Ricardo Fernandes Mena
Bloco de Notas | sobre marcas, emoções e comunicação | criado na sequência do Doutoramento pela Universidade de Vigo na área de Comunicação e à Docência na área de Marketing no IPAM.Arquivo para Textos únicos
Urgências Profissionais e Pessoais – um entrave ao sucesso?
Um dos meus autores de eleição, Seth Godin, colocou um post no seu blog que não resisti a partilhar por é algo que todos nos deparamos hoje em dia.
As tarefas, responsabilidades ou projecto sucedem-se mas o nosso dia mantém as 24 horas. Se tudo é urgente, então temos de começar a preparar a nossa empresa para fazer bem, cada vez mais rápido e eficaz.
Ainda mais rápido do que aquilo que conseguimos… planear ajuda a diminuir o grau de incerteza.
Managing urgencies
Do you have a plan?
A long or medium term plan for your brand or your blog or your career or your project?
You can have grand visions for remodeling your house or getting in shape, but if there’s a fire in the kitchen, you drop everything and put it out. What choice do you have? The problem, of course, is that most organizations are on fire, most of the time.
I gave a talk the other day, all about the unstoppable slow decline of interruption (traditional) media and the opportunities for rethinking how we communicate with people. At the end of the talk, someone came up and had very nice things to say about what he’d learned. The he leaned over and asked me to help him brainstorm about his brand’s upcoming ad campaign, because it was due to his boss on Friday.
Add up enough urgencies and you don’t get a fire, you get a career. A career putting out fires never leads to the goal you had in mind all along.
I guess the trick is to make the long term items even more urgent than today’s emergencies. Break them into steps and give them deadlines. Measure your people on what they did today in support of where you need to be next month.
If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent.
Seth Godin
Os 11 mandamentos de Bill Gates
Num discurso de 10 minutos perante uma plateia de estudantes do ensino secundário, Bill Gates enunciou 11 mandamentos para que os jovens sobrevivam no mundo real e para que o sistema de ensino se torne eficaz. Vale a pena, num momento em que debate sobre a qualidade do ensino, o facilitismo e laxismo do sistema português, permanece em cartaz partilhar as 11 regras do génio Bill que estimulam a nossa reflexão.
1. A vida não é fácil; acostumem-se a isso.
2. O mundo não está preocupado com a vossa auto-estima. O mundo espera que vocês façam alguma coisa útil por ele antes de vocês se sentirem bem convosco próprios.
3. Vocês não vão ganhar 5000 euros por mês assim que saírem da Universidade. Vocês não serão directores de uma empresa com carro e telefone à disposição, antes de terem conseguido comprar o vosso próprio carro e telefone.
4. Se vocês acham que os vossos professores são rudes, esperem até terem um chefe. Ele não vai ter pena de vocês.
5. Vender jornais velhos ou trabalhar nas férias não está abaixo da vossa posição social. Os vossos avós têm uma palavra diferente para isso: a “isso” chamam oportunidade.
6. Se vocês fracassarem, a culpa não é dos vossos pais. Por isso não os culpem dos vossos erros, aprendam com eles.
7. Antes de vocês nascerem, os vossos pais não eram tão críticos como agora. Eles só ficaram assim por pagarem as vossas contas, lavarem as vossas roupas. Antes de quererem salvar o planeta para a próxima geração, desejando consertar os erros da geração dos vossos pais, tentem limpar o vosso próprio quarto.
8. A vossa escola pode ter eliminado a distinção entre vencedores e perdedores, mas a vida não é assim. Em algumas escolas vocês não chumbam mais de um ano e têm tantas chances quantas vocês precisarem até acertar. Isto não tem nada a ver com a vida real. Se pisarem o risco, são despedidos… Façam bem à primeira!
9. A vida não está dividida em semestres. Vocês não terão sempre os verões livres e é pouco provável que os outros empregados vos ajudem a cumprir as vossas tarefas no fim de cada período.
10. A televisão não é a vida real. Na vida real, as pessoas têm que largar o “barzinho” ou a boîte e ir trabalhar.
11.Seja simpático com os “estudiosos” – aqueles estudantes que muitos julgam que são uns idiotas. Existe uma grande probabilidade de vocês virem um dia a trabalhar para eles.
Small is the new Big
Big used to matter. Big meant economies of scale. (You never hear about “economies of tiny” do you?) People, usually guys, often ex-Marines, wanted to be CEO of a big company. The Fortune 500 is where people went to make… a fortune.
There was a good reason for this. Value was added in ways that big organizations were good at. Value was added with efficient manufacturing, widespread distribution and very large R&D staffs. Value came from hundreds of operators standing by and from nine-figure TV ad budgets. Value came from a huge sales force.
Of course, it’s not just big organizations that added value. Big planes were better than small ones, because they were faster and more efficient. Big buildings were better than small ones because they facilitated communications and used downtown land quite efficiently. Bigger computers could handle more simultaneous users, as well.
Get Big Fast was the motto for startups, because big companies can go public and get more access to capital and use that capital to get even bigger. Big accounting firms were the place to go to get audited if you were a big company, because a big accounting firm could be trusted. Big law firms were the place to find the right lawyer, because big law firms were a one-stop shop.
And then small happened.
Enron (big) got audited by Andersen (big) and failed (big.) The World Trade Center was a target. TV advertising is collapsing so fast you can hear it. American Airlines (big) is getting creamed by Jet Blue (think small). BoingBoing (four people) has a readership growing a hundred times faster than the New Yorker (hundreds of people).
Big computers are silly. They use lots of power and are not nearly as efficient as properly networked Dell boxes (at least that’s the way it works at Yahoo and Google). Big boom boxes are replaced by tiny ipod shuffles. (Yeah, I know big-screen tvs are the big thing. Can’t be right all the time).
I’m writing this on a laptop at a skateboard park… that added wifi for parents. Because they wanted to. It took them a few minutes and $50. No big meetings, corporate policies or feasibility studies. They just did it.
Today, little companies often make more money than big companies. Little churches grow faster than worldwide ones. Little jets are way faster (door to door) than big ones.
Today, Craigslist (18 employees) is the fourth most visited site according to some measures. They are partly owned by eBay (more than 4,000 employees) which hopes to stay in the same league, traffic-wise. They’re certainly not growing nearly as fast.
Small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.
Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.
Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.
Small means that you can answer email from your customers.
Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and
shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.
A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they’re good, not because they’re big. So smart small companies are happy to hire them.
A small restaurant has an owner who greets you by name.
A small venture fund doesn’t have to fund big bad ideas in order to get capital doing work. They can make small investments in tiny companies with good (big) ideas.
A small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you’re sick.
Is it better to be the head of Craigslist or the head of UPS?
Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.
Don’t wait. Get small. Think big
By Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com
