Research

 

1 º Conference 


Varying in:

A - Length (from a few hours to several days); and

B - Topics:

- strategy;
- general management;
- economics;
- economic freedom; and
- specific sectors such as the pharmaceutical and tourism sectors.

And all sharing three objectives:

- to create an action plan, by focusing the debate after the conference, on:

1.1 – How good is the company in applying the lessons to our firm?

1.2 – What are the main present difficulties?

1.3 – How can we overcome them?

 

That enables to extract from each conference a specific action plan, to intervene within the company.

2nd- transmitting knowledge; and

3rd - creating an attitude.

 

 

 

The five main topics on the conferences are:

 

– Strategy

 

1 – How Toyota conquered world markets: One can win with 10 and lose with 100: strategies of attack (internationalization) and defense (internal market); (based on the book Strategy Moves, Financial Times/Prentice-Hall published in eleven languages);

 

2 – The Neglected Firm: how each executive should and can manage simultaneously his/her two firms: the present and the future one; to be both simultaneously a manager and an entrepreneur (published in three languages);

 

3 – How to measure strategy: 1) quantitatively, 2) qualitatively, defining it and 3) in dynamic terms (published in four languages);

 

–General management

 

4 – History teaching business: The lessons from great battles for business strategy (Agincourt; Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift; Cannae; Teutoburger Forest; Chancellorsville; and Salamanca).

Each conference draws practical lessons for business administration:

- For instance the conference about the Agincourt battle (1), illustrates that companies and employees should:

1) Aim at improving strengths instead of minimizing weaknesses; and
2) Choose carefully the field of combat: both market segments and job positions, which maximize the 1st and ignore the 2nd;
3) Thus, achieving a change in the terms of engagement.

 That is,

- Then, the war between the Zulus and the British empire stress the importance of:

1) Focus (in strategy and daily work including time management);
2) Business competitive intelligence (what you do not know can certainly hurt you).

- Also, Chancellorsville enhances the power of:

A) Leadership;
B) Selecting people based on their talents and not experience;
C) Following the correct steps in the decision making process; and
D) The business flanking strategy (why, when and how).

- And so on (for a total of six world battles, which can even be selected by the client).

 




5 – Shakespeare (Henry V), Mourinho and the lessons for business (conference in collaboration with Professor Luis Lourenço, who is a friend and biographer of the football coach José Mourinho)





 




6 – Creating battle ready organizations; the teachings of Peter Drucker;

 






7 – Drucker Legacy and Cecily Drucker on entrepreneurial management (a one day lecture in collaboration with Cecily Drucker – daughter of Peter Drucker –; and Bruce Rosenstein – a Drucker biographer who has extensively studied his work)

The environment



8 – Winds of change: The XXI macrotrends and why middle sized companies are condemned: only giants and dwarfs will survive;

Marketing

9 – The seven golden rules of advertising: what ticks.

Economics

10 – The competitiveness of economic blocs (European Union compared to the USA and Japan): causes and consequences of the competitiveness differences;

11 – The power of economic freedom: European Union compared to the USA and the differences within European Union;

12 – Ireland versus Portugal: two different economic models and two results.

 

 

A battle ready organization weathers any storm. No company can expect to go through its lifetime without a few major crisis. It can however, -when things are routine – create an organization stamina, which will overpass any future crisis.

An example is how to create a culture of excellence.

 

 

Cultural change :

 

Seven steps are followed:

1 – Meeting with the President, to list all negative traits to be changed: lack of initiative? Not assuming responsibility? Raising problems instead of providing solutions? “Decentralizing upwards"? Not accompanying the issues until they are definitely solved? Etc.

2 – To define the objectives and means of measurement

3 – Preparation of a seminar where through concrete examples and anecdotes the issue is addressed. People must come out feeling good and optimistic. They will recall the stories and examples of the seminar in the following weeks and months and share the lessons among all.

4 - The outcome of the seminar is a code of conduct of the dos and don'ts, which must be treasured by all company members. A copy is given to every employee. And publicized by every possible means.

5 – Adaptation of the incentive system to make sure that the type of behavior wanted, is now incentivated everywhere in the organization. People do not behave as they are asked but as one incentivates them. What one incentivates is what one gets.

6 - Periodic meetings (every 3 months or every 4 months), where every manager seats with each of his/her staff and reviews what has and has not improved in behavior.

7 - After six months another seminar will make the point of the situation regarding:

-what has improved;
-where further improvement is needed;
- what are the major obstacles; and
- solutions.

The objective is to create an organizational culture, characterized by the famous Letter to Garcia (below):

DELIVERING THE LETTER TO GARCIA

Jorge A. Vasconcellos e Sá
M.B.A. Drucker School
PhD Columbia University
Jean Monnet Professor

There are several wars in this world of ours: between men and women, which are condemned to misunderstand each other since they want different things: men want women and women want… men.

Another war is between rich and poor. And then a third one is between those driving a Ferrari and those who say: I shall still be driving a Ferrari too (on the same side); and those who on the contrary say: you shall be walking by foot, as I do, some day.

Father António Vieira, the great Portuguese thinker of the 17th Century, distinguished between two kinds of people: those of the steps (passos) and those of the court (paço). The former attack the ball at a penalty kick with all their strength. The latter, face to face with the ball, opt for theorizing about how to do penalty kicks.

The former are “can do Joes” following Nike’s slogan: “Just do it”… they are those which… deliver the letter to Garcia.

Let us give the word to the marvellous leaflet by Elbert Hubbard (40 million copies):

“When war broke between the USA and Spain, the leader of the Cuban revolutionaries, general Garcia, had its base in the mid of the Cuban mountains but nobody knew for sure, where.

There was no way to communicate with him by mail, telegraph, whatsoever. The USA President, MacKinley, had to obtain, urgently, its cooperation. But: what to do?
                            
MacKinley called for Rowan (an assistant to him) and gave him a letter to deliver to Garcia.

Rowan took the letter and put it in his pocket. Four days later he disembarked from a small boat in the Cuban coast. He went into the wilderness. And three weeks afterwards, he appeared on the other side of the island, after having crossed at foot an hostile country and having delivered the letter to… Garcia.

This is the point I wish to stress: President MacKinley gave a letter to Rowan for him to deliver it to Garcia. Rowan took the letter and did not ask: where can I find him?

Here is a man whose figure should be engraved in bronze and put in all the schools of the world. The youth needs neither book learning, nor vague instruction on this and that, but rather to temper their nerves, be loyal, act promptly, concentrate energies and deliver the letter to Garcia.

There is no one who has not felt frustrated and demoralized in some occasions in the face of men he/she relied upon, only to find in them inaptitude and lack of will to focus on and finish a given task.

You, dear reader, try it. Call an employee and ask him: “please, be as kind as to check on an encyclopedia and write a brief note on the life of Correggio”.

The employee will look at you, with dum, lifeless eyes, and throw a long list of questions such as:

Recently, I did hear statements of sympathy for those who unemployed look for an honest job.

However no word was said, nobody mentioned the boss who ages before time, trying in vain that his/her employees perform a diligent and intelligent job, in a daily struggle against those who do absolutely nothing as soon as he/she turns the back on them.

Every shop, every company, are constantly depurating itself from the bad elements. The boss, in order for business to prosper must let go some elements and hire new ones. The incompetent and unworthy will always be asked to leave. It is in the boss own interest to keep the best those who can deliver the letter to Garcia.

Did I express myself to harshly? Perhaps. But while most show pity for those who fail, my sympathy goes to those who prevail, against all odds, those who make things happen.

To the men who when given a letter to Garcia, obediently takes it, asks no unnecessary questions and just delivers it, this men never will be without a job and he needs not to go on strike to ask for better salaries. My heart is thus, with this type of man. It is of these men that civilization needs and progress is made of.”

Moral of the history? Two.

First: this is the explanation for the failure of communism. Asks E. Hubbard: “If men lack diligence, what will they do when benefits are to be shared by all?”

Answer: very little as M. Tatcher put it: “There were two systems and two results. It is not with impunity that one ignores human nature.”

Second: between progress and misery stands only those who every single day, make a point of being, not part of the problem, not even of the landscape, but of the solution.

Their daily motto is “if there is a will there is a way”. They follow the marines as they say: “nothing will happen during my watch”. And they understand what Lord Nelson transmitted to the British sailors of Trafalgar: “Great Britain expects that each one will do his duty.”

Military? No. Neither military, nor civilian. Just a fundamental attitude before life. These men are the true civilization heroes, anonymous or well known, rich or poor, bosses or employees. Because they assure that every single day will bring progress.

By delivering the letter to Garcia, these men are those the Bible has in its mind when it says: “By their fruits, you shall recognize them” (Mateus 7:16).

2nd – newspaper articles (monthly front page article of the macro section of the Angolan Semanário Económico and every fortnight the editorial column of the portuguese Vida Económica);

3rd – books (the two latest of which were published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Peter Drucker: "Carving success out of the crisis: what Drucker would have told us" in 2009; and then in 2010 "Drucker on tourism: creating battle-ready organizations");

4th – studies (either external – market; or internal – company, focused). The former have included the pharmaceutical, textiles, footwear, wine, tourism, naval reparation, etc. industries. Sometimes these studies lead to published books, such as:

The pharmaceutical sector:

Pharmaceutical industry: Freedom works: International comparison of several world pharmaceutical models (Ireland; UK; Germany; USA; etc.) – the less bureaucratic, more stable and freer model produces the best.

The knowledge societies and the pharmaceutical industry: the most competitive world countries export knowledge, where the pharmaceutical industry has a growing role; how to organize it.

 

Tourism:

Peter Drucker's teachings to create highly competitive tourism organizations

 

5th – the Portuguese Institute for Economic Freedom (created in 2008), promotes competition (with regulation) in markets and liberty in the economic arena: Freedom works. And