Lights will flicker and go dark. Famine’s leathery claws will dig deep and hold tight. Access to the inputs—financial and material and labor—that define the modern world will cease existing in sufficient quantity to make modernity possible. The story will be different everywhere, but the overarching theme will be unmistakable: the last seventy-five years long will be remembered as a golden age, and one that didn’t last nearly long enough at that.The center point of this book is not simply about the depth and breadth of changes in store for every aspect of every economic sector that makes our world our world. It is not simply about history once again lurching forward. It is not simply about how our world ends. The real focus is to map out what everything looks like on the other side of this change in condition. What are the new parameters of the possible? In a world deglobalized, what are the new Geographies of Success?What comes next?”
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?
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.”
"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
"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"
"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 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"]
"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"
"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.
