Deshonor y otras banalidades
“Y cuando el varón vio que no podía con él, tocó en el sitio del encaje de su muslo, y se descoyuntó el muslo de Jacob mientras con él luchaba.
Y el varón le dijo: Déjame, porque raya el alba. Y Jacob le respondió: No te dejaré, si no me bendices”.
Gn 32. 22-32
La historia de Jacob está contada en el libro del Génesis y está llena de contrastes. Cuenta el relato que Jacob compró la primogenitura de su hermano Esaú por un plato de lentejas, lo cual dista mucho de ser ético y se sustenta en el engaño pues se aprovechó de la ceguera de su padre Isaac. Jacob no se detuvo ahí, también compró a su esposa Raquel a su tío Labán, a cambio de catorce años de trabajo. En realidad, el primer trato había sido por 7 años pero Labán lo engañó, entregándole a su hija Lea. Tuvo que trabajar otros 7 años más para conseguir a Raquel. En esta historia de engaños y traiciones nadie podría suponer que Dios lo renombrara Israel, después que protagonizara una lucha de toda una noche contra un ángel (Elhoim-dios), convirtiéndose así, en el padre de los israelitas.
Es de llamar la atención, la súplica de Jacob al final de la lucha justo después de recibir un golpe y sentirse derrotado. Le dice al varón (desconocía que era un ángel): “No te dejaré, si no me bendices”.
¿Por qué pedir la bendición a quien te derrota? Sin duda muchos piensan que esta expresión carece de toda dignidad, autoestima o valor y pudiera considerarse sumisa y limosnera. Jacob quien se había curtido a base de traiciones y engaños, de repente asume una actitud humilde. No golpea por la espalda lanzándole una piedra o golpe por el lado ciego, ni se espera al descuido del oponente para contraatacar. Todo lo contrario, reconoce que la lucha fue en buena lid y que el adversario fue superior y que demostró una fuerza mayor a la suya. Con base en el relato, podemos decir que en la derrota, Jacob salió victorioso.
En las banalidades de la vida, en los tiempos modernos nos encontramos con el anti Jacob del fútbol, el lusitano Mourinho, que al igual que el jerarca israelita, es el líder de un rebaño (millonario) que carece de lucidez y se deja guiar por los engaños y mentiras de un pastor farsante.
Qué espectáculo tan bochornoso ofrece este arrogante e insulso director técnico cada vez que juega contra el Barça. Cuántas oportunidades ha desperdiciado de validar la historia de grandes logros a buena lid del Real Madrid, llenando la camisa blanca de manchas negras e indelebles. Mourinho ha quedado retratado para la posteridad. Es un ser indeseable en el fútbol de élite pues exhibe la bajeza de un perdedor. Es un mal deportista y mal competidor, un incitador barriobajero de masas. Un cobarde y mentiroso. Ya es hora de que, si alguien tiene dignidad en el Madrid, le saque la careta y denuncie a un entrenador que está acostumbrado a ganar sin escrúpulos no importando el precio, incluso está dispuesto a comprarlo por un plato de lentejas.
Caer en el ridículo de mentir sabiendo que sería grabado por las cámaras de televisión, en la agresión a Tito Vilanova, delata su mal nacencia. No fue un choque fortuito, fue una agresión premeditada, por la espalda y con mala leche. Le mira con cara de odio y desprecio, le mete el dedo en el ojo con precisión y después tiene la desvergüenza y el cinismo de negarlo y ningunearlo en rueda de prensa. ¿Pito? ¿Quién es Pito? Qué bueno que no está en México, el albur no se lo acabaría: “Picar el pito”, ¡qué ridículo!
No hay defensa posible. Esto es la gota que colma el vaso. Mourinho juega con fuego y se ha quemado, es una mancha para siempre en la historia del Madrid. Y así, sin que el Madrid lo reconozca se ha convertido, en un año, en el enemigo no. 1 de la institución. La obsesión de Mourinho por romper la hegemonía del Barça le lleva a perder los papeles, le vuelve loco. Ha visitado ocho veces el Camp Nou con el Chelsea, Inter y Madrid y no ha sabido ganar nunca. Esto le corroe, le humilla y contagia a sus jugadores. El mensaje de ganar a cualquier precio, enciende la mecha de otro delincuente de las canchas, Pepe, a quien aún se le recuerda cuando le dio una patada asesina a Casquero jugador del Getafe en el 2009 cuando yacía en el suelo y de espaldas. No se quedan atrás Ramos, Carbalho, Marcelo y tristemente Alonso. No existe un argumento que pueda defender la actuación de estos bandoleros vestidos de futbolistas arrastrando la prosapia del que fuera el mejor club del SXX.
Aunque el Madrid mejoró futbolísticamente, su entrenador, no. Como en todo protocolo, el Barça esperó en el césped de Valencia a que el Madrid recogiera el trofeo de campeón de la Copa del Rey, como un reconocimiento a quien fue mejor ese día (al menos anotando más goles), en cambio el Madrid con el consentimiento de su entrenador se escapó al vestuario en un gesto de poca ética deportiva. La desfachatez de decir que era un juego de pretemporada, contrasta en sobre manera con la vehemencia demencial de las entradas de sus jugadores. Jugadores como Casillas que se destacaban por su liderazgo y profesionalismo, ahora son marionetas de Mourinho y da pena oírles decir lo que “no piensan”, lo que les dictan o sus torpes intentos por justificar al insolente de su entrenador. El “puto amo” del Madrid (entrenador, mánager general, director de comunicación y todo lo que quiera) tiene secuestrado a un presidente que calla y otorga.
La derrota del Madrid fue doble, perdió en el campo y afuera de él. Marcelo, Mourinho y compañía son los culpables del bochornoso final. Cuesta entender que Florentino Pérez haya puesto el club en manos del “clan de los portugueses”, el intermediario Jorge Mendes y Mourinho. Fichan con sobreprecio a jugadores que no dan la talla, como Carvalho y Coentrao, mientras que el “divo” Cristiano se cree un crack estando a años luz de Messi. Hasta mayo no tendrá el Madrid opción de ganar otro título (si es que llegaran a ganar algo). Mientras, el Barça ya suma tres copas y la próxima semana puede ganar la Supercopa de Europa en Montecarlo y en el próximo diciembre el mundial de clubes.
Detrás de esta historia banal que pareciera no tener consecuencias, ¿No es verdad que la misma derrota puede ser aleccionadora? Con madurez la derrota dignifica, enseña a corregir el camino, puede ser un trampolín para otros logros y hazañas. ¿Quién en carne propia no ha perdido al menos una vez en la vida misma? ¿Por qué no pedir la bendición a la sabiduría para ser grande en la derrota y humilde en la victoria? Detrás de la obscuridad de la noche hay un sol por la mañana.
La lección de Jacob es vigente.
sábado, 20 de agosto de 2011
miércoles, 3 de agosto de 2011
The route of changing
How Dow Corning Beat Commoditization By Embracing It
June 21 2011 by Mark W. Johnson
What do you do when your chief product threatens to become a commodity? You can of course cede the low end of the market and try to shift your business model to something for which customers will continue to pay premium prices. Or, maybe more daringly, you can do what Dow Corning did: beat commoditization through business model innovation that faces the threat head on.
Business model innovation of either kind isn’t easy. You have to find ways of doing things that are new and sometimes diametrically different than the core business model.
In a few years leading up to 2002, the company recognized silicone was becoming a commodity as markets matured, the competitive landscape began to grow and customer needs began changing. A strategic review lead to an exercise in customer segmentation which revealed information that created a huge opportunity for the organization.
The segmentation lead to the discovery that, regardless of the market segment, customers existed within four segments ranging from pure “innovation seekers” to “price seekers” with varying degrees of each in between. With this segmentation, Dow Corning could easily see which segments it was serving very well and which left room for opportunity. In this case, Dow Corning, a highly innovative and service oriented organization, needed to find a way to better serve the “price seeker” segment. This segment knew what products they needed, how to use them, but didn’t need all the high value services bundled into the price of the product. They simply wanted to purchase their standard silicones at the lowest possible price.
Don Sheets, current CFO, worked to develop and implement a new business model that would tackle this customer segment. He knew that he couldn’t capture the price seekers merely by cutting prices. Charging less for the same goods would result in unacceptably low margins and make the model unattractive to Dow Corning in the long term. Instead, he had to ensure profitability by coming up with a business model radically different from the high-end, value driven model of the company’s core business.
Though innovation is too often thought of as a moment-of-inspiration thing, success is far more likely when the new opportunity is approached methodically, through a process of testing the most important assumptions one by one. So Sheets and his team carefully considered the four critical elements that make up any business model: key resources, key processes, a profit model, and a customer value proposition (CVP).
Because the CVP typically determines how the other three elements are configured, it’s critical to get it right by answering this question: what is the job that customers are trying to get done and how will the offering help them do it? Dow Corning’s CVP for these price-driven customers was to offer them products in a more direct, simplified fashion—with fewer services and at lower costs. This was potentially disruptive to Dow’s existing business, but if the revenue model, resources and processes were realigned to support this new CVP, the potential was great.
In keeping with the CVP, Sheets and his team determined that cutting services alone wouldn’t do it. There also needed to be a new price point that was lower than any of Dow Corning’s offerings at the time. This new venture had to have a much lower cost structure given these customers were much more price sensitive. For the most part, thought Sheets and his team, this customer segment knew what products they wanted and how to use these products. There were certain services they wouldn’t need. In order to build efficiencies into the model – so Dow Corning could afford to sell these products at lower prices and still like the profitability – standard operating mechanisms would be instrumental. In this case, business rules were designed and built into the model.
Rules such as minimum order quantities and order lead times were enforced. These alone created efficiencies in the supply chain, logistics and in the warehouses where less inventory is managed. Also, standard credit terms of 30 days were offered with the option of purchasing different terms at a premium. Prices are market-based and set at the time the customer places their order. All of this required a shift away from Dow Corning’s hands-on, service approach to one that was low-touch, standardized, automated and web-enabled – as close to an on-demand operation as possible.
A critical point in its development came when the management team sought the reaction of the organization as a whole. It’s an important step when an innovation requires radical new ways of thinking and operating. Not surprisingly, the idea was not particularly warmly received initially–it was alien compared with its core operations. Such reactions often lead companies to tie a potentially transformative business too closely to the core, binding it to the same cultural norms, incentive plans, and processes – a critical mistake that has sabotaged many an otherwise innovative offering. So Dow Corning created an entirely new brand – XIAMETER® – a business model under the Dow Corning corporate umbrella, yet operate independently, with its own identity and culture.
The remaining challenge was to fit this new entity to the overall organization. Because automating as much of the customer transaction as possible was essential to keeping down overhead, the Xiameter brand was designed from the start as a web-enabled business model. The customer would place an order with no human interaction, requiring far fewer staffers than a traditional Dow Corning business unit. Because those staffers needed to be much more comfortable managing business differently, the Xiameter organization sought out people at Dow Corning who could act differently with customers – a much more transactional approach than a nurturing approach. While still needing to be team players, they had to be experts who were comfortable making fast decisions. One test of this was how quickly they decided to accept a position with the Xiameter team when asked to join the new business model.
Most new businesses need time before their success can be fairly gauged. Not so in the case of the Xiameter business model, which quickly delivered on its promise, sometimes in unexpected ways:
• Dow Corning earned back its investment in just three months.
• New orders allowed better use of under-utilized manufacturing capacity.
• By utilizing market-based prices, it drove more demand for silicone products, in some cases drove up prices, which in turn increased profits for Dow Corning as a whole.
• Prior to the launch of www.xiameter.com, the company had no online sales but now over 30 percent of Dow Corning’s sales are online – nearly three times the industry average.
• Despite worries that the new model would cannibalize the existing customer base, a majority of the new business was driven from new customers.
In the nine years since the Xiameter brand launched, it has transformed dramatically, while still staying true to its core business model. It now offers more than 2,100 standard silicone products, compared with just 400 when it launched. Originally, it was just for large-volume customers. It now also serves smaller volume customers through transparent tiered pricing so customers can now choose the pricing most appropriate for them based on the volumes they need. And while www.xiameter.com still maintains a minimum order quantity business rule, they have added the option of purchasing through local distributors for customers seeking flexible order options or customized services. Discounts are available for purchasing multiple items within a product family, and customers can lock in price and volume commitments through an online supply agreement. And the Xiameter business model has been able to maintain its efficient cost structure by implementing and automating all its business rules within www.xiameter.com which links directly to SAP.
Improved offerings are a natural outcome of innovation. It’s good for both customers and companies. Customers get better products; companies get higher margins or greater revenue. The trick is knowing when and how to make the next change. Like Dow Corning’s core business and the life cycle evolution of products, the Xiameter brand will also have to continue to evolve. When that point comes, Dow Corning, practiced in applying a methodical and repeatable process of business model innovation, should be ready to once again turn their world upside down.
June 21 2011 by Mark W. Johnson
What do you do when your chief product threatens to become a commodity? You can of course cede the low end of the market and try to shift your business model to something for which customers will continue to pay premium prices. Or, maybe more daringly, you can do what Dow Corning did: beat commoditization through business model innovation that faces the threat head on.
Business model innovation of either kind isn’t easy. You have to find ways of doing things that are new and sometimes diametrically different than the core business model.
In a few years leading up to 2002, the company recognized silicone was becoming a commodity as markets matured, the competitive landscape began to grow and customer needs began changing. A strategic review lead to an exercise in customer segmentation which revealed information that created a huge opportunity for the organization.
The segmentation lead to the discovery that, regardless of the market segment, customers existed within four segments ranging from pure “innovation seekers” to “price seekers” with varying degrees of each in between. With this segmentation, Dow Corning could easily see which segments it was serving very well and which left room for opportunity. In this case, Dow Corning, a highly innovative and service oriented organization, needed to find a way to better serve the “price seeker” segment. This segment knew what products they needed, how to use them, but didn’t need all the high value services bundled into the price of the product. They simply wanted to purchase their standard silicones at the lowest possible price.
Don Sheets, current CFO, worked to develop and implement a new business model that would tackle this customer segment. He knew that he couldn’t capture the price seekers merely by cutting prices. Charging less for the same goods would result in unacceptably low margins and make the model unattractive to Dow Corning in the long term. Instead, he had to ensure profitability by coming up with a business model radically different from the high-end, value driven model of the company’s core business.
Though innovation is too often thought of as a moment-of-inspiration thing, success is far more likely when the new opportunity is approached methodically, through a process of testing the most important assumptions one by one. So Sheets and his team carefully considered the four critical elements that make up any business model: key resources, key processes, a profit model, and a customer value proposition (CVP).
Because the CVP typically determines how the other three elements are configured, it’s critical to get it right by answering this question: what is the job that customers are trying to get done and how will the offering help them do it? Dow Corning’s CVP for these price-driven customers was to offer them products in a more direct, simplified fashion—with fewer services and at lower costs. This was potentially disruptive to Dow’s existing business, but if the revenue model, resources and processes were realigned to support this new CVP, the potential was great.
In keeping with the CVP, Sheets and his team determined that cutting services alone wouldn’t do it. There also needed to be a new price point that was lower than any of Dow Corning’s offerings at the time. This new venture had to have a much lower cost structure given these customers were much more price sensitive. For the most part, thought Sheets and his team, this customer segment knew what products they wanted and how to use these products. There were certain services they wouldn’t need. In order to build efficiencies into the model – so Dow Corning could afford to sell these products at lower prices and still like the profitability – standard operating mechanisms would be instrumental. In this case, business rules were designed and built into the model.
Rules such as minimum order quantities and order lead times were enforced. These alone created efficiencies in the supply chain, logistics and in the warehouses where less inventory is managed. Also, standard credit terms of 30 days were offered with the option of purchasing different terms at a premium. Prices are market-based and set at the time the customer places their order. All of this required a shift away from Dow Corning’s hands-on, service approach to one that was low-touch, standardized, automated and web-enabled – as close to an on-demand operation as possible.
A critical point in its development came when the management team sought the reaction of the organization as a whole. It’s an important step when an innovation requires radical new ways of thinking and operating. Not surprisingly, the idea was not particularly warmly received initially–it was alien compared with its core operations. Such reactions often lead companies to tie a potentially transformative business too closely to the core, binding it to the same cultural norms, incentive plans, and processes – a critical mistake that has sabotaged many an otherwise innovative offering. So Dow Corning created an entirely new brand – XIAMETER® – a business model under the Dow Corning corporate umbrella, yet operate independently, with its own identity and culture.
The remaining challenge was to fit this new entity to the overall organization. Because automating as much of the customer transaction as possible was essential to keeping down overhead, the Xiameter brand was designed from the start as a web-enabled business model. The customer would place an order with no human interaction, requiring far fewer staffers than a traditional Dow Corning business unit. Because those staffers needed to be much more comfortable managing business differently, the Xiameter organization sought out people at Dow Corning who could act differently with customers – a much more transactional approach than a nurturing approach. While still needing to be team players, they had to be experts who were comfortable making fast decisions. One test of this was how quickly they decided to accept a position with the Xiameter team when asked to join the new business model.
Most new businesses need time before their success can be fairly gauged. Not so in the case of the Xiameter business model, which quickly delivered on its promise, sometimes in unexpected ways:
• Dow Corning earned back its investment in just three months.
• New orders allowed better use of under-utilized manufacturing capacity.
• By utilizing market-based prices, it drove more demand for silicone products, in some cases drove up prices, which in turn increased profits for Dow Corning as a whole.
• Prior to the launch of www.xiameter.com, the company had no online sales but now over 30 percent of Dow Corning’s sales are online – nearly three times the industry average.
• Despite worries that the new model would cannibalize the existing customer base, a majority of the new business was driven from new customers.
In the nine years since the Xiameter brand launched, it has transformed dramatically, while still staying true to its core business model. It now offers more than 2,100 standard silicone products, compared with just 400 when it launched. Originally, it was just for large-volume customers. It now also serves smaller volume customers through transparent tiered pricing so customers can now choose the pricing most appropriate for them based on the volumes they need. And while www.xiameter.com still maintains a minimum order quantity business rule, they have added the option of purchasing through local distributors for customers seeking flexible order options or customized services. Discounts are available for purchasing multiple items within a product family, and customers can lock in price and volume commitments through an online supply agreement. And the Xiameter business model has been able to maintain its efficient cost structure by implementing and automating all its business rules within www.xiameter.com which links directly to SAP.
Improved offerings are a natural outcome of innovation. It’s good for both customers and companies. Customers get better products; companies get higher margins or greater revenue. The trick is knowing when and how to make the next change. Like Dow Corning’s core business and the life cycle evolution of products, the Xiameter brand will also have to continue to evolve. When that point comes, Dow Corning, practiced in applying a methodical and repeatable process of business model innovation, should be ready to once again turn their world upside down.
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