Maior parte da extensão rodoviária do país apresenta problemas

De acordo com a Pesquisa CNT de Rodovias 2011, 57,4% da extensão rodoviária pesquisada é considerada regular, ruim ou péssima.

Segundo a 15ª Pesquisa CNT de Rodovias 2011, divulgada nesta quarta-feira (26) na sede da Confederação Nacional do Transporte, em Brasília (DF), 12,6% da malha estão em ótimo estado; 30% são consideradas boas; 30,5%, regulares; 18,1%, ruins; e 8,8% estão em péssimas condições.

Nesta edição do levantamento foram avaliados 92.747 km, o que representa 100% da malha federal pavimentada, as principais rodovias estaduais pavimentadas e as concessionadas. São 1.802 km a mais do que o analisado na pesquisa anterior.

O objetivo do estudo, realizado pela CNT e pelo Serviço Social do Transporte e Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem do Transporte (Sest Senat), é avaliar as condições das rodovias brasileiras pavimentadas segundo aspectos perceptíveis aos usuários, identificando as condições das vias – em relação ao pavimento, à sinalização e à geometria da via – que afetam o conforto e a segurança.

Para fazer a análise, 17 equipes da CNT percorreram o Brasil durante 39 dias, entre 27 de junho e 4 de agosto deste ano. Os resultados são apresentados por tipo de gestão (pública ou concedida), por tipo de rodovia (federais ou estaduais), por região e por unidade da Federação.

Regiões

Como nos anos anteriores, a pesquisa da Confederação Nacional do Transporte aponta que o Sudeste do país é a região que apresenta as melhores condições de rodovias. Do total de 26.778 km avaliados, 24,6% são classificados como em ótimo estado; 30,7% como bom; 28,2%, regular; 13,2%, ruim e 3,3%, péssimo.

Em seguida aparece a Região Sul, com 19,7% do total de 16.199 km analisados como em ótimo estado; 40,7% em bom estado; 26,3% classificados como regulares; 10,7% como ruins e 2,6% como péssimas.

O Nordeste, por sua vez, com 25.820 km estudados, possui 3,8% das estradas ótimas; 33%, boas; 32,8%, regulares; 17,7%, ruins e 12,7%, péssimas.

Dos 14.151 km de rodovias avaliados no Centro-Oeste, 6,4% estão em ótimas condições; 22,7% em bom estado; 35%, regulares; 26,7%, ruins; e 9,1% em péssimo estado.

O Norte, por sua vez, com 9.799 km analisados, conta com apenas 0,8% das estradas avaliadas como ótimas; 12,7% como boas; 31,4% como regulares; 31,8% como ruins e 23,2% como péssimas.

Pavimento

Em relação à qualidade de pavimentação, os resultados da Pesquisa CNT de Rodovias 2011 mostram que 46,6% das estradas apresentam pavimento ótimo; 5,5%, pavimento bom; 33,9%, regular; 11,2%, ruim; e 2,8%, péssimo. Nesse quesito são observados itens como se o pavimento está perfeito, com buracos e se obriga redução da velocidade.

De acordo com o estudo, o pavimento das rodovias, em geral, apresenta defeitos que acabam prejudicando a atividade de transporte de cargas e de passageiros no país.

Sinalização

Sobre os aspectos de sinalização, são conferidas as condições das faixas, visibilidade e legibilidade de placas. Da malha analisada, 16,6% tiveram sua sinalização classificada como de ótimo estado; 26,5% como bom; 28,7%, regular; 14,3%, ruim e 13,9%, péssimo.

Geometria

A variável geometria da via identifica as soluções de engenharia implantadas nas rodovias para atenuar o impacto das condições de topografia e relevo sobre o deslocamento de veículos, aumentando a segurança dos usuários.

Geometria da via inclui itens como pista simples de mão dupla, faixa adicional de subida, pontes e viadutos, entre muitas outras variáveis. Da extensão pesquisada, 88,3% é de pista simples de mão dupla e 42,1% não possui acostamento.

O estudo da CNT identificou que 4,2% da extensão avaliada teve sua geometria classificada como ótima (3.895 km). Outros 19% foram classificados como bom; 27,3% como regular; 17,5%, ruim; e 32%, péssimo. Por isso, ainda de acordo com o documento, melhorias do tipo duplicação, implantação ou melhoria da faixa adicional de subida, e melhoria da sinalização e proteção das curvas e pontes precisam ser urgentemente empregadas.

Gestão pública e privada

A pesquisa detalhou ainda as diferenças existentes entre as rodovias que são administradas pelo governo e as sob gestão das concessionárias. Das vias sob concessão (15.374 km), 48% foram classificadas como ótimas; 38,9% como boas; 12% como regulares; 1,1% como ruins e nenhuma foi avaliada como péssima.

Já entre as rodovias sob gestão pública (77.373 km), apenas 5,6% foram avaliadas como ótimas; 28,2% como boas; 34,2% como regulares; 21,5% como ruins e 10,5% como péssimas.

Em entrevista coletiva na manhã desta quarta, o diretor-executivo da CNT, Bruno Batista, ressaltou que, em 2010, apenas R$ 9,85 bilhões foram investidos em infraestrutura de rodovias, o que corresponde a 0,26% do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB).

Para se ter uma ideia, o prejuízo causado a transportadoras devido a falhas nas vias somaram R$ 14,1 bilhões, ou 0,4% do PIB. "No ano em que o governo federal fez mais investimentos, as condições de rodovias não melhoraram. E esse custo tem sido repassado para a população com acréscimos nos valores de produtos que nós todos consumimos e também no número de mortos, que não para de crescer no Brasil. Só em 2010 foram mais de oito mil nas nossas rodovias federais".

Bruno Batista ressaltou ainda que 60% da carga transportada no Brasil passa pelas rodovias. "Essa falta de infraestrutura adequada diminui a competitividade do país. O Brasil precisa manter uma tradição de investimento, que é o que o governo não tem conseguido fazer. Isso faz com que as melhores rodovias do Brasil, com menores índices de acidentes, sejam as concedidas", reforçou.

Ligações rodoviárias

O levantamento traz ainda um ranking de 109 ligações rodoviárias de todo o Brasil. As ligações são trechos regionais que interligam territórios de uma ou mais unidades da Federação. Essas extensões têm importância socioeconômica e volume significativo de veículos de cargas e/ou passageiros.

A primeira colocada na lista é a São Paulo SP - Itaí SP – Espírito Santo do Turvo SP, composta pelas rodovias SP-255, SP-280/BR-374. Por sua vez, em último lugar (109ª posição), está a Belém PA - Guaraí TO, composta pelas rodovias BR-222, PA-150, PA-151, PA-252, PA-287, PA-447, PA-475, PA-483, TO-336.

A pesquisa

A pesquisa é uma avaliação independente das rodovias a partir da perspectiva dos usuários, contemplando a segurança e o desempenho. Com a realização do estudo, a CNT pretende difundir informações sobre a infraestrutura rodoviária, para que políticas setoriais de transporte, projetos privados, programas governamentais e atividades de ensino e pesquisa resultem em ações que promovam o desenvolvimento do transporte rodoviário de cargas e de passageiros.

Fonte: Aerton Guimarães / Agência CNT de Notícias

How Great Companies Think Differently - Parte I

It’s time that beliefs and theories about business catch up with the way great companies operate and how they see their role in the world today. Traditionally, economists and financiers have argued that the sole purpose of business is to make money—the more the better. That conveniently narrow image, deeply embedded in the American capitalist system, molds the actions of most corporations, constraining them to focus on maximizing short-term profits and delivering returns to shareholders. Their decisions are expressed in financial terms.

I say convenient because this lopsided logic forces companies to blank out the fact that they command enormous resources that influence the world for better or worse and that their strategies shape the lives of the employees, partners, and consumers on whom they depend. Above all, the traditional view of business doesn’t capture the way great companies think their way to success. Those firms believe that business is an intrinsic part of society, and they acknowledge that, like family, government, and religion, it has been one of society’s pillars since the dawn of the industrial era. Great companies work to make money, of course, but in their choices of how to do so, they think about building enduring institutions. They invest in the future while being aware of the need to build people and society.

In this article, I turn the spotlight on this very different logic—a social or institutional logic—which lies behind the practices of many widely admired, high-performing, and enduring companies. In those firms, society and people are not afterthoughts or inputs to be used and discarded but are core to their purpose. My continuing field research on admired and financially successful companies in more than 20 countries on four continents is the basis for my thinking about the role of institutional logic in business.

Institutional logic holds that companies are more than instruments for generating money; they are also vehicles for accomplishing societal purposes and for providing meaningful livelihoods for those who work in them. According to this school of thought, the value that a company creates should be measured not just in terms of short-term profits or paychecks but also in terms of how it sustains the conditions that allow it to flourish over time. These corporate leaders deliver more than just financial returns; they also build enduring institutions.

Rather than viewing organizational processes as ways of extracting more economic value, great companies create frameworks that use societal value and human values as decision-making criteria. They believe that corporations have a purpose and meet stakeholders’ needs in many ways: by producing goods and services that improve the lives of users; by providing jobs and enhancing workers’ quality of life; by developing a strong network of suppliers and business partners; and by ensuring financial viability, which provides resources for improvements, innovations, and returns to investors.

In developing an institutional perspective, corporate leaders internalize what economists have usually regarded as externalities and define a firm around its purpose and values. They undertake actions that produce societal value—whether or not those actions are tied to the core functions of making and selling goods and services. Whereas the aim of financial logic is to maximize the returns on capital, be it shareholder or owner value, the thrust of institutional logic is to balance public interest with financial returns.

Institutional logic should be aligned with economic logic but need not be subordinate to it. For example, all companies require capital to carry out business activities and sustain themselves. However, at great companies profit is not the sole end; rather, it is a way of ensuring that returns will continue. The institutional view of the firm is thus no more idealized than is the profit-maximizing view. Well-­established practices, such as R&D and marketing, cannot be tied to profits in the short or long runs, yet analysts applaud them. If companies are to serve a purpose beyond their business portfolios, CEOs must expand their investments to include employee empowerment, emotional engagement, values-based leadership, and related societal contributions.

Business history provides numerous examples of industrialists who developed enduring corporations that also created social institutions. The Houghton family established Corning Glass and the town of Corning, New York, for instance. The Tata family established one of India’s leading conglomerates and the steel city of Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. That style of corporate responsibility for society fell out of fashion as economic logic and shareholder capitalism came to dominate assumptions about business and corporations became detached from particular places. In today’s global world, however, companies must think differently.

(Continua amanhã)

Fonte: HBR by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

O caminhão mais bonito da Fenatran/2011

E o caminhão mais bonito da Fenatran foi... o nosso! :-D)

Equipe Ticket Car Corinthians Motorsport fazendo o pré-lançamento do TICKET FRETE!

Na estante do gestor: novidades literárias da semana

Os principais lançamentos e a resenha de um livro em destaque.


CRÍTICA TECNOLOGIA

Livro diz que Google controla silenciosamente a internet

Usuários 'pagam caro' por dar informações sobre seus interesses, diz autor

CAMILA FUSCO
DE SÃO PAULO

O que palavras aparentemente desconexas como Disney, cachorro e amendoim têm em comum?

Para a maioria das pessoas, elas não revelam muito, mas, se digitadas no Google, apontam que a interessada nos temas é possivelmente uma mulher, mãe de filhos pequenos e que sofre de alergias específicas.

Pode ser ainda que, a partir da identificação de seu perfil, a internauta veja mais propagandas de produtos infantis, indicações imobiliárias e, dali a alguns anos, até sugestões de escolas para adolescentes.

Não se trata de pura adivinhação, mas da era em que informações aparentemente simples viram material precioso para previsões de comportamentos.

É o que relata Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor da Universidade da Virgínia em "A Googlelização de Tudo".

Mestre em criar conexões invisíveis baseadas nos interesses dos usuários pesquisados na ferramenta de busca, o Google é, na visão do professor, a principal ameaça à privacidade de dados pessoais nos dias de hoje.

Isso porque não esclarece que tudo o que se coloca na rede pode ser monitorado por seus sistemas de identificação de navegação (os chamados cookies) nem informa com precisão como os usuários podem configurar seus critérios de busca para proteger suas informações.

A lógica perversa do Google, na avaliação de Vaidhyanathan, está ainda em transmitir ao mundo que o acesso a seus serviços é gratuito, enquanto o verdadeiro custo está na troca por detalhes da personalidade de cada um.

São essas informações que renderão lucro à empresa, com a venda de anúncios direcionados a perfis específicos de usuários.

Dividida em seis capítulos, a primeira parte da narrativa se concentra em mostrar o triunfo da aceitação da "googlelização" -presença cada vez mais frequente do buscador em diversas áreas do conhecimento.

Indica ainda a criação de uma geração superficial, que aceita ver o mundo por meio dos resultados de buscas no Google em detrimento de conhecimentos profundos.

Desliza, no entanto, ao considerar o buscador como o principal vilão da internet, reduzindo a importância de outras ferramentas concorrentes e das redes sociais, que hoje podem ser a maneira mais avançada para acumular informações sobre os internautas.

Na segunda parte do livro, o autor apresenta elementos políticos, filosóficos e até psicológicos pelos quais tenta provar necessária a reação dos internautas às forças dominantes na rede.

O livro é para quem quer conhecer os bastidores dessa potência da internet mundial, mas não traz provas concretas -além do relato do autor- sobre se o Google é bom, mau ou se é apenas esperto ao aproveitar o espírito de "compartilhamento" dos internautas na rede.

É o início da análise sobre a dinâmica do controle da informação virtual, mas está longe de ser uma resposta definitiva para a questão.

A GOOGLELIZAÇÃO DE TUDO
AUTOR Siva Vaidhyanathan
EDITORA Cultrix
QUANTO R$ 35,91 (272 págs.)
TRADUÇÃO Jeferson Luiz Camargo
AVALIAÇÃO Regular

------------------------

LANÇAMENTOS

NACIONAIS

QUADRINHOS
A Cauda Longa em Quadrinhos
Chris Anderson
EDITORA Campus/Elsevier
QUANTO R$ 25 (72 págs.)

O livro explica o conceito da cauda longa de uma forma diferente: em quadrinhos. Com referências a músicas, filmes e livros, o autor, que assumiu o comando da revista "Wired" em 2001, mostra de uma forma criativa como o futuro do comércio não é mais os grandes "hits", mas produtos de nicho.

ADMINISTRAÇÃO
Pipeline de Desempenho
Stephen Drotter
EDITORA Campus/Elsevier
QUANTO R$ 69,90 (286 págs)
TRADUÇÃO Leonardo Abramovicz

Para o autor, o erro dos líderes é atuar em níveis hierárquicos errados, ou seja, produzir resultados que deveriam ser produzidos por níveis inferiores. O objetivo é mostrar como o trabalho deve fluir em uma empresa e como, em um ambiente incerto, os líderes podem obter resultados.

AUTOAJUDA
Rico ou Pobre
Randy Gage
EDITORA Cultrix
QUANTO R$ 15,21 (112 págs.)
TRADUÇÃO Denise de C. Rocha Delela

A prosperidade é o tema central do livro, que propõe que a maioria das pessoas não aceita ou não se permite tornar-se prósperas. O autor questiona a ideia de pobreza como virtude e diz que as pessoas foram "programadas" para ver o dinheiro como algo ruim.

CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS
Desigualdades Regionais no Brasil
Alexandre Rands Barros
EDITORA Campus/Elsevier
QUANTO R$ 39,90 (368 págs.)

Uma análise das desigualdades regionais do Brasil. Com uma perspectiva histórica, institucional, estatística e teórica, explica o "atraso" do Nordeste em relação ao Centro-Sul. A hipótese do autor é que as diferenças não diminuem com as forças do mercado ou políticas de suporte a empresas.

CARREIRA
Click
George C. Fraser
EDITORA BestBusiness
QUANTO R$ 42,90 (304 págs.)
TRADUÇÃO Claudia Gerpe Duarte

A importância de construir seu "networking" -ou rede de relacionamentos, em português- é o assunto do livro. O objetivo do autor é mostrar que os relacionamentos profissionais não precisam ser frios e egoístas e ensinar ao leitor formas de criá-los com envolvimento e confiança.

LIDERANÇA
Líderes de Verdade Não Usam PowerPoint
Christopher Witt, com Dale Fetherling
EDITORA BestBusiness
QUANTO R$ 34,90 (256 págs)
TRADUÇÃO Eduardo Rieche

O autor questiona o uso dos slides do PowerPoint para exibir dados ao público em palestras e apresentações. Segundo ele, o líder deve acreditar em sua capacidade de provocar a mudança, e não deixar esse trabalho para um software.

INTERNACIONAIS

EMPRESAS
Inside Coca-Cola
Neville Isdell, com David Beasley
EDITORA St. Martin's Press
QUANTO US$ 25,99 ou US$ 12,99 (em e-book)

Escrito pelo ex-CEO da Coca-Cola, que atuou na empresa por mais de 30 anos, saindo em 2009, o livro conta sua trajetória pessoal e profissional, em que passou por países como Irlanda, Rússia, Índia e Turquia. Além de histórias, traz lições e um olhar sobre empresas, sucesso e ética.

MERCADO
Financial Centres and International Capital Flows
Laure Quennouëlle-Corre e Youssef Cassis
EDITORA Oxford University Press
QUANTO US$ 110 (336 págs.)

Explica o funcionamento dos centros financeiros nos séculos 19 e 20 e os fatores que os levaram ao sucesso ou ao fracasso. O livro tem contribuições de estudiosos internacionais que examinam a direção de fluxos internacionais de capitais, entre outros aspectos.

Fonte: Folha de São Paulo

Treat Your Employees like Neighbors

Another baseball season is ending, and fans are starting to wonder which players will wear their team's uniform next season. Each year, some players will jump ship from one team to another as part of the free agent market — and disappoint fans when their favorite players show little loyalty to the team.

This tension between the player's desire to get paid his worth and the fans' hope for loyalty is at the root of a key insight into human social relationships. In a classic 1992 paper (PDF), Alan Page Fiske describes four elementary forms of social relationships, basically: families, neighborhoods, hierarchies, and markets.

In a good family, everyone shares to the best of their ability. Parents give food, clothing, and shelter to their kids unconditionally. As kids grow up, they shoulder more responsibilities and sometimes take care of their parents. Nobody is keeping score.

Neighborhoods don't share equally, but they do tend to strive for equality. If you have a flat tire, your neighbor might lend a hand. It would be strange to pay him, but you might lend him something as a way to say thanks. This kind of relationship can go bad when one neighbor consistently asks for things from others without giving back.

In hierarchies, everyone takes on a role. Those high in the hierarchy get more privileges and more rewards. Those lower down have to do what they are told. The hierarchy can be hard on those people who are consistently at the bottom and don't have the ability to move up.

Finally, in a market, everyone is paid what they are worth. Your grocery store is a market: You bring home a basket of goods in exchange for a price that you think is fair.

Where does your company fall?

I would argue that no company can survive as a market. The amount of compensation that an employee can get on the open market is generally higher than the actual wage they earn. Just look at what companies pay outside consultants relative to what they would pay an employee to take on a similar task.

Market environments also promote behaviors that benefit the individual at the potential expense of the company as a whole. Recall rogue traders at investment houses who gamble huge sums of money. While these individuals are the worst offenders, a market system that rewards people for their portfolio performance only creates loyalty to the portfolio, not the company.

A family relationship with your employees isn't optimal either. Many families have at least one wayward member who is loved unconditionally, but draws more from the family than she returns. That kind of relationship is just not sustainable within a company. Everyone has to shoulder a fair share of the burden. Indeed, this is one reason why many companies have strict rules about nepotism. Hiring family members (or treating employees like family) blurs the lines between relationships in ways that can cause trouble down the line.

Instead, successful companies often have elements of both hierarchies and neighborhoods. That is, most companies establish levels of management with the expectation that higher levels take on more responsibility for guiding the company — in exchange for higher pay and benefits. The hierarchy can be particularly effective when people can work their way up through the organization.

That part isn't surprising. But what's less expected is that a successful company also has to have elements of a good neighborhood. When you walk down the street near your home, you might pick up some trash or set a neighbor's flowerpots upright after a storm. You do that because you think of your neighborhood as an extension of yourself. You put in effort for the greater community, of which you are an essential part.

Likewise, a company cannot succeed unless employees start to think of themselves as part of something bigger than themselves. An employee will only stay late a few times out of fear that a manager is watching. But people are likely to put in consistent extra effort when they are truly part of the neighborhood and feel like everyone is pitching in.

To have a neighborhood culture, the company has to respond in kind. Seemingly small actions like supporting families going through difficult times and providing education opportunities for employees create a general sense of community. This investment in community is repaid in behaviors that ultimately affect the company's bottom line.

Fairness matters, because it supports the creation of a community. Ultimately, the loyalty of a neighborhood helps a company to avoid the ills of the market economy that characterizes major league professional sports.

Fonte: Fast Company by Art Markman

How Will You Measure Your Life? - Parte V

Remember the Importance of Humility

I got this insight when I was asked to teach a class on humility at Harvard College. I asked all the students to describe the most humble person they knew. One characteristic of these humble people stood out: They had a high level of self-esteem. They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were. We also decided that humility was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others. Good behavior flows naturally from that kind of humility. For example, you would never steal from someone, because you respect that person too much. You’d never lie to someone, either.

It’s crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once you’ve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you’ll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited. Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself—and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too. When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.

Choose the Right Yardstick

This past year I was diagnosed with cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than I’d planned. Thankfully, it now looks as if I’ll be spared. But the experience has given me important insight into my life.

I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted this disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.

I think that’s the way it will work for us all. Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

Fonte: HBR by Clayton M. Christensen

Crescimento do setor de transporte de carga rodoviário estimula a busca por qualificação

O cenário econômico mundial encontra-se debilitado devido à crise que abateu-se sobre ele nos últimos meses. Mas apesar disso existem algumas áreas que ainda não sofreram nenhum efeito desta crise, uma delas é o transporte de cargas rodoviário.

O problema do setor na verdade está em outra área, o de mão-de-obra. Empresas do setor avaliam que existam 40 mil vagas abertas para motoristas de caminhão no país.

Porém, para dirigir atualmente um caminhão não adianta apenas tirar a carteira de motorista é preciso mais.

O principal motivo é a qualificação da mão-de-obra, hoje o motorista precisa entender de tecnologia, isto devido ao fato dos caminhões serem em sua maioria monitorados via satélite e para isto são equipados com computadores.

A qualificação desta mão-de-obra aumenta a falta de profissionais no setor, já que não existe uma renovação de trabalhadores nesta área e os profissionais antigos sentem dificuldades em se adaptar as novas exigências.

“Existem muitos motoristas com mais idade que hoje estão fora do mercado exatamente pela dificuldade de buscar essa qualificação”, diz Rosane Confortini, coordenadora de treinamento do Sest-Senat.

O número de mercadorias que circulam pelo país pela malha rodoviária está em expansão, hoje são 60%. Com este aumento o profissional deste setor está cada vez mais procurado, mas as empresas não querem apenas experiência na estrada, exigem qualificação.

“O profissional que está qualificado e com a prática necessária para viajar nesse país tem o emprego imediato”, calcula Kagio Miura, diretor do sindicato das transportadoras.

No entanto, o grande crescimento do setor está estimulando os profissionais a buscarem a qualificação. Os motoristas estão deixando as estradas para estarem nas salas de aula.

“Vendo que o país está em expansão e está crescendo bastante, com profissionais cada vez mais qualificados, vim buscar mais conhecimento na área”, comenta o aluno Márcio Fernandes.

A intenção do Serviço Nacional de Transporte é formar 67 mil motoristas ao ano. São 138 unidades em vários estados.

Lembrando que para ser um motorista profissional antes de tudo é preciso ter habilitação especial nas categorias D ou E.

Fonte: Portal Viracopos

How Will You Measure Your Life? - Parte IV

In using this model to address the question, How can I be sure that my family becomes an enduring source of happiness?, my students quickly see that the simplest tools that parents can wield to elicit cooperation from children are power tools. But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point parents start wishing that they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture at home in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one another, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.

If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.

Avoid the “Marginal Costs” Mistake

We’re taught in finance and economics that in evaluating alternative investments, we should ignore sunk and fixed costs, and instead base decisions on the marginal costs and marginal revenues that each alternative entails. We learn in our course that this doctrine biases companies to leverage what they have put in place to succeed in the past, instead of guiding them to create the capabilities they’ll need in the future. If we knew the future would be exactly the same as the past, that approach would be fine. But if the future’s different—and it almost always is—then it’s the wrong thing to do.

This theory addresses the third question I discuss with my students—how to live a life of integrity (stay out of jail). Unconsciously, we often employ the marginal cost doctrine in our personal lives when we choose between right and wrong. A voice in our head says, “Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK.” The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems alluringly low. It suckers you in, and you don’t ever look at where that path ultimately is headed and at the full costs that the choice entails. Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.”

I’d like to share a story about how I came to understand the potential damage of “just this once” in my own life. I played on the Oxford University varsity basketball team. We worked our tails off and finished the season undefeated. The guys on the team were the best friends I’ve ever had in my life. We got to the British equivalent of the NCAA tournament—and made it to the final four. It turned out the championship game was scheduled to be played on a Sunday. I had made a personal commitment to God at age 16 that I would never play ball on Sunday. So I went to the coach and explained my problem. He was incredulous. My teammates were, too, because I was the starting center. Every one of the guys on the team came to me and said, “You’ve got to play. Can’t you break the rule just this one time?”

I’m a deeply religious man, so I went away and prayed about what I should do. I got a very clear feeling that I shouldn’t break my commitment—so I didn’t play in the championship game.

In many ways that was a small decision—involving one of several thousand Sundays in my life. In theory, surely I could have crossed over the line just that one time and then not done it again. But looking back on it, resisting the temptation whose logic was “In this extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK” has proven to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? My life has been one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that followed.

The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

(Continua amanhã)

Fonte: HBR by Clayton M. Christensen

Etanol perde espaço no ‘mix’ de combustíveis

O etanol hidratado deve perder em 2011 uma boa fatia de participação nos tanques de combustíveis dos brasileiros.

Com preços médios 32% mais altos que em 2010, o hidratado, que abastece diretamente os veículos, ficará com apenas 25% de participação nesse mercado, o menor desde 2006, segundo projeção da Informa Economics FNP. Os 75% restantes ficarão com a gasolina C, que já tem em sua mistura o etanol anidro.

No ano passado, o percentual de mercado para o hidratado foi de 33,54%. Em 2008 e 2009, período de auge do consumo de etanol na década, a fatia ficou muito próxima de 40%.

A projeção da FNP é que o mercado total (gasolina C e hidratado) deverá crescer 2,1% neste ano, ritmo menor do que nos dois últimos ciclos, quando as taxas anuais ficaram entre 7% e 8%.

Assim, considerando o crescimento de 2,1%, o consumo de hidratado em 2011 deve atingir 11,58 bilhões de litros, ante os 15,07 bilhões de litros registrados em 2010.

A gasolina C, com os 75% restantes, terá consumo no ano de 34,26 bilhões de litros. A avaliação da FNP não considera o consumo dos veículos leves movidos a Gás Natural Veicular (GNV) e nem a diesel.

De acordo com projeção da SCA Trading, maior comercializadora de etanol do país, se for considerado o mercado todo de etanol - hidratado e anidro -, a participação do biocombustível sobe para patamares próximos de 40% - no entanto, também bem abaixo dos mais de 50% atingidos em 2009.

Independentemente da comparação, o fato é que haverá uma forte retração do etanol neste ano e poucos sinais de que esses níveis vão mudar nos próximos dois anos, diz Jacqueline Bierhals, gerente de Agroenergia da FNP.

“Teremos uma estabilidade para o etanol e para o mercado de combustíveis como um todo”, diz a especialista da FNP, que lançou neste mês seu segundo relatório anual de energias renováveis (Renergy).

No primeiro caso, o motivo da inércia está nos próprios fundamentos do setor sucroalcooleiro, que vem de um período de pouca oferta de cana, com poucas chances de se equilibrar em apenas dois anos.

Com isso, as indústrias estão produzindo menos etanol e a consequência é a alta dos preços, que estão bem menos atrativos ao consumidor final, nos postos.

Conforme dados da Agência Nacional de Petróleo (ANP) referentes à semana encerrada em 15 de outubro, só é vantagem abastecer com etanol nos Estados de Mato Grosso, Goiás e Tocantins, regiões onde o preço do etanol só é competitivo - ou seja, vale menos de 70% do preço da gasolina - porque a gasolina custa mais caro. No Estado de São Paulo, maior consumidor nacional, essa relação está no limite, em 69,76%.

Apesar do apelo ambiental do etanol, que emite menos poluentes do que a gasolina, está no “bolso” o principal fator de decisão do brasileiro, agora sob o efeito da era “flex”, dos carros bicombustíveis.

Somente na usina em São Paulo, o litro do etanol hidratado está valendo neste momento 24% mais do que há um ano.

Para se ter uma ideia do quanto o consumo tem relação com o preço, em 2008, auge da demanda por etanol no mercado interno brasileiro, o indicador Cepea/Esalq para o hidratado foi de R$ 0,7192 por litro na usina em São Paulo.

Em 2009, outro ano de grande consumo, essa média subiu, mas apenas um pouco, para R$ 0,76, sem afetar a competitividade com a gasolina. Já em 2010, saltou para R$ 0,9105 e, no acumulado desse ano, já está bateu em R$ 1,2030.

Esses níveis baixos de participação do etanol em relação à gasolina devem persistir em 2012, diz Alísio Mendes Vaz, presidente-executivo do Sindicato Nacional das Empresas Distribuidoras de Combustíveis (Sindicom), cujas associadas representam 60% do mercado de etanol do país. Isso porque, afirma ele, não há perspectivas de crescimento significativo na oferta de cana no ano que vem.

Jacqueline Bierhals, da FNP, também não vê recuperação do “market share” do etanol no curto prazo.

“No melhor dos cenários, a produção de cana do ano vem será igual à dessa safra”, completa. Ela considera que até pode haver crescimento na oferta do etanol no país, sobretudo porque a perspectiva de aumento na produção mundial de açúcar (o que trará mais concorrência com o açúcar brasileiro) deve estimular as usinas do país a usarem mais caldo da cana para etanol. “Mas se houver avanço, será pequeno e sem grandes impactos no mercado”, diz.

Um cenário de “abundância” na oferta de etanol, como o ocorrido entre 2007 e 2009, não deve se repetir no setor, diz Martinho Seiiti Ono, presidente da SCA Trading.

“O perfil das empresas que lideram esse mercado mudou pós-crise de 2008. São multinacionais e fundos de private equity, caracterizados por uma racionalização do retorno dos investimentos. E hoje não há certeza de que o capital aplicado em projetos novos de etanol vai oferecer retorno”, diz Seiiti Ono.

Fonte: Valor Econômico, Por Fabiana Batista

How Will You Measure Your Life? - Parte III

The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.

Allocate Your Resources

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.

I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term perspective.

When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.

Create a Culture

There’s an important model in our class called the Tools of Cooperation, which basically says that being a visionary manager isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s one thing to see into the foggy future with acuity and chart the course corrections that the company must make. But it’s quite another to persuade employees who might not see the changes ahead to line up and work cooperatively to take the company in that new direction. Knowing what tools to wield to elicit the needed cooperation is a critical managerial skill.

The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions—the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use “power tools”—coercion, threats, punishment, and so on—to secure cooperation. Many companies start in this quadrant, which is why the founding executive team must play such an assertive role in defining what must be done and how. If employees’ ways of working together to address those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT’s Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision—which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.

(Continua amanhã)

Fonte: HBR by Clayton M. Christensen

Chevrolet comemora 100 anos e mira em seu legado para o futuro

Falar em Chevrolet é, indiscutivelmente, abordar um dos ícones da cultura norte-americana do século XX. E, com o dia 3 de novembro se aproximando, a marca fundada pelo piloto de corridas Louis-Joseph Chevrolet em 1911 intensifica as comemorações em torno de seu centenário. Mais do que isso, a marca da gravata dourada enxerga neste marco a possibilidade de manter seu legado perene na memória da indústria automobilística e também cultivar mudanças que serão determinantes para seu futuro.

Além de promover ações simbólicas e comemorativas em praticamente todos os países espalhados nos seis continentes onde mantém operações, a Chevrolet também está aproveitando o centenário para corrigir falhas históricas em alguns de seus mais importantes mercados. É o caso do Brasil, onde sustenta um portfólio desatualizado e carente de produtos realmente novos. A história começa a mudar com a chegada do Cruze, o sedã médio que tem a missão de reaver a primazia da gravata dourada no badalado segmento do mercado nacional.

Apesar dos tropeços, a Chevy se mantém, inegavelmente, como uma emblemática referência cultural. Sua marca e os nomes de seus clássicos modelos – Corvette, Camaro, Suburban, El Camino, Impala, Malibu, Monte Carlo, entre outros – são mencionados em mais de 700 canções da música norte-americana. Os clássicos imortalizados no Brasil também ganharam menções no rock nacional e na MPB: “Ele tinha um Opala metálico azul / Era o rei dos pegas na Asa Sul” foi cantado por Renato Russo na Legião Urbana, enquanto Ana Carolina usou o verso “Se mandou / Bateu com meu Chevette” para desabafar suas dores de amor.

Criada em Detroit há ainda incompletos 100 anos pelo piloto suíço de descendência francesa Louis Chevrolet e pelo empresário William C. Durant, a Chevrolet nasceu com a missão de entregar veículos mais completos e com preços mais competitivos que as opções oferecidas à época, especialmente o icônico Ford Model T. Desde o início, um dos conceitos mais difundidos pela empresa foi de que o caminho é tão importante quanto o destino – ideia também presente na publicidade de seus produtos.

Até hoje, a marca norte-americana já comercializou 209 milhões de veículos – 4,26 milhões vendidos apenas em 2010. Graças ao plano de expansão nos principais mercados emergentes – incluindo China, Brasil, Rússia e Índia –, a Chevrolet quer terminar 2011 com o maior volume comercializado de sua história. No ano passado, 60% de suas vendas ocorreram fora do território norte-americano.

Ao contrário da imagem construída ao longo do século passado, quando ficou marcada como fabricante de sedãs grandes, picapes e SUVs para os consumidores norte-americanos, a Chevrolet inicia seus próximos 100 anos de história diversificando o portfólio de produtos. A boa aceitação do Cruze – atualmente o veículo compacto (para os padrões daquele mercado) mais vendido dos EUA – e a decisão de levar o hatch subcompacto Spark para o mercado norte-americano mostram que a marca da gravata dourada está decidida a usar sua experiência centenária para se diversificar.

Em breve

Para a Chevrolet, o ícone do futuro é mesmo o sedã elétrico Volt, que almeja se tornar referência entre as propostas das grandes marcas para veículos que apresentam eficiência energética. Apesar de ainda aparecer atrás do Nissan Leaf nos EUA, o elétrico de autonomia estendida continua concentrando as atenções da GM, que já operou mudanças na fábrica de Detroit para aumentar a produção do modelo. A meta é fechar 2012 com 60 mil unidades fabricadas.

Em 2013, a Chevrolet também terá uma versão totalmente elétrica do citadino Spark, que terá apelo principalmente na Califórnia. A versão será vendida em quantidades limitadas nos EUA. O Spark também será oferecido por lá com motores a gasolina comuns. Outra novidade que promete se tornar emblemática para a nova fase da Chevrolet é a próxima geração do clássico esportivo Corvette, que ainda não tem cronograma de lançamento definido, mas provavelmente será equipada com um câmbio manual de sete marchas.

Para os brasileiros, uma das novidades mais aguardadas é a nova Blazer, que por enquanto ficará longe do mercado norte-americano. A próxima geração do modelo será revelada oficialmente no próximo Salão de Dubai, no dia 10 de novembro. O modelo foi desenvolvido pela Chevrolet brasileira e será destinado principalmente aos mercados emergentes da Ásia e da América Latina. A Tailândia será o primeiro país a receber a nova Blazer, já no início de 2012. Por aqui, a novidade será produzida localmente e deve estrear ainda no primeiro semestre do próximo ano.

As expectativas da legião de admiradores da Chevy parecem demonstrar que o futuro da marca pode ser ainda mais brilhante que seu passado. E, como resposta, a Chevrolet sugere que, na verdade, é o centenário que está apenas começando que merece as comemorações.

Fonte: por Rubén Hoyo, do Autocosmos/México para MotorDream

How Will You Measure Your Life? - Parte II

One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question—how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. I tell the students about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. In my mind’s eye I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilized, and demeaned. I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem—feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team. More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That’s unfortunate. Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

I want students to leave my classroom knowing that.

Create a Strategy for Your Life

A theory that is helpful in answering the second question—How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?—concerns how strategy is defined and implemented. Its primary insight is that a company’s strategy is determined by the types of initiatives that management invests in. If a company’s resource allocation process is not managed masterfully, what emerges from it can be very different from what management intended. Because companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, companies shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.

Over the years I’ve watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I’ve seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them implemented that strategy. The reason? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.

It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that HBS draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives. I tell the students that HBS might be one of their last chances to reflect deeply on that question. If they think that they’ll have more time and energy to reflect later, they’re nuts, because life only gets more demanding: You take on a mortgage; you’re working 70 hours a week; you have a spouse and children.

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, core competence, disruptive innovation, the four Ps, and the five forces.

My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isn’t the only thing that gives people direction. For example, one of my former students decided that his purpose was to bring honesty and economic prosperity to his country and to raise children who were as capably committed to this cause, and to each other, as he was. His purpose is focused on family and others—as mine is.

(Continua amanhã)

Fonte: HBR by Clayton M. Christensen

Veículo por habitante vai crescer 62%, planeja setor

Até 2020, setor espera atingir 250 unidades para cada 1.000 habitantes

Anfavea estima que indústrias vão investir US$ 21 bilhões até 2015 em ampliações e novas fábricas de carros

A indústria automotiva brasileira pretende aumentar em 62,3% a taxa de motorização até 2020. A intenção é passar dos atuais 154 para 250 veículos por 1.000 habitantes, de acordo com estimativa da Anfavea (Associação Nacional dos Fabricantes de Veículos Automotores).

Para isso, o setor planeja investimentos de US$ 21 bilhões até 2015 em ampliações e em novas fábricas. A produção anual, que neste ano foi projetada em 3,74 milhões de unidades, deve saltar para 6,3 milhões em dez anos.

Considerando o mesmo percentual e a renovação da frota, as montadoras poderão produzir ao menos 37 milhões de novos veículos no período. Ao final do período, o país poderá registrar uma frota de 69 milhões de veículos.

O aumento da produção considera o crescimento da economia previsto para 2011, estimado em 4% pelo setor, e outros fatores como a oferta de crédito e o aumento de renda da população.

Segundo a Anfavea, 60% das vendas de veículos são feitas por meio de operações de crédito.

Além disso, o crescimento está relacionado aos pacotes lançados pelo governo para incentivar a produção e evitar a demissão de trabalhadores. A última medida aumentou o IPI para carros importados a partir da segunda quinzena de dezembro.

De acordo com dados do Ipea (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada), a taxa de motorização no Brasil cresceu 30% entre 1998 e 2008 baseada na popularização e no aumento do crédito.

No México, o crescimento verificado foi de 75% no mesmo período. Já a vizinha Argentina tem taxa de motorização maior que a do Brasil.

Para o presidente mundial da Renault-Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, não há dúvidas de que o Brasil tem potencial para superar a taxa de motorização de países da Europa, como Portugal, atualmente com 495 veículos por 1.000 habitantes.

"O Brasil tem condições de atingir a relação de 500 veículos por 1.000 habitantes. O brasileiro gosta de carro, e o país ainda tem muito a crescer no setor", disse.

Para especialistas consultados pela Folha, a meta é ambiciosa.

"Parece mais um desejo do que algo que seja possível", diz Arthur Barrionuevo, professor e economista da FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas).

"Não creio que, nem mesmo num prazo razoável de dois ou três anos, o nível de crédito possa se expandir a ponto de viabilizar um aumento substancial da demanda de veículos no Brasil", diz Júlio Manuel Pires, professor de economia da USP.

Com mais veículos nas ruas, a lógica é que o tráfego se torne cada vez mais complicado, principalmente nas grandes cidades. Porém, para a Anfavea, a culpa não pode ser atribuída somente à indústria automotiva.

Segundo a associação, a questão deve ser analisada e associada a outros fatores, como a qualidade do transporte coletivo, sua eficiência, o adensamento populacional e a condição da infraestrutura viária (ruas e avenidas).

CARGA PESADA

No começo do mês, Ghosn esteve no Brasil para anunciar R$ 3,1 bilhões na construção da primeira fábrica da Nissan no país e a ampliação da unidade da Renault em São José dos Pinhais (PR).

Em entrevista à Folha, o executivo criticou o preço do aço brasileiro, a falta de infraestrutura e a alta carga tributária. "A tributação é muito grande no Brasil. De 40% a 48% do que se paga num carro é tributo", disse.

"A gente compra aço coreano feito com minério brasileiro porque custa bem menos do que o aço brasileiro. Esse é um problema que temos de resolver porque nosso interesse é baixar o preço do carro no Brasil."

Expansão repete boom de 'milagre' e Plano Cruzado

A indústria automotiva brasileira já viveu dois momentos parecidos com o que se estima para 2020: o período do milagre econômico, entre 1968 e 1973, e o ano de 1986, que marcou a implantação do Plano Cruzado.

"Nesses dois momentos a economia esteve bastante aquecida, com expansão do crédito e com impactos bastante positivos sobre o setor automobilístico", disse Júlio Manuel Pires, professor de economia da USP.

Para ele, a partir de agora a oferta de crédito ficará restrita ao comportamento da inflação. "Não creio que esse mesmo ritmo de crescimento do crédito possa se manter sem comprometer a inflação dos preços."

Pires afirma que até 2020 seja mais provável o aumento da oferta de crédito para a área habitacional do que para a automobilística. "Considero mais positivo do ponto de vista social e para o desenvolvimento econômico", disse.

Mesmo assim, ele confirmou que a indústria automotiva brasileira se desenvolveu bastante nos últimos anos, voltada para o atendimento dos mercados interno e externo, principalmente para a América Latina.

"É um setor competitivo internacionalmente no que diz respeito a carros mais populares, mas ainda carece de investimentos para ganhar competitividade no segmento de carros sofisticados", disse.

Fonte: Folha de São Paulo por Venceslau Borlina Filho

How Will You Measure Your Life? - Parte I

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn’t—that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”

I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.

When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is...,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.

I’ve thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.

That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

“I came to business school knowing exactly what I wanted to do—and I’m leaving choosing the exact opposite. I’ve worked in the private sector all my life, because everyone always told me that’s where smart people are. But I’ve decided to try government and see if I can find more meaning there.

“I used to think that industry was very safe. The recession has shown us that nothing is safe.”

Ruhana Hafiz, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010

Her Plans: To join the FBI as a special adviser (a management track position)

“You could see a shift happening at HBS. Money used to be number one in the job search. When you make a ton of money, you want more of it. Ironic thing. You start to forget what the drivers of happiness are and what things are really important. A lot of people on campus see money differently now. They think, ‘What’s the minimum I need to have, and what else drives my life?’ instead of ‘What’s the place where I can get the maximum of both?’”

Patrick Chun, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010

His Plans: To join Bain Capital

“The financial crisis helped me realize that you have to do what you really love in life. My current vision of success is based on the impact I can have, the experiences I can gain, and the happiness I can find personally, much more so than the pursuit of money or prestige. My main motivations are (1) to be with my family and people I care about; (2) to do something fun, exciting, and impactful; and (3) to pursue a long-term career in entrepreneurship, where I can build companies that change the way the world works.”

Matt Salzberg, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010

His Plans: To work for Bessemer Venture Partners

“Because I’m returning to McKinsey, it probably seems like not all that much has changed for me. But while I was at HBS, I decided to do the dual degree at the Kennedy School. With the elections in 2008 and the economy looking shaky, it seemed more compelling for me to get a better understanding of the public and nonprofit sectors. In a way, that drove my return to McKinsey, where I’ll have the ability to explore private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

“The recession has made us step back and take stock of how lucky we are. The crisis to us is ‘Are we going to have a job by April?’ Crisis to a lot of people is ‘Are we going to stay in our home?’”

John Coleman, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010

His Plans: To return to McKinsey & Company

As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions.

(Continua amanhã)

Fonte: HBR by Clayton M. Christensen

Change or die - Parte 5

Supporting Change

Even when leaders have reframed the issues brilliantly, it's still vital to give people the multifaceted support they need. That's a big reason why 90% of heart patients can't change their lifestyles but 77% of Ornish's patients could -- because he buttressed them with weekly support groups with other patients, as well as attention from dieticians, psychologists, nurses, and yoga and meditation instructors.

Xerox's executives learned this lesson well. Four years ago, when the company was in crisis, they came up with a new vision that required salespeople to change the way they had always worked. "Their whole careers, salespeople had done one thing," says James Firestone, president of Xerox North America, who leads a sales force of 5,400. "They would knock on doors, look for copiers, see how old they were, and sell a refresh. They knew how to do that." The salespeople had such predictable routines that they could plan their days, weeks, even years. It was comforting. But it just wasn't succeeding any longer.

Under the new strategy, the salespeople were supposed to really engage with customers so they could understand the complexities of how their offices operated and find opportunities to sell other products, such as scanners and printers. Maybe they would find that the customer actually needed fewer machines that could do more than the old ones had. Learning about the client's needs meant that the sales reps had to take a lot more time and talk to more people about broader issues. It undermined the cozy predictability of their routines. The reps became anxious, Firestone recalls. "They'd say, 'I know how to sell and make a living the old way, but not the new way.' "

Their anxiety was compounded by the fact that Xerox lagged in giving them the support they needed. It often took a couple of months before the salespeople received their scheduled training in the new approach. And it took two years before the company changed its incentive pay system to fit better with the new model, in which the reps had to invest a lot more time and effort before they signed deals. Eventually, though, the change effort, by expanding the sales focus to a larger range of products, helped Xerox avoid bankruptcy and return to profitability. "People need a sense of confidence that the processes will be aligned internally," Firestone says. "For large companies, this is where change usually fails." Even if change starts at the top, it can easily die somewhere in the middle. That's why Xerox now holds "alignment workshops" that ask middle managers -- the people who make processes work -- to outline the ways its systems could inhibit its agendas for change.

This Is Your Brain on Change

Are most of us like the fearful copier salespeople who dread disruption to their routines? Neuroscience, a field that has exploded with insight, has a lot more to say about changing people's behavior -- and its findings are guardedly optimistic. Scientists used to believe that the brain became "hardwired" early in life and couldn't change later on. Now researchers such as Dr. Michael Merzenich, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, say that the brain's ability to change -- its "plasticity" -- is lifelong. If we can change, then why don't we? Merzenich has perspective on the issue since he's not only a leading neuroscientist but also an entrepreneur, the founder of two Bay Area startups. Both use PC software to train people to overcome mental disabilities or diseases: Scientific Learning Corp. focuses on children who have trouble learning to read, and Posit Science Corp. is working on ways to prevent, stop, or reverse cognitive decline in older adults.

Merzenich starts by talking about rats. You can train a rat to have a new skill. The rat solves a puzzle, and you give it a food reward. After 100 times, the rat can solve the puzzle flawlessly. After 200 times, it can remember how to solve it for nearly its lifetime. The rat has developed a habit. It can perform the task automatically because its brain has changed. Similarly, a person has thousands of habits -- such as how to use a pen -- that drive lasting changes in the brain. For highly trained specialists, such as professional musicians, the changes actually show up on MRI scans. Flute players, for instance, have especially large representations in their brains in the areas that control the fingers, tongue, and lips, Merzenich says. "They've distorted their brains."

Businesspeople, like flutists, are highly trained specialists, and they've distorted their brains, too. An older executive "has powers that a young person walking in the door doesn't have," says Merzenich. He has lots of specialized skills and abilities. A specialist is a hard thing to create, and is valuable for a corporation, obviously, but specialization also instills an inherent "rigidity." The cumulative weight of experience makes it harder to change.

How, then, to overcome these factors? Merzenich says the key is keeping up the brain's machinery for learning. "When you're young, almost everything you do is behavior-based learning -- it's an incredibly powerful, plastic period," he says. "What happens that becomes stultifying is you stop learning and you stop the machinery, so it starts dying." Unless you work on it, brain fitness often begins declining at around age 30 for men, a bit later for women. "People mistake being active for continuous learning," Merzenich says. "The machinery is only activated by learning. People think they're leading an interesting life when they haven't learned anything in 20 or 30 years. My suggestion is learn Spanish or the oboe."

Meanwhile, the leaders of a company need "a business strategy for continuous mental rejuvenation and new learning," he says. Posit Science has a "fifth-day strategy," meaning that everyone spends one day a week working in a different discipline. Software engineers try their hand at marketing. Designers get involved in business functions. "Everyone needs a new project instead of always being in a bin," Merzenich says. "A fifth-day strategy doesn't sacrifice your core ability but keeps you rejuvenated. In a company, you have to worry about rejuvenation at every level. So ideally you deliberately construct new challenges. For every individual, you need complex new learning. Innovation comes about when people are enabled to use their full brains and intelligence instead of being put in boxes and controlled."

What happens if you don't work at mental rejuvenation? Merzenich says that people who live to 85 have a 50-50 chance of being senile. While the issue for heart patients is "change or die," the issue for everyone is "change or lose your mind." Mastering the ability to change isn't just a crucial strategy for business. It's a necessity for health. And it's possibly the one thing that's most worth learning.

Fonte: Fast Company, by Alan Deutschman