A Estratégia do Oceano Azul

Agora que terminei de ler o primeiro livro sobre o BSC (The Balanced Scorecard - Translating Strategy Into Action) e antes de partir para o segundo (na verdade enquanto ainda estudo o primeiro), resolvi variar e comecei ler "A Estratégia do Oceano Azul". Você já deve ter ouvido falar. Eu mesmo já comentei por aqui algumas vezes.
O livro é muito bem escrito e está recheado de referências bibliográficas para os que procuram estudar o tema em profundidade.
Resumindo, trata-se de propor uma "expansão" do que estudamos em Estratégia Empresarial até hoje e buscar caminhos além das fronteiras do setor de atuação da organização. Assim são criados os "oceanos azuis", espaços enormes de demanda de mercado em que não há concorrência. Quer um exemplo? Pense no Cirque du Soleil (está no primeiro parágrafo do livro).
O camarada, do nada, conseguiu sair da mesmice do circo (o negócio de rentabilidade duvidosa), buscou algo do teatro e criou uma experiência que encanta a todos e, por conseqüência, o seu oceano azul.
Em contra-posição temos os oceanos vermelhos (que continuarão existindo e sendo motivo de preocupação das empresas), que são os espaços disputados palmo a palmo por concorrentes (o que nos leva à boa e velha análise de Porter). O vermelho é o sangue derramado na luta ferrenha por fatias de mercado.
Tem lá seu valor e já posso até perceber uma certa influência no trabalho do Porter. Veja aqui um vídeo em que faz afirmações que lembram muito o Oceano Azul. De fato, os autores fazem questão de ressaltar que não se invalida o que Porter e outros estudiosos trouxemos. O que trazem é algo que se acrescenta. Vale a pena.
Há um site oficial com informações interessantes: clique aqui...

A BSC (Balanced Scored Card) Study Pause

It's about two months without writing about Balanced Scorecard (BSC). I'm sorry about that but I had to stop my (self)studies on it because of a personal (urgent) project. Unfortunately I can't say this here...
As soon as I finish this project I'll come back. For while I'll let here some articles about this issue. Take a look at this.

Common Sense in Strategy Communication: Four Lessons from Canon USA, by Lauren Keller Johnson, Balanced Scorecard Report
At Canon USA, strategic awareness is serious business. Executives advocate top-down, bottom-up, and lateral communications and feedback. The commitment to communicating strategy, and aligning employees with this commitment, has served the company, a subsidary of Canon, Inc., very well.
Read more...

Chapter 2 - The Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

That's my second chapter's summary on the book The Balanced Scorecard (Robert Kaplan and David Norton)



▼ ❑ CHAPTER 2
• ❑ The Chapter 2 answers the question: why does business need a BSC? The main reason is: "you can't manage what you can't measure", so measure and management systems are to be used. The difference between BSC and other systems is the way it brings more than financial aspects.

• ❑ The authors tell us more about the four perspectives and linking these to a single strategy.

• ❑ Financial measurement has been the standard for thousand of years. Egyptians used to bookkeeping financial records. It also happened during the age of exploration, Industrial Revolution, until the post World-War II (approximately), when some critics appears.

• ❑ The overemphasis on financial results may cause problems on long-term

▼ ❑ A little bit more about the four perspective:
• ❑ 1 Financial Perspective: Indicates wether a company's strategy, implementation, and execution are contributing to bottom-line improvement
• ❑ 2 Customer Perspective: Managers identify the target market segments and articulate the customer and market-based strategy that will deliver superior future financial returns
• ❑ 3 Internal-Business-Process Perspective: Executives identify the critical internal processes to meet customer and financial objectives. It still focus on improvement of existing processes, however will usually identify new processes
• ❑ 4 Learning an Growth Perspective: Identifies the infrastructure that the organization must build to create long-term growth and improvement. Organizational learn and growth come from: people, systems, and organizational procedures

• ❑ In order to link measures to strategy the BSC makes relationships among objectives in the Perspectives as a Cause-and-Effect Chain

• ❑ Outcome Measures x Performance Drivers = Lagging Indicators x Leading Indicators

• ❑ Four Perspectives should be considered a template, not a strait jacket. It can be used another perspectives or less than four. It depends on the industry, circumstances, etc

• ❑ Depending on the organizational design, companies should develop the BSC on strategic business unit (SBU). The question for wether a department or functional unit should have a BSC is: "does it have its own mission, strategy, customers, internal process?"

• ❑ The book approach (strategy as choosing the market and the customer, identifying the critical business processes, and selecting the individual and organizational capabilities) is consistent with the Industry and Competitive Analysis by Michel Porter.

• ❑ Important: The BSC is primarily a mechanism for strategy implementation, not for strategy formulation

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

Recently I've decided to post in English. In this way I can train my skills in this language and also share some informations worldwide.
As I'm studying BSC by myself I'm going to post the summary of the Chapter 1. Take a look below:



- CHAPTER 1
- The Chapter 1 talks about measuring and managing in the
information age. It mentions the importance of intellectual
assets and the changes in the relationship with customers.

- By the first time, it presents two of the the four
perspectives somehow saying that "innovation and improvement
of products, services, and process will be generated by
reskilled people, superior information technology, and
aligned organizational procedures".

- Financial short-term measures or motivation aren't sufficient
to determine the success of failure. They are about the past
not the future.

- The BSC comes to put together financial (past) measures and
drivers of future: customer, internal-business-process, and
learn and growth perspectives.

- The BSC is more than a measurement system. It's a management
system. It can be used "as the central, organized framework
for their management process".

- There are some objectives in developing BSC in companies:
1 - Clarify and gain consensus about strategy;
2 - Communicate strategy throughout the organization;
3 - Align departmental and personal goals to the strategy;
4 - Identify and align strategic initiatives;
5 - Perform periodic and systematic strategic reviews;
6 - Obtain feedback to learn about and improve strategy.