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Remova o Tédio e a Frustração da Jornada do seu Cliente

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Remova o Tédio e a Frustração da Jornada do seu Cliente

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Por Alexander Chernev

28 de março de 2023

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Remove Boredom and Frustration from Your Customer Journey

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While generating positive affect is essential, it often is even more effective to minimize negative customer experiences. This can be achieved by addressing the two main detractors of a customer’s emotional journey: frustration and boredom.

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Uma Excelente Experiência do Usuário (UX) Não Garante uma Excelente Experiência do Cliente

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Uma Excelente Experiência do Usuário (UX) Não Garante uma Excelente Experiência do Cliente

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Por Adam Richardson

12 de agosto de 2015

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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It's one thing to create a great looking product that's easy to use. It's another to create a great experience that continues to improve, delight, and expand in scope over time. The first is user experience. The second is customer experience.

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Great UX Doesn't Guarantee a Great Customer Experience

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Atualize Sua Estratégia de Precificação para combinar com o Comportamento do Consumidor

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Atualize Sua Estratégia de Precificação para combinar com o Comportamento do Consumidor

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Por David J. Hardisty, Thomas Allard e Dale Griffin

28 de maio de 2020

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Behavioralists are gaining insight into how price affects demand and willingness-to-pay. Just as "life hacks" are small changes designed to make your life easier, the authors identify three "pricing hacks" to reduce sticker shock and increase the perceived value of their offerings. Instead of offering a standard option for "$200" and a higher-quality alternative for "$250", focus on the difference and offer the high-quality option for "$50 more." Second, many quality and sustainability attributes are difficult for consumers to evaluate. If a new dishwasher saves 20kWh per cycle, how much value does that provide? The solution here is to translate intangible costs into metrics that resonate with consumers: in particular, dollar costs, which offer a way to reframe the total cost of ownership in a way that is more meaningful for consumers. Third, "stacked" discounts refer to cumulative discounts that are sequentially presented to consumers, for example, offering a 20% "first time buyer" discount, on top of a 15% "holiday weekend sale." Research shows that stacking multiple discounts is more effective than providing one overall discount.

How can marketing managers nudge consumers to purchase those higher quality goods and services that consumers say they want? Just as "life hacks" are small changes designed to make your life easier, we identify three "pricing hacks," small tweaks in how retailers present prices to consumers that reduce sticker shock and increase the perceived value of their offerings. Recognizing these "hacks" enables retailers to guide consumers toward better, but more expensive options more effectively.

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Upgrade Your Pricing Strategy to Match Consumer Behavior

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Behavioralists are gaining insight into how price affects demand and willingness-to-pay. Just as "life hacks" are small changes designed to make your life easier, the authors identify three "pricing hacks" to reduce sticker shock and increase the perceived value of their offerings.

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7 Lições sobre Precificação Dinâmica (Cortesia de Bruce Springsteen)

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7 Lições sobre Precificação Dinâmica (Cortesia de Bruce Springsteen)

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Por Rafi Mohammed

30 de setembro de 2022

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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7 Lessons on Dynamic Pricing (Courtesy of Bruce Springsteen)

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Some fans were outraged when man-of-the-people Bruce Springsteen charged more than $5,000 per seat for his upcoming concert. The high prices were the result of a dynamic pricing system, in which prices are adjusted upward in response to strong demand. This controversy illustrates seven lessons that managers should keep in mind when adjusting prices, including the need for clear communications, longtime customers’ expectation that they deserve a discount, and the fact that high prices will raise expectations about quality and service.

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O que Realmente Faz os Clientes Comprarem um Produto

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O que Realmente Faz os Clientes Comprarem um Produto

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Por Hugh N. Wilson, Emma K. Macdonald e Shane Baxendale

9 de novembro de 2015

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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On a cold English autumn evening recently, we three found ourselves together in the bar of our business school, Cranfield School of Management, along with some clients. Emma, an Australian by upbringing, did something entirely unexpected: she ordered the quintessential summer drink of Wimbledon, a Pimm's. She didn't say this was a good idea, or praise Cranfield's Pimm's, she just ordered it. Most of the group instantly followed her.

The business world is rightly obsessed with net promoter score and other measures of peer recommendation. What other customers say is incredibly influential on our buying behavior. But there is a touchpoint that is even more influential, which marketers rarely think about and almost never measure: observing what other customers actually do.

We have hard evidence to back this statement. We recently analyzed the brand touchpoints of 14,000 people in North America and Europe over a one-week period. Each person was asked to report their experiences during the week of a brand in one of four categories: mobile handsets, soft drinks, technology products, and electrical goods. The data were collected by structured text message as touchpoints happened, using research agency MESH Experience's real-time experience tracking approach.

After mining the data from the resulting 69,000 texts we found that observing other customers wasn't only very common, it was also strikingly important in shaping consumers' views of a brand: equally important as word-of-mouth recommendations for mobile handsets and soft drinks, and even more important than word of mouth for technology products and electrical goods (see the figure below). Overall, peer observation was equal in importance to the brand advertising on which companies spend billions.

We discovered this by accident, but it makes sense. As parents we are taught that what we do is far more important than what we say (this is familiar to social psychologists as the concept of the descriptive norm). When others at the rock concert drop litter, we express disgust at the state of the field and then surreptitiously join in. A recent experiment showed that the number of migrants citizens think their country should take is vastly influenced by the data they are given on what neighboring countries are doing. What the psychologist and Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kahneman terms "System 1 thinking" also applies: with many decisions to take, it saves effort to assume that if others are using a product, it's probably good.

So what can marketers do about it? First, it's important to think about distinctive branding for the product in use not just for the purchase moment, so we notice when a friend is using the brand. Apple's early advertising of the iPod focused on associating it with the characteristic white earphones, visible even when the iPod wasn't.

Second, if decision-making is made by the group rather than the individual, marketers can try to win the group. One global drinks manufacturer we follow is now using group discounts as well as communicating that the product can be enjoyed in groups. (And the Cranfield bar has now taken to offering Emma a pitcher of Pimm's when she orders a glass.) Brand research shows that Coca-Cola's customized cans have helped it own the brand attribute "Good for sharing," one of the three top attributes for driving drinks purchases; one of the several effects going on in this successful "share a Coke" campaign is positive peer observation.

Third, expose normally invisible customer behaviors to their peers. Just adding figures to a website on how many people are buying increases both sales and the price customers will pay. And if they are figures on my group buying, so much the better: people are more likely to reuse their towel in hotels if they are given statistics on reuse within that hotel, rather than exhortations about the whole planet.

Fourth, build in peer observation to product launches. When Hutchison launched its early social-media-enabled mobile handset INQ in Singapore, rapid take-up was helped by rapid transit: real-time experience tracking found that people were particularly noticing other travelers' phones on the evening commute. So the company engaged a tribe of young people to use the bright, colorful handsets while walking along the trains.

How well do these strategies work? What else can we do? We'd love to hear more from marketers. Because when we talk to blue-chips about this research, the reaction follows a common pattern. Managers are instantly struck by the evident importance of this neglected touchpoint. Soon after, they declare it to be someone else's problem in the firm.

Marketing communications people are charged with improving the efficacy of paid-for media, service people with improving Net Promoter Score (NPS). Perhaps we should first ask chief executives: is anyone tasked with tracking the importance of peer observation? And amidst the armies of communications specialists and their agencies, whose job is it to make sure this free touchpoint works in our favor?

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What Really Makes Customers Buy a Product

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On a cold English autumn evening recently, we three found ourselves together in the bar of our business school, Cranfield School of Management, along with some clients. Emma, an Australian by upbringing, did something entirely unexpected: she ordered the quintessential summer drink of Wimbledon, a Pimm's.

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Como Deveria Ser o Seu Processo de Inovação

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Como Deveria Ser o Seu Processo de Inovação

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Por Steve Blank e Pete Newell 11 de setembro de 2017

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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What Your Innovation Process Should Look Like

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For innovation to contribute to a company or government agency, it needs to be designed as a process from start to deployment. When organizations lack a formal innovation pipeline process, project approvals tend to be based on who has the best demo or slides, or who lobbies the hardest.

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Como Nossa Empresa Aprendeu a Fazer Previsões Melhores Sobre Tudo

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Como Nossa Empresa Aprendeu a Fazer Previsões Melhores Sobre Tudo

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Por Danny Hernandez

15 de maio de 2017

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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We all make bets about the future, whether we call them that or not. We select a career based on perceptions about its prospects; we take on projects based on what we think we can accomplish; we hire employees based on how we predict they will perform. We don't have an option not to make predictions in our work lives, but we do have an option to try and make better ones. At Twitch, employees have worked to create a culture of forecasting based on the research of Philip Tetlock. Although employees were skeptical at first, most have come to embrace the practice of making frequent numerical forecasts.

In Silicon Valley, everyone makes bets. Founders bet years of their lives on finding product market fit, investors bet billions on the future value of ambitious startups, and executives bet that their strategies will increase a company's prospects. Here, predicting the future is not a theoretical superpower, it's part of the job.

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How Twitch Learned to Make Better Predictions About Everything

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We all make bets about the future, whether we call them that or not. We select a career based on perceptions about its prospects; we take on projects based on what we think we can accomplish; we hire employees based on how we predict they will perform.

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Insira Significado no Centro do Seu Modelo de Negócios

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Insira Significado no Centro do Seu Modelo de Negócios

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Por Ron Shaich

16 de novembro de 2023

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Most business models cover the bases nicely: how the company will serve customers better than rivals. But they don't really explain why the company matters. Why should anyone care that your company exists? Why should they walk past your rivals in order to reach you? What's your real differentiation in the eyes of target customers? Without good answers, you aren't likely to stand out in the marketplace for long. Once the shine wears off, or rivals match your pricing, you'll lose both customers and employees. That's bad both for your long-term competitive position and for society. Adding a larger meaning beyond the dollars makes sense for every constituent - investors, employees and the community. A successful business model connects with customers, employees, and investors, and builds a compelling vision for the long term. And the only way to do that is with empathy and imagination to gain a deep understanding of the needs of your target customer. In this article, author Ron Shaich, founder and former chairman & CEO of Panera Bread, shares how his team transformed a low-margin French bakery into a profitable French bakery café by listening to customers and pinpointing the meaning behind the business model.

We've been looking at business models all wrong. Yes, they're about making your company stand out from the competition and deliver value to customers - getting their jobs done. And leaders need the foundation of a solid business model to make crucial decisions when setting up and structuring their operations.

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Put Meaning at the Center of Your Business Model

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Most business models cover the bases nicely: how the company will serve customers better than rivals. But they don't really explain why the company matters. Why should anyone care that your company exists? Why should they walk past your rivals in order to reach you? What's your real differentiation in the eyes of target customers?

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Você Precisa Mais do que Dados para Entender Seus Clientes

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Você Precisa Mais do que Dados para Entender Seus Clientes

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Por Marcus Collins

13 de dezembro de 2023

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Today we have more data than ever before, yet marketers still struggle to understand their customers. That's because today's marketers have mistaken information for intimacy. The author, who ran strategy for Wieden+Kennedy, describes an ethnographic research campaign his team conducted on behalf of McDonald's. They produced a cultural bible of sorts that chronicled a series of beliefs, artifacts, behavioral rituals, and language that constitute the McDonald's fandom. He offers three questions marketers can ask to start to establish more intimacy with their own customers.

Every marketer wants to better understand their consumers - their preferences, pain points, and perspectives - to establish a better product-consumer fit. Today, there's more data available than ever before, yet marketers still struggle with this practice. How can that be? More data should lead to better understanding; yet contemporary marketers find themselves extracting comparatively marginal insight about who these people truly are.

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You Need More Than Data to Understand Your Customers

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Today we have more data than ever before, yet marketers still struggle to understand their customers. That's because today's marketers have mistaken information for intimacy. The author, who ran strategy for Wieden+Kennedy, describes an ethnographic research campaign his team conducted on behalf of McDonald's.

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6 Maneiras de Construir uma Cultura Centrada no Cliente

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6 Maneiras de Construir uma Cultura Centrada no Cliente

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Por Denise Lee Yohn

2 de outubro de 2018

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Companies have been trying to adopt customer centricity for nearly 20 years now. Yet only 14% of marketers say their company really focuses on customer centricity. To build a culture that focuses on customer needs, companies should take six steps: Operationalize customer empathy; hire for customer orientation; democratize customer insights; facilitate direct interaction with customers; link employee culture to customer outcomes; and tie compensation to the customer. Company leaders are starting to recognize that culture and strategy go hand in hand. Only when customer-centric strategies are supported and advanced by culture will a company realize its customer-centric vision.

Companies have been trying to adopt customer centricity for nearly 20 years now. But the CMO Council reports that "only 14 percent of marketers say that customer centricity is a hallmark of their companies, and only 11 percent believe their customers would agree with that characterization."

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6 Ways to Build a Customer-Centric Culture

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Companies have been trying to adopt customer centricity for nearly 20 years now. Yet only 14% of marketers say their company really focuses on customer centricity. To build a culture that focuses on customer needs, companies should take six steps: Operationalize customer empathy; hire for customer orientation; democratize customer insights; facilitate direct interaction with customers; link employee culture to customer outcomes; and tie compensation to the customer.

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4 Estratégias para Simplificar a Jornada do Cliente

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4 Estratégias para Simplificar a Jornada do Cliente

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Por Richard L. Gruner

14 de maio de 2021

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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4 Strategies to Simplify the Customer Journey

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While it may be tempting to offer your customers a never-ending array of products, customizations, and information, research shows that simplicity is almost always the best option for boosting both company value and customer loyalty. But what does it take to build a customer experience that’s smooth and simple from end to end? In this piece, the author offers four strategies to ensure simplicity is baked into every aspect of the customer’s journey: identify and communicate what simplicity means to your organization, look beyond product development to find ways to simplify throughout the customer journey, embrace internal complexity to achieve external simplicity, and remember that while simplicity is often necessary, it isn’t always the answer.

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38 Perguntas Inteligentes para Fazer em uma Entrevista de Emprego

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38 Perguntas Inteligentes para Fazer em uma Entrevista de Emprego

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Por Amy Gallo

19 de maio de 2022

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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The opportunity to ask questions at the end of a job interview is one you don't want to waste. It's both a chance to continue to prove yourself and to find out whether a position is the right fit for you. In this piece, the author lists sample questions recommended by two career experts and divides them up by category: from how to learn more about your potential boss to how to learn more about a company's culture. Choose the ones that are more relevant to you, your interests, and the specific job ahead of time. Then write them down - either on a piece of paper or on your phone - and glance at them right before your interview so that they're fresh in your mind. And, of course, be mindful of the interviewer's time. If you were scheduled to talk for an hour and they turn to you with five minutes left, choose two or three questions that are most important to you. You will always have more time to ask questions once you have the job offer in hand.

"So, do you have any questions for me?"

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38 Smart Questions to Ask in a Job Interview

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The opportunity to ask questions at the end of a job interview is one you don't want to waste. It's both a chance to continue to prove yourself and to find out whether a position is the right fit for you.

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Os quatro tipos de inovação e os problemas que eles resolvem

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Os quatro tipos de inovação e os problemas que eles resolvem

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Por Greg Satell

Junho 21, 2017

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Innovation is, at its core, about solving problems - and there are as many ways to innovate as there are different types of problems to solve. Just like we wouldn't rely on a single marketing tactic for the life of an organization, or a single source of financing, we need to build up a portfolio of innovation strategies designed for specific tasks. Leaders identify the right type of strategy to solve the right type of problem, just by asking two questions: How well we can define the problem and how well we can define the skill domain(s) needed to solve it. Well-defined problems that benefit from well-defined skills fall into the category of "sustaining innovation." Most innovation happens here, because most of the time we're trying to get better at something we're already doing. "Breakthrough innovation" is needed when we run into a well-defined problem that's just devilishly hard to solve. In cases like these, we need to explore unconventional skill domains. When the reverse is true - skills are well-defined, but the problem is not - we can tap into "disruptive innovation" strategies. And when nothing is well-defined, well, then we're in the exploratory, pioneering realm of basic research. There are always new problems to solve; learn to apply the solution that best fits your current problem.

One of the best innovation stories I've ever heard came to me from a senior executive at a leading tech firm. Apparently, his company had won a million-dollar contract to design a sensor that could detect pollutants at very small concentrations underwater. It was an unusually complex problem, so the firm set up a team of crack microchip designers, and they started putting their heads together.

About 45 minutes into their first working session, the marine biologist assigned to their team walked in with a bag of clams and set them on the table. Seeing the confused looks of the chip designers, he explained that clams can detect pollutants at just a few parts per million, and when that happens, they open their shells.

As it turned out, they didn't really need a fancy chip to detect pollutants - just a simple one that could alert the system to clams opening their shells. "They saved $999,000 and ate the clams for dinner," the executive told me.

That, in essence, is the value of open innovation. When you have a really tough problem, it often helps to expand skill domains beyond specialists in a single field. Many believe it is just these kinds of unlikely combinations that are key to coming up with breakthroughs. In fact, a study analyzing 17.9 million scientific papers found that the most highly cited work tended to be mostly rooted within a traditional field, with just a smidgen of insight taken from some unconventional place.

But what if the task had been simply to make a chip that was 30% more efficient? In that case, a marine biologist dropping clams on the table would have been nothing more than a distraction. Or, what if the company needed to identify a new business model? Or what if - as is the case today - current chip technology is nearing its theoretical limits, and a completely new architecture needs to be dreamed up?

In researching my book, Mapping Innovation, I found that every innovation strategy fails eventually, because innovation is, at its core, about solving problems - and there are as many ways to innovate as there are types of problems to solve. There is no one "true" path to innovation.

Yet all too often, organizations act as if there is. They lock themselves into one type of strategy and say, "This is how we innovate." It works for a while, but eventually it catches up with them. They find themselves locked into a set of solutions that don't fit the problems they need to solve. Essentially, they become square-peg companies in a round-hole world and lose relevance.

We need to start treating innovation like other business disciplines - as a set of tools that are designed to accomplish specific objectives. Just as we wouldn't rely on a single marketing tactic or a single source of financing for the entire life of an organization, we need to build up a portfolio of innovation strategies designed for specific tasks.

It was with this in mind that I created the Innovation Matrix to help leaders identify the right type of strategy to solve a problem, by asking two questions: How well can we define the problem? and How well can we define the skill domain(s) needed to solve it?

Sustaining innovation. Most innovation happens here, because most of the time we are seeking to get better at what we're already doing. We want to improve existing capabilities in existing markets, and we have a pretty clear idea of what problems need to be solved and what skill domains are required to solve them.

For these types of problems, conventional strategies like strategic roadmapping, traditional R&D labs, and using acquisitions to bring new resources and skill sets into the organization are usually effective. Design thinking methods, such as those championed by David Kelley, founder of the design firm IDEO and Stanford's d.school, can also be enormously helpful if both the problem and the skills needed to solve it are well understood.

Breakthrough innovation. Sometimes, as was the case with the example of detecting pollutants underwater, we run into a well-defined problem that's just devilishly hard to solve. In cases like these, we need to explore unconventional skill domains, such as adding a marine biologist to a team of chip designers. Open innovation strategies can be highly effective in this regard, because they help to expose the problem to diverse skill domains.

As Thomas Kuhn explained in the The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, we advance in specific fields by creating paradigms, which sometimes can make it very difficult to solve a problem within the domain in which it arose - but the problem may be resolved fairly easily within the paradigm of an adjacent domain.

Disruptive innovation. When HBS professor Clayton Christensen introduced the concept of disruptive innovation in his book The Innovator's Dilemma, it was a revelation. In his study of why good firms fail, he found that what is normally considered best practice - listening to customers, investing in continuous improvement, and focusing on the bottom line - can be lethal in some situations.

In a nutshell, what he discovered is that when the basis of competition changes, because of technological shifts or other changes in the marketplace, companies can find themselves getting better and better at things people want less and less. When that happens, innovating your products won't help - you have to innovate your business model.

More recently, Steve Blank has developed lean startup methods and Alex Osterwalder has created tools like the business model canvas and value proposition canvas. These are all essential assets for anyone who finds themselves in the situation Christensen described, and they are proving to be effective in a wide variety of contexts.

Basic research. Pathbreaking innovations never arrive fully formed. They always begin with the discovery of some new phenomenon. No one could guess how Einstein's discoveries would shape the world, or that Alan Turing's universal computer would someday become a real thing. As Neil deGrasse Tyson said when asked about the impact of a major discovery, "I don't know, but we'll probably tax it." To his point, Einstein's discoveries now play essential roles in technologies ranging from nuclear energy to computer technologies and GPS satellites.

Some large enterprises, like IBM and Procter & Gamble, have the resources to invest in labs to pursue basic research. Others, like Experian's DataLabs, encourage researchers and engineers to go to conferences and hold internal seminars on what they learn. Google invites about 30 top researchers to spend a sabbatical year at the company and funds 250 academic projects annually.

Yet one of the best-kept secrets is how even small and medium-size enterprises can access world-class research. The federal government funds a variety of programs, such as the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a series of manufacturing hubs to help develop advanced technologies, and Argonne Design Works. Local universities, which have a wealth of scientific talent, can also be a valuable resource.

Taking steps to participate in these types of programs can help small business compete in competitive markets. For example, Mike Wixom of Navitas, a four-year-old battery company that joined the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) as an affiliate, told me, "As a small company, we're fighting for our survival on a daily basis. Becoming a JCESR affiliate gives us an early peek at technology, and you get to give feedback about what kinds manufacturing issues are likely to come up with any particular chemistry."

So, clearly, being able to reach out to scientists on the cutting edge can help a business plan for the future, just as the other approaches, such as design thinking, open innovation, business model innovation, and others, can help propel a business forward if applied in the right context. But no one solution fits all problems.

If your innovation strategy is struggling or failing, consider whether it's because you've locked yourself into a single approach. There are always new problems to solve; learn to apply the solution that best fits your current problem.

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The 4 Types of Innovation and the Problems They Solve

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Innovation is, at its core, about solving problems - and there are as many ways to innovate as there are different types of problems to solve. Just like we wouldn't rely on a single marketing tactic for the life of an organization, or a single source of financing, we need to build up a portfolio of innovation strategies designed for specific tasks.

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Para Fomentar a Inovação, Cultive uma Cultura de Coragem Intelectual

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Para Fomentar a Inovação, Cultive uma Cultura de Coragem Intelectual

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Por Timothy R. Clark

Outubro 13, 2020

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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If you want your team to innovate, you need to create a culture of intellectual bravery, in which team members are willing to disagree, dissent, or challenge the status quo even when it requires they risk being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished. As a leader, make this possible by rewarding (or punishing) vulnerability and risk-taking. The author suggests seven ways you can set the right tone on your team and encourage psychological safety. For example, respond constructively to feedback or bad news and if you reject feedback, explain exactly why. Also, encourage people to think beyond their roles and consider assigning someone to play the role of devil's advocate. Perhaps most important, model vulnerability. Share your mistakes. Ask exploratory questions. Admit what you don't know.

When an organization stops innovating, it is only a matter of time before it fails. But what causes a company to cease coming up with new ideas? Over the last 20 years, I've studied many failed organizations and one of the things I consistently see is an almost imperceptible erosion of intellectual bravery.

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To Foster Innovation, Cultivate a Culture of Intellectual Bravery

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If you want your team to innovate, you need to create a culture of intellectual bravery, in which team members are willing to disagree, dissent, or challenge the status quo even when it requires they risk being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished. As a leader, make this possible by rewarding (or punishing) vulnerability and risk-taking.

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Como Sua Empresa Pode Estimular a Inovação de Todos os Funcionários

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Como Sua Empresa Pode Estimular a Inovação de Todos os Funcionários

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Clique aqui para ler em PT

Por Fabrizio Salvador e Fabian J. Sting

Setembro 19, 2022

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Frontline employees often contribute the best ideas for process improvement, as Toyota and other companies have often found. In this article, the authors show how the kaizen approach to process improvement used at manufacturing companies can be translated to the context of knowledge work, where it can help companies identify opportunities for automating knowledge work. It revolves around the creation of an ideas platform and development toolkit that employees can share and experiment with. Accounting giant PwC has found that adopting this approach and providing extra recognition and rewards for participation on the platform has helped employees to realize over 7 million hours savings in work time.

Companies around the world benefit from the ideas and innovations of their frontline employees to improve their products and processes. The kaizen approach to this, which originated from the Toyota Production System, has been instrumental in driving performance through frontline employee idea generation and implementation. The basic notion behind kaizen is that a continuous stream of hands-on improvements translates into substantial productivity and quality gains over time.

Innovation and Creativity Course

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Innovation and Creativity. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

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How Your Company Can Encourage Innovation from All Employees

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Frontline employees often contribute the best ideas for process improvement, as Toyota and other companies have often found. In this article, the authors show how the kaizen approach to process improvement used at manufacturing companies can be translated to the context of knowledge work, where it can help companies identify opportunities for automating knowledge work.

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Como o Propósito Corporativo Conduz à Inovação

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Como o Propósito Corporativo Conduz à Inovação

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Por Darrell Rigby

Zach First e Mikaela Boyd

01 de novembro de 2023

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Too often, companies' innovation efforts overfocus on one or two stakeholder groups and ignore the others. The result is failure. The best innovations create mutual value for all key constituents: the customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and investors that together have a material "stake" in the innovation's outcome. This article provides four tips for harnessing your corporate purpose to improve your innovation success rate.

Executives consistently name innovation among their highest priorities ... and greatest frustrations. Researchers estimate that 70% to 90% of innovations fail. And despite new organization structures, internal incubators, big data, and even artificial intelligence, there is no evidence those numbers are improving.

Innovation and Creativity Course

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Innovation and Creativity. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

Unlock your team's curiosity and willingness to take smart risks.

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How Corporate Purpose Leads to Innovation

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Too often, companies' innovation efforts overfocus on one or two stakeholder groups and ignore the others. The result is failure. The best innovations create mutual value for all key constituents: the customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and investors that together have a material "stake" in the innovation's outcome.

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Utilize o Big Data para Criar Valor para os Clientes, Não Apenas Segmentá-los

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Utilize o Big Data para Criar Valor para os Clientes, Não Apenas Segmentá-los

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Clique aqui para ler em PT

Por Niraj Dawar

16 agosto, 2016

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Use Big Data to Create Value for Customers, Not Just Target Them

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Por G. Lynn Shostack

Janeiro, 1984

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Considering the extent to which the service industry contributes to our GNP, very little has been said or written about the application of rational management techniques to the development of new services. Many believe that good service results from the style of an individual entrepreneur or company and is therefore highly idiosyncratic.

As a result of her years of experience with service organizations, Ms. Shostack thinks it's time that managers subject service development to more rigorous analysis and control. This very pragmatic article describes how the use of a blueprint can help a service developer not only to identify problems before they happen but also to see the potential for other market opportunities. While the blueprint is most useful to managers developing new services, others can apply the same principles to test the quality of services for which they contract.

We're all familiar with the symptoms of service failure. Your shirt comes back from the laundry with a broken button. Within a week of paying an outrageous repair bill, that ominous rattle reappears in your car's engine. A customer service representative says he'll get back to you and doesn't. An automatic teller swallows your card.

Examples of poor service are widespread; in survey after survey, services top the list in terms of consumer dissatisfaction. Ideas like H&R Block's approach to tax preparation, the McDonald's formula for fast-food service, and Walt Disney's concept of entertainment are so few and far between that they seem to be the product of genius-a brilliant flash that can never be duplicated.

Faced with service problems, we tend to become somewhat paranoid. Customers are convinced that someone is treating them badly; managers think that recalcitrant individual employees are the source of the malfunction. Thinly veiled threats by customers and managers are often first attempts to remedy the problem; if they fail, confrontation may result.

But these remedies obscure the basis for a lasting "cure." Even though services fail because of human incompetence, drawing a bead on this target obscures the underlying cause: the lack of systematic method for design and control.

The development of a new service is usually characterized by trial and error. Developers translate a subjective description of a need into an operational concept that may bear only a remote resemblance to the original idea. No one systematically quantifies the process or devises tests to ensure that the service is complete, rational, and fulfills the original need objectively. No R&D departments, laboratories, or service engineers define and oversee the design. There is no way to ensure quality or uniformity in the absence of a detailed design. What piecemeal quality controls exist address only parts of the service.

There are several reasons for the lack of analytical service systems designs. Services are unusual in that they have impact, but no form. Like light, they can't be physically stored or possessed and their consumption is often simultaneous with their production.

People confuse services with products and with good manners. But a service is not a physical object and cannot be possessed. When we buy the use of a hotel room, we take nothing away with us but the experience of the night's stay. When we fly, we are transported by an airplane but we don't own it. Although a consultant's product may appear as a bound report, what the consumer bought was mental capability and knowledge, not paper and ink. A service is not a servant; it need not be rendered by a person. Even when people are the chosen means of execution, they are only part of the process.

Outstanding service companies instill in their managers a fanatical attachment to the original service idea. Believing that this product of genius is the only thing they have going for them, they try to maintain it with considerable precision. They bring in methods engineers to quantify and make existing components more efficient. They codify the process in volumes of policies and procedures. While the outline of a great service concept may be reflected in these tools, the procedures are only fragmented views of a more comprehensive, largely undocumented phenomenon. Good and lasting service management requires much more. Better service design provides the key to market success, and more important, to growth.

The operations side of service management often uses work flow design and control methods such as time-motion engineering, PERT/GANTT charting, and quality-control methods derived from the work of W. Edwards Deming. These procedures provide managers with a way to visualize a process and to define and manipulate it at arm's length. What they miss is the consumer's relationship to, and interaction with, services. They make no provision for people-rendered services that require judgment and a less mechanical approach. They don't account for the service's products that must be managed simultaneously with the process. And they don't allow for special problems of market position, advertising, pricing, or distribution.

We can build on the strength of these operational systems, however, to come up with a more comprehensive and workable framework for addressing most issues of service development. We can devise a blueprint for service design that is nonsubjective and quantifiable, one which will allow developers to work out details ahead of time. Such a blueprint gives managers a context within which to deal with the management and control of the process.

Designing a Blueprint

A service blueprint allows a company to explore all the issues inherent in creating or managing a service. The process of designing a blueprint involves the consideration of several issues:

Identifying processes. The first step in creating such a blueprint is mapping the processes that constitute the service. Exhibit I maps a shoeshine parlor. As the service is simple and clear-cut, the map is straightforward. For more complex services, identifying and defining the processes involved may be difficult and result in a large, complicated diagram. Tax-return preparation or health care, for example, involves many decision points, alternative courses of action, and variable methodologies. Portfolio management, car repair, and even tailoring require contemplation and observation before diagramming.

Exhibit I Blueprint for a Corner Shoeshine

Even within the simplest process, further definition is beneficial; in shoeshining it might be useful to specify how the proprietor will perform the step called "buff." Definition doesn't mean you must mechanize all procedures. But identifying the components of a step or action reveals the inputs needed and steps covered, and permits analysis, control, and improvement. For example, a doctor or a lawyer would do well to break down the "problem diagnosis" step.

It is important to watch out for parts of the service that the consumer does not see, like purchasing of supplies. Though invisible, these processes are important because changing them may alter the way consumers perceive the service. If, for example, a bank redesigns a computer program so that it produces a different account statement for customers, the bank may affect its image or other consumer perceptions of value. These subprocesses are integral to the success of the service.

Isolating fail points. Having diagrammed the processes involved, the designer can now see where the system might go awry. The shoeshiner may pick up and apply the wrong color wax. So the designer must build in a subprocess to correct this possible error. The identification of fail points and the design of fail-safe processes are critical. The consequences of service failures can be greatly reduced by analyzing fail points at the design stage. When designers and managers think through potential problems together in advance, the quality of service execution is invariably higher.

Establishing time frame. After diagramming a service profile, identifying processes and vulnerabilities, and building in fail-safe measures, the designer must consider the execution.

Since all services depend on time, which is usually the major cost determinant, the designer should establish a standard execution time. As a blueprint is a model, the design should also allow for deviation from standard execution time under working conditions. The amount of latitude necessary in the time frame will depend on the complexity of the delivery.

In the shoeshine example, the standard execution time is two minutes. Research showed that the customer would tolerate up to five minutes of performance before lowering his or her assessment of quality. Acceptable execution time for a shoeshine is then five minutes.

Analyzing profitability. The customer can spend the three minutes between standard and acceptable execution time at the corner parlor waiting in line or during service, if an error occurs or if the shoeshiner does certain things too slowly. Whatever its source, a delay can affect profits dramatically. Exhibit II quantifies the cost of delay; after four minutes the proprietor loses money.

Exhibit II Shoeshine Profitability Analysis

A service designer must establish a time-of-service-execution standard that precludes unprofitable business and maintains productivity. Such a standard not only helps measure performance and control uniformity and quality, it also serves as a model for distribution of the service to far-flung locations.

Delivering the Service

Recruiting, training, and general management are important considerations in services rendered by people, and for complex professional occupations such as legal, consulting, or medical services these factors are of paramount importance. But some services can be rendered mechanically, as banks have demonstrated with automatic tellers, and some can be performed by customers themselves, as at salad bars.

Implementation constantly evolves. Schools, for example, once depended entirely on teachers to render the service of education; today computers and television have an important function in the classroom. A service designer must weigh alternate means of execution, for example, by considering the merits of using a buffing machine in the process of shoeshining. The productivity and profit margin increases must be weighed against a customer's perception of lower quality. A blueprint facilitates the analysis of cost-benefit trade-offs and can be used to test the appeal of different designs to prospective customers.

A blueprint can help the service developer with other problems. For the pricing department, it provides a basis for a thorough cost analysis; for distribution, a map to be duplicated; for promotion, tangible evidence it can manage and control.

Highlighting Tangible Evidence

To maintain credibility, the service must select and manage products with care. In some cases, products are optional-a consultant may not have to present a written report for instance. Consumers, however, often deduce the nature of the service from this type of circumstantial evidence. The design of a service should therefore incorporate the orchestration of tangible evidence-everything the consumer uses to verify the service's effectiveness. The setting, including color schemes, advertising, printed or graphic materials, and stationery, all proclaim a service's style. The design should not be carelessly delegated to outsiders or left to chance.

Airlines have learned this lesson. The interior and exterior decor of the plane, flight attendants' uniforms, the appearance of the reservation desk, ticket folders, baggage tags, and advertising graphics all tell the customer what kind of service to expect. They either reinforce or contradict personal experience with the airline.

Making People Special

To the customer, people are inseparable parts of many services. The presence of people, however, brings a higher risk that service quality will vary. At the design stage, the developer must plan and consider every encounter between consumer and provider. The good manners and attentiveness customers associate with good personal service must be made part of the hiring, training, and performance standards of the company. Indifferent or surly execution can devalue the service.

Both the Disney organization and IBM offer outstanding examples of superior people management to provide uniform service. Airlines and fast-food chains "package" service personnel in clothes that proclaim and reinforce an overall service identity. These companies invest heavily in training and retraining at all levels.

At the beginning and end of the design cycle lies the marketing goal to which all service organizations aspire: benefiting customers. For the customer, a good shoeshine is "shiny shoes," "clean shoes," or "preservation." It goes without saying that market research throughout the design cycle is the best control mechanism to ensure that the service meets the goal.

Modifying a Service

Market research during a service's operating life enables managers to measure quality and identify needs for redesign.

Exhibit III shows how the designer may add a repeat of steps 2 and 3 in the shoeshine service to create a two-coat shine, and justify a 20-cent price increase, thus increasing the profit margin by nearly 30%. Moreover, the shoeshiner might decide to add a receipt or a sample of shoepolish as tangible evidence of good care. Such service reminders (the shoeshiner could print his or her name and address on the shoe-polish sample) could lead to a premium price for a premium service.

Exhibit III Modified Shoeshine Blueprint

A designer can use a blueprint to engineer new market products or services (see Exhibit IV). A designer can do much at the drawing board, well before expensive formal market introduction of the service.

Exhibit IV Blueprint for More Complex Shoe Products and Services

Applying the Principles

Service blueprint methods can be applied in the development of a discount brokerage service in a large money-center bank (see Exhibit V). Very little of this service is visible to customers. In fact, customers have virtually no conception of the processes that underlie most services.

Exhibit V Blueprint for Discount Brokerage

Discount brokerage is not particularly complex, but the blueprint condenses and simplifies the service and omits many minor steps. For example, the step "prepare and mail statements" includes more than 12 activities, such as printing statements and stuffing and sealing envelopes.

The important fail points (F) show where the service may experience quality or consistency problems. Telephone communication, for example, is a component that is not only critical and difficult to control but also one of the most powerful influences of customer perception, since it provides the only personal contact. To deal with this potential fail point, management decided to script dialogues for various situations, to train staff thoroughly in communication and response techniques, to establish procedures making certain that calls never went unanswered, and to ensure accuracy by logging, recording, and confirming all customer instructions. While the blueprint doesn't show these processes, the system designer has diagrammed and controlled each one.

The design shows execution time standards that can be easily monitored and quantified. They allow the measurement of capacity and productivity through volume and throughput relationships. In telephone communication, for example, the brokerage set a broad time limit for opening accounts (one-half to one hour). Execution standards can be tightened as operating experience increases.

Although the superficial aspects of services may seem the same, the design particulars involve so many alternatives and choices that no two services will have exactly the same design. Services differ from competitor to competitor in the sum of particulars. Individual aspects allow consumers to discriminate between companies offering the same product.

In its complete form, Exhibit V permits the analysis of competitive differences. The designer can then respond to unfavorable comparisons with appropriate changes. As new processes or products are added, or enhancements made, they can be mapped on the blueprint and analyzed for their impact on operations, profitability, and reliability.

Creating Better Service

A blueprint is more precise than verbal definitions and less subject to misinterpretation. It illustrates the dictum of W. Edwards Deming that workers are never to blame for flaws in a process. Process design is management's responsibility.

A service blueprint allows a company to test its assumptions on paper and thoroughly work out the bugs. A service manager can test a prototype delivery on potential customers and use the feedback to modify the blueprint before testing the procedure again.

A blueprint encourages creativity, preemptive problem solving, and controlled implementation. It can reduce the potential for failure and enhance management's ability to think effectively about new services.

The blueprint principle helps cut down the time and inefficiency of random service development and gives a higher level view of service management prerogatives. The alternative-leaving services to individual talent and managing the pieces rather than the whole-makes a company more vulnerable and creates a service that reacts slowly to market needs and opportunities. As the United States moves to a service economy, companies that gain control of the design and management process will be the companies that survive and prosper.

...This pondrous heel of perforated hide / Compact, with pegs indented many a row, / Manly, (for such its mass form bespeaks,) / The weighty tread of some rude peasant clown / Upbore: on this supported oft, he stretch'd, / With uncouth strides, along the furrow'd glebe, / Flatt'ning the stubborn clod, till cruel time, / (What will not, cruel time!) on a wry step, / Sever'd the strict cohesion; when, alas! / He, who could erst, with even, equal pace, / Pursue his destined way with symmetry, / And some proportion form'd, now, on one side, / Curtail'd and maim'd, the sport of vagrant boys, / Cursing his frail supporter, treach'rous prop! / With toilsome steps, and difficult, moves on.

Thus fares it oft with other than the feet / Of humble villager;-the statesman thus, / Up the steep road, where proud ambition treads, / Aspiring, first uninterrupted winds / His prosp'rous way: nor fears miscarriage foul, / While policy prevails, and friends prove true; / But that support soon failing, by him left, / Betray'd, deserted; from his airy height / Head-long he falls; and through the rest of life, / Drags the dull load of disappointment on.

A version of this article appeared in the January 1984 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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Considering the extent to which the service industry contributes to our GNP, very little has been said or written about the application of rational management techniques to the development of new services. Many believe that good service results from the style of an individual entrepreneur or company and is therefore highly idiosyncratic.

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Seus concorrentes nem sempre são quem você pensa que são

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Seus concorrentes nem sempre são quem você pensa que são

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Clique aqui para ler em PT

Por Mark Bonchek e Gene Cornfield

28 de abril de 2016

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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When it comes to strategy, one way to meet radically new expectations in your industry is to draw from the impressive and surprising strategies that are being used in other industries. Why can't interacting with an insurance company be as responsive and transparent as interacting with Uber? Why can't checking into a hospital be as seamless as checking into a hotel? These are the sorts of questions that more and more customers are asking, and the questions that a winning business strategy must answer. You won't find those answers if you limit your strategic vision to what other companies in your field are doing. Remember, your competitors aren't always who you think they are.

Most executives think they know who they're competing against - the major firms in their field or entrepreneurial "ankle biters" with a new technology or business model. But what happens when your competitors aren't who you think they are? Specifically, how do you devise a winning business strategy when you are competing not just against incumbents or upstarts from your industry, but against the ever-changing expectations of your customers, whose encounters with products and services reach far beyond the established boundaries of your industry?

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Your Competitors Aren't Always Who You Think They Are

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When it comes to strategy, one way to meet radically new expectations in your industry is to draw from the impressive and surprising strategies that are being used in other industries. Why can't interacting with an insurance company be as responsive and transparent as interacting with Uber?

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Foque em acompanhar seus clientes, não seus concorrentes

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Foque em acompanhar seus clientes, não seus concorrentes

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Clique aqui para ler em PT

Por Mark Bonchek e Gene Cornfield

28 de abril de 2016

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Every company these days seems to be either contemplating or pursuing digital transformation. Most cite the need to keep up with disruptive and well-established competitors. But perhaps this focus is too narrow. We believe the greatest challenge to companies today is not keeping up with their competitors, but with their own customers.

One reason is that individuals are transforming to digital faster than organizations. Think for a moment about people as tiny enterprises. They've redesigned their core processes in the area of procurement (online shopping), talent acquisition (marketplaces), collaboration (social networking), market research (peer reviews), finance (mobile payments) and travel (room and ride sharing). Have you reinvented your core processes to the same degree?

Customers' expectations are also more liquid and no longer based on industry boundaries. Customers - whether consumers or business buyers - don't compare your customer service to that of your competitors, but to the best customer service they receive from anywhere. The same is true for their expectations of your web site, mobile app, loyalty program, branding, and even social responsibility.

So how can you keep up with your customers? You have to start thinking like them.

Customers don't think in or; they think in and. You have to transcend trade-offs.

The adage used to be that you could pick any two combinations of "cheap, good, or fast." But today's customer doesn't want to make tradeoffs. They want it cheap, good, and fast. As leaders, we are accustomed to thinking of business being about making tough decisions between competing objectives. But we need to think more like our customers. Instead of focusing on how to make tradeoffs, we need to focus on how to transcend them.

Some of the tradeoffs that are most suited to digital transcendence are:

Big and small: Combine the speed, agility and creativity of being small with the scope, scale and influence associated with being big.

Complex and simple: Manage the systems and processes to run a global business while creating simple and elegant experiences for customers.

Global and personal: Achieve universal consistency and reach around the world while delivering relevant, tailored interactions to every customer.

Customers want to be empowered, not controlled. You have to act with empathy.

Business used to be about getting customers to do what you wanted them to do. But customers don't accept this any more. They don't like to be told what to do. They want relationships based on reciprocity, transparency and authenticity. If you want to keep up with your customer, you can't be focused on getting them to do what you want, but instead on helping them do what they want.

This evolution from control to empowerment means a change in the basic building blocks of customer engagement.

Funnels used to be linear processes that moved customers from one stage to the next. There was no going back until a sale was either won or lost. Now these funnels have become Escherian journeys, fluid, customer-led and multi-dimensional. It's not about capturing and converting towards a transaction, but connecting and collaborating around a shared purpose.

Channels used to be pipes connecting you with your customer, carrying carefully crafted messages to passive audiences. Now they are experiences connecting customers to their own desires, and communities connecting customers to each other. It's not about promoting the features and benefits of your product, but building empathy and understanding of each customer's intent - and helping them achieve it - as part of an ongoing relationship.

Customers don't think in straight lines. You need to be non-linear.

To keep up with your customer, you have to let go of linear thinking. Customers today expect you to be where they are, deliver what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. If they're browsing your website on their laptop, they will expect that when they next come to your site from their mobile device or tablet, or talk to a sales person in your store, branch or call center, you will pick up right where they left off. Business has become like that old game of Twister. You have to be flexible if you are going to win.

This requires rethinking and redesigning core disciplines:

Strategy has to go beyond analyzing markets, making plans, and forecasting the future. Strategy also has to build capabilities, transform culture and architect for constant change.

Campaigns have to be more than one-way communications for one-time responses. They need to initiate and expedite personalized journeys as part of ongoing conversations.

Personalization needs to go deeper than looking simply at what someone buys. It needs to be based on the subconscious motivations of why someone buys, revealed through real-time analysis of a wide variety of data sources.

Social can't be treated merely as a channel for distributing messages. Done right, it's a context for building genuine relationships that demonstrate how much they really matter.

Loyalty needs to be more than accumulating points for rewards. To be genuine and enduring, loyalty needs to be reciprocal. If you want their loyalty, you have to be loyal in return.

Operations need to go beyond the efficiency of the company to the efficiency of the customer. How can you optimize to help customers get more for their time and effort, not just their money?

It's a significant shift in mindset and practice to reorient from keeping up with competitors to keeping up with customers.

We suggest getting started by assessing where you are.

How does your transformation compare to your customers? In what areas are they moving faster or slower than you are?

Who is setting your customers' expectations? It's probably coming from outside your industry.

What kind of relationship do you want to have with your customer? Are you trying to get them to do what you want? Or figuring out how to help them do what they want?

Next, look at where to focus your attention.

Which tradeoffs do you need to transcend? We mentioned a few above. Others include speed and scale, consistent and nimble, high-tech and high-touch.

Where is linear thinking getting in the way? Review the disciplines outlined above and see which ones will have the most impact on your customer experience.

Creating sustainable advantage is more elusive than ever. The new game is designing customer-driven journeys across touch points to help them achieve their intent, and to create more multidimensional relationships. To win this game, stop thinking about just keeping up with your competitors, and start thinking about keeping up with your customers.

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Focus on Keeping Up with Your Customers, Not Your Competitors

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Every company these days seems to be either contemplating or pursuing digital transformation. Most cite the need to keep up with disruptive and well-established competitors. But perhaps this focus is too narrow. We believe the greatest challenge to companies today is not keeping up with their competitors, but with their own customers.

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Consumidores Preferem Experiências Compartilhadas em Detrimento das de Qualidade.

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Consumidores Preferem Experiências Compartilhadas em Detrimento das de Qualidade.

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Clique aqui para ler em PT

Por Ximena Garcia-Rada

Michael I. Norton

Rebecca K. Ratner

21 de setembro de 2023

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Some consumer experiences are best when they're solo - but new research shows that people will forgo a high-quality experience in order to share it with a partner or loved one. As a result, they may have a worse time, which can lead to unsatisfied consumers, lower sales, and neglected business opportunities. This article explains why people tend to stick together, even when it isn't necessarily beneficial, and outlines several ways marketers can encourage people to break apart (even briefly) in order to boost their satisfaction.

People's lives are generally a mix of spending quality time with others and leaving space for time alone. Some experiences seem geared toward togetherness - for example, recent estimates suggest that 90% of movie theater visits occur with others - while others are more geared toward solo time, like reading or painting. And while people often make their own decisions about how to spend their time, choices made by companies affect these decisions as well. Explicitly or implicitly, businesses are designed to encourage consumers to be with others or alone - like amusement park rides that have two seats in each row, or restaurants that offer bar seating so people don't need to sit at a table with an empty chair across from them.

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Customer Focus. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

Learn how to keep your customers-and their most important needs-front and center.

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Research: Consumers Choose Shared Experiences Over Quality Ones

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Some consumer experiences are best when they're solo - but new research shows that people will forgo a high-quality experience in order to share it with a partner or loved one. As a result, they may have a worse time, which can lead to unsatisfied consumers, lower sales, and neglected business opportunities.

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Como Marcas Globais Podem Responder a Concorrentes Locais

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Como Marcas Globais Podem Responder a Concorrentes Locais

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Por Sonia Gupta e Oliver Wright

07 de fevereiro de 2019

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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How Global Brands Can Respond to Local Competitors

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Small consumer brands are better able to create hypertargeted products.

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As quatro coisas que uma empresa de serviços deve acertar: Estudo extensivo das melhores empresas de serviços do mundo revela os princípios sobre os quais elas são construídas.

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As quatro coisas que uma empresa de serviços deve acertar: Estudo extensivo das melhores empresas de serviços do mundo revela os princípios sobre os quais elas são construídas.

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Por Frances X. Frei

Data da publicação (Abril 2008)

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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The Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right

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Many of the management tools and techniques used in service businesses were designed to tackle the challenges of product companies. Although they are valuable to service managers, they aren’t sufficient for success. In this article, Harvard Business School’s Frei explains why and urges companies to add some new ones to the mix. After years of extensive research and analysis, she offers an approach for crafting a profitable service business based on four critical elements: the design of the offering, the funding mechanism, employee management, and customer management. Just like a product that’s going to market, a service needs to be compellingly designed, and management must field a workforce capable of producing it at an attractive price. In addition, however, service firms must manage their customers, who do not simply use the service but who can also be integral to its production: Because customers’ involvement as producers can wreak havoc on costs, companies must also develop creative ways to fund their distinctive offerings, by providing a self-service alternative, for example, or by offsetting expenses with operational savings. A close look at successful service businesses—Walmart, Commerce Bank, the Cleveland Clinic, and others—reveals that effective integration of the four elements is key. There is no “right” way to combine them; the appropriate design of one depends upon the other three. If managers don’t get all four pulling together, they risk pulling the enterprise apart. Incumbents can fend off attacks from highly focused upstarts by becoming multifocused—that is, by pursuing multiple niches through optimized service models rather than trying to cover the entire waterfront with one model. Shared services within a firm (functions such as HR and finance) can help, since they will enable it to generate economies of scale and experience across models.

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As Quatro Fases do Gerenciamento de Projetos: Planejamento, Preparação, Implementação e Encerramento.

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As Quatro Fases do Gerenciamento de Projetos: Planejamento, Preparação, Implementação e Encerramento.

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Por Editores da HBR

03 de novembro de 2016

Tradução: Chat GPT

Revisão e adaptação: Profa. Andressa Sullamyta

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Whether you're in charge of developing a website, designing a car, moving a department to a new facility, updating an information system, or just about any other project (large or small), you'll go through the same four phases of project management: planning, build-up, implementation, and closeout. Even though the phases have distinct qualities, they overlap.

For example, you'll typically begin planning with a ballpark budget figure and an estimated completion date. Once you're in the build-up and implementation phases, you'll define and begin to execute the details of the project plan. That will give you new information, so you'll revise your budget and end date-in other words, do more planning -according to your clearer understanding of the big picture.

Here's an overview of each phase and the activities involved.

When people think of project planning, their minds tend to jump immediately to scheduling-but you won't even get to that part until the build-up phase. Planning is really about defining fundamentals: what problem needs solving, who will be involved, and what will be done.

Determine the real problem to solve.

Before you begin, take time to pinpoint what issue the project is actually supposed to fix. It's not always obvious. Say the CIO at your company has asked you, an IT manager, to develop a new database and data entry system. You may be eager to jump right into the project to tackle problems you have struggled with firsthand. But will that solve the company's problem? To increase the project's chances of success, you must look beyond the symptoms you have observed-"We can't get the data out fast enough" and "I have to sift through four different reports just to compile an update on my clients' recent activity"-to find the underlying issues the organization is trying to address. Before designing the database, you should ask what type of data is required, what will be done with it, how soon a fix is needed, and so on. If you don't, you'll run the risk of wasting time and money by creating a solution that is too simplistic, too complicated, or too late-or one that doesn't do what users need it to do.

Identify the stakeholders.

The real problem will become even clearer once you figure out who all your stakeholders are-that is, which functions or people might be affected by the project's activities or outcomes, who will contribute resources (people, space, time, tools, and money), and who will use and benefit from the project's output. They will work with you to spell out exactly what success on the project means. Have them sign off on what they expect at the end of the project and what they are willing to contribute to it. And if the stakeholders change midstream, be prepared not only to respond to the new players but also to include all the others in any decision to redirect the project.

Define project objectives.

One of your most challenging planning tasks is to meld stakeholders' various expectations into a coherent and manageable set of goals. The project's success will be measured by how well you meet those goals. The more explicitly you state them at the outset, the less disagreement you will face later about whether you have met expectations.

In the planning phase, however, much is still in flux, so you'll revise your objectives later on, as you gather information about what you need to achieve.

Determine scope, resources, and major tasks.

Many projects fail either because they bite off more than they can chew and thus grossly underestimate time and money or because a significant part of the work has been overlooked. One tool that can help you avoid these problems is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which aids in the process of determining scope and tasks and developing estimates.

The underlying concept is to subdivide complex activities into their most manageable units. To create a WBS:

Ask, "What will have to be done to accomplish X?"

Continue to ask this question until your answer is broken down into tasks that cannot be subdivided further.

Estimate how long it will take to complete these tasks and how much they will cost in terms of dollars and person-hours.

As a result of your thoughtful planning, you'll be able to rough out an estimate of how many people-with what skills-you'll need for the project. You'll also have a good idea of how long the project will take.

Prepare for trade-offs.

Time, cost, and quality are the three related variables that typically dictate what you can achieve.

Quality = Time + Cost

Change any of these variables, and you change your outcome. Of course, such alterations often occur in the middle of a project. If your time frame for developing a new database management system is suddenly cut in half, for instance, you will need to either employ twice the number of people or be satisfied with a system that isn't as robust as originally planned. Don't let bells and whistles get in the way of mission-critical activities. The key is to establish a level of quality that meets your stakeholders' needs.

Knowing from the start which variable is most important to each stakeholder will help you make the right changes along the way. It's your responsibility to keep every one informed of any tweaks and tell them what the consequences will be in terms of time, cost, and quality.

In the build-up phase, you bring your team together. Time estimates become schedules. Cost estimates become budgets. You gather your resources. You get commitments, and you make them.

Assemble your team.

Your first task in this phase is to assess the skills needed for the project so that you can get the right people on board. This assessment flows directly from the Work Breakdown Structure you did during the planning phase, in which you developed your best estimate of the necessary tasks and activities. You may need to bring in people- either temporary workers or employees from other parts of the organization-who have certain skills. Don't forget to budget time and money for training to cover any gaps you can't fill with people who are already up to speed.

Plan assignments.

If you've built your own team, you've probably already decided who will do what. Or, if you've inherited a team but worked with the members before, you can still make the assignments yourself. But if a new, unfamiliar group is assigned to you, list the people on the team, list the skills required, and talk to each team member about his or her own skill set before you match people to tasks. This approach starts the process of team communication and cohesion.

Create the schedule.

It would be nice if you could tally up the to-dos and say, "With the resources we have, we will need this much time"-and then get exactly what you've asked for. But the reality is, most projects come with fixed beginning and end dates, regardless of available resources.

To create a realistic schedule within those constraints, work backward from any drop-dead deadlines you know about-that is, dates that cannot be changed-to see when your deliverables must be ready. For instance, if an annual report is due for a shareholders' meeting and you know it takes the printer two weeks, then all the final art and copy for the report must be ready to go to the printer two weeks before the meeting.

Hold a kickoff meeting.

As soon as you've chosen your players and set the schedule, bring everyone together for a kickoff meeting. Go over the project's plan and objectives with the group in as much detail as possible, and review the proposed time frame. Be sure to clarify roles and responsibilities. Encourage people to point out spots where problems may occur and where improvements could be made. Take all suggestions seriously-especially in areas where the team members have more experience than you do-and adjust your estimates and activities accordingly.

Develop a budget.

The first question to ask when developing a budget is, "What will it take to actually do the work?" To determine your costs, break down the project into the following categories: personnel, travel, training, supplies, space, research, capital expenditures, and overhead.

After you've entered the figures from these standard categories into the budget, ask a trusted adviser what you forgot. Did you overlook insurance? Licensing fees? Costs for legal or accounting support?

A budget, no matter how carefully planned, is just your best guess. Expect actual numbers to deviate from original estimates, and stay as flexible as possible within your limitations of time, quality demands, and total money available.

It's time to put the plan into action. The implementation phase is often the most gratifying, because work actually gets done, but it can also be the most frustrating. The details can be tedious and, at times, overwhelming.

Monitor and control process and budget.

Whether you have a formal project control system in place or you do your own regular check-ups, try to maintain a big-picture perspective so that you don't become engulfed by details and petty problems. Project-monitoring software systems can help you measure your progress.

No single approach works for all projects. A system that's right for a large project can easily swamp a small one with paperwork, whereas a system that works for small projects won't have enough muscle for a big one.

Respond quickly to changes in data or information as they come in, and look for early signs of problems so that you can initiate corrective action. Otherwise, all you are doing is monitoring, not exercising control. Make it clear to your team that your responses to problems that arise won't do any good if you don't receive timely information. (But don't jump in to fix things too quickly-allow your team members to work out small problems on their own.)

Watch the real numbers as they roll in to ensure that they are matching the budgeted amounts. Be ready to explain why extra costs are unavoidable. Common ones that sneak up on projects include increased overtime to keep things on schedule, consultant fees to resolve unforeseen problems, and fluctuations in currency exchange rates.

Report progress.

Stakeholders will generally want regular updates and status reports. Consult with them to see how much information they'd like and in what format. Don't hide or downplay problems as they come up, or you can easily transform them into crises. If you keep your stakeholders informed, they may turn out to be good resources when issues do arise.

Hold weekly team meetings.

When you're immersed in project details, it's easy to be diverted from critical activities to side paths that waste time. You and your team can stay focused by meeting once a week and periodically asking yourselves what's essential to the project's success.

Set clear agendas for your meetings. Try structuring them around production numbers, revenue goals, or whatever other metrics you've chosen to gauge performance. Many of your agenda items will naturally stem from targets the project has missed, met, or exceeded: For instance, you may need to discuss as a group whether to incorporate more travel into the project because you've noticed a decline in productivity at a satellite office. Or you might ask the product designers on your team to continue gathering among themselves on a biweekly basis because they've doubled their creative output since they've begun doing so. Keep the momentum going by following up each week on any to-dos and connecting them with the metrics for overall performance. Also, celebrate small successes along the way-that will rekindle the team's enthusiasm as you make progress toward your larger objectives.

Manage problems.

Some problems have such far-reaching consequences that they can threaten the success of the entire project. The most common are time slippage, scope creep, quality issues, and people problems.

Pay attention to small signs of emerging problems, such as a team member's increased tension and irritability, loss of enthusiasm, or inability to make decisions. When you see signs like these, get to the heart of the problem quickly and deal with it. Don't let it grow from a small irritant into a disaster.

Though some projects feel endless, they all, eventually, come to a close. How do you, as project manager, know when to make that happen? And how do you go about it?

Evaluate project performance.

Before closing out your project, your team needs to meet its goals (or determine, along with key stakeholders, that those goals no longer apply). Compare your progress with the scope everyone agreed on at the beginning. That will tell you how well the project has performed-and if there's still work to do. When you discuss your findings with your stakeholders, make sure you reach consensus with them on how "finished" the project is. Keep your scope front and center so that everyone uses the same yardstick to measure success.

Close the project.

The steps you take to wrap things up will depend on whether your team assumes ownership of its own deliverables, hands them off to others in the organization, or must terminate the project altogether.

If all has gone as planned with your project, then it's time for celebration. Even if, as is more likely, there are some rough spots along the way-the project takes longer than expected, the result is less than hoped for, or the costs overtake your estimates-it's still important to recognize the team's efforts and accomplishments.

Debrief with the team.

No matter what the outcome, make sure you have scheduled a post-evaluation-time to debrief and document the process so that the full benefits of lessons learned can be shared. The post-evaluation is an opportunity for discovery, not for criticism and blame. Team members who fear they'll be punished for past problems may try to hide them rather than help find better ways of handling them in the future.

Adapted from HBR Guide to Project Management; content originally published in Pocket Mentor: Managing Projects (Harvard Business Review Press, 2006).