Lessons to Brazil – Selling quality

Statistics say Brazilian industry is shrinking by the day. Some companies are putting employees on leave or closing their doors until the government and unions do something to protect them.

My dentist was hysterical last time I had a tooth treated because she was trying to purchase injections. She said the government quality inspection agency had cancelled the license for US injections and she was trying to get them anyway and failing miserably. She said she could simply not buy the Brazilian ones because they were terrible quality, and that the US ones had silicone and didn´t hurt her patient´s gums.

The reason Brazilian industry is dropping is because it is 10 years behind in terms of technology, innovation and quality, and it´s not because of lack of investment. Protectionism is always a backward path, always bad. Competitiveness is healthy and makes industries work harder. But most Latin American countries continue to prefer to protect their industries against the outside world.

In the 20 years I have lived in Brazil, the story is always the same. A new product comes out and is initially successful because it is good quality, eager to please and pleasing. Then, when sales go up, the quality drops and the company becomes greedy. Greed is inherent to companies and most global companies cut costs by exporting labour to China or India but quality has to be maintained or improved to please customers. In Brazil, they reduce quality because they can´t (or won´t) reduce labour costs or tax (which are both incredibly high and made burdensome by the government who claims to protect them) so good quality products become harder and harder to find. Instead of adopting the US mentality of selling more, they try to sell for more. A higher price is always the focus, never a higher quantity (we all accept lesser quality if the price is low) and quality is reduced to an absolute minimum.

There are exceptions of course, such as Natura, Alpargatas, Hering, Vale and other well-established companies, and they have a huge number of faithful consumers who would never trade the quality of their products for anything cheaper, which goes to show that all Brazilian customers are willing to pay for quality. Other companies truly try to maintain quality but cannot because the quality of raw materials is so bad. Fiorucci, for example, closed its factory in the town I live in because the quality of Brazilian thread (and other raw materials) is so bad. Grimoldi, an Argentinian shoe company, stopped manufacturing shoes in Brazil (cheaper labour) because Brazilian glue is so bad. Shoes that were known for their quality when produced in Argentina, would literally fall apart in your hand when they came from Brazil.

Foreigners who live in Brazil, who are accustomed to buying items with a basic usable quality are forced to ask friends and family to send them plugs, sockets, clothes pegs, thread, pins and needles (Brazilian ones get rusty although some claim to be stainless steel). Of course, lots of these products come from China and Taiwan, but the Brazilian ones are more expensive and just as bad.

In some cases, the bad quality gets to be dangerous. I once purchased a “cheap” iron (a well-known brand, the cheapest in the store but not cheap by my standards) that I had to stop using in the middle of ironing a shirt because it was releasing sparks and short-circuiting. Too many electrical items have exposed live parts that aren´t supposed to be live.

Lots of Brazilian housewives are waiting for a decent furniture company to open its doors. They are simply tired of wardrobes that can´t be moved because the parts never fit properly again and you can´t close the doors or drawers. The problem is that they are not cheap and there is no mid-option. It´s either BRL 400 or BRL 4000 for a decent quality wardrobe.

If Brazil truly wants to grow it has to create an real open market, allow companies to collapse and re-erect so they can compete and become better, following globally-accepted quality standards. Until they do, Brazilian industry will only sell to Brazilians who are starting to look elsewhere for the quality they expect.

Lessons to Brazil – Simplifying education

In Brazil there is an expression: Para que simplificar quando podemos complicar? Why simplify when we can make it more complicated?

This rule goes for just about everything from buying a drink at a nightclub to learning a trade.

My sister decided to be an interpreter because she is trilingual. She finished school in 3 months (after a simple admittance exam to determine level) and finished her first interpretation course in weeks based on competency and the capacity to understand the lessons taught. Simple right? That´s how education should be. If you are capable, if you know, you should be able to study or continue where you left off.

Not in Brazil. If you want to study in a decent public institution (they are usually the best for higher education and fundamental if you want to finish school) you have to go through the hell of the public bureaucratic system.

I did not finish secondary school because its not a requirement for O-levels in the UK. Then I had the bad idea of wanting to finish school so I could continue studying in Brazil. I went to the Adult Education Centre and they said I needed to prove I had gone to school. I asked my school back in the UK to send me proof of attendance. I took that paper back to the Centre and they said they would get back to me. I waited a month. They called saying I had to take it to the Conselho de Educação to see if it was valid in Brazil. What they did with my paper for a month beats me. Anyway, I called the Conselho and they said they followed a law to determine validity of my proof of education, but they said they were rarely there so I would have to call before going. But, they said, you have to prove you went to PRIMARY school, too.

education (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

The senselessness of their request forced me to give up.

Home-schooling is illegal in Brazil. EVERYONE has to study at a recognized educational institution or you run the risk of paying a heavy fine. Some rich families have paid but continue to be considered law-breakers. They refuse to enter the over-complex and ineffective educational system. You can, however, take the exam to get a diploma but I dread to ask what I need to present to take that exam.

Public education in Brazil is mostly very bad. It´s not the teachers or the students, it´s the actual system, the books they use and the methodology. It´s based on copying and memory rather than understanding and reasoning, so people should have the right to study wherever they please and take the same exam as everyone else without proving anything except their aptitude, and getting a diploma for their efforts.

If they can´t offer what they are paid to offer, they should allow people to find their own solutions to the same problem.

Lessons from Brazil – The police

I don´t care what anyone says, the Brazilian police force is the best police force in the whole wide world. Yes, there is corruption, bad cops, killer cops but most of them are incredibly kind, hard-working people who put their lives on the line for almost nothing. The police in Brazil gets almost nothing in return for their hard work and that does not stop them from trying to become better. Investments in security are mostly pre-election and they have the basics, but they don´t get any special treatment for being police officers.

In Argentina, which is supposed to be more “developed” or “chic” as the Brazilians say, have a depressingly corrupt police force full of people who cannot get jobs anywhere else, are less educated than anyone else and are only provided with used uniforms, old guns and cars and deficient training.

EVERY time you are pulled over by a traffic warden or the police in Argentina, you are indirectly asked for money to be “let off”. This is incredibly rare in Brazil.

On the other hand, those same traffic wardens are REALLY efficient BECAUSE they get money from people. You make one mistake and they are on you like flies. In Brazil, specially in the small towns like the one I live in, the traffic police (or military police) is really lax. They seldom stop you and witness all types of bad activity, like red light and stop sign hopping, drunk drivers, you name it. There are exceptions, of course, like in the motorways, where the police (policia rodoviaria) is less tolerant.

I feel sorry for the police in Brazil who are accused of violating human rights, torturing or even killing people. I am all for human rights and some police officers are cruel or worse than the criminals, but when a town is invaded by crack dealers and addicts who kill you for 3 reales, the police are forced to adapt and they really make a difference. Most international organization who complain about the police in Brazil have no idea how some people live here. They don´t see the Gaza-strip type neighbourhoods or even cities there are here and how crime affects and destroys the lives of citizens. Sometimes, it´s just war and the police are forced to become soldiers. And they do it without complaining. I have witnessed this so many times in the North-east, a true no-man´s land where a city of 80,000 is engulfed in the crack epidemic with all the consequent violence and drug-related deaths and a small group of officers who have to deal with it, with no external help.

Sigh…. so my heart-felt gratitude goes to the (good) police in Brazil.

Lessons to Brazil – Thinking like a Nation

I don´t know if this is common in other Latin American countries, but I know it´s the same in Argentina. I don´t know if it´s related to being from a generation of immigrants and never truly acquiring that feeling of belonging to a country or a part of a nation (that the USA managed to do), but Brazilians (and Argentinians) don´t think like/as a nation.

Let me illustrate with some very common examples of things I have seen in BOTH Brazil and Argentina:

1.When someone puts a foot on the street to cross (even if it´s a pedestrian crossing) most cars accelerate instead of slowing down.

2. When someone is crossing the street at the crossing and the traffic light turns green when he/she is mid-way, the drivers press the accelerator (without actually accelerating if he/she is lucky) to frighten or hasten the pedestrian.

3. When someone eats something that leaves a wrapper they just it on the floor. There is no where-is-the-damn-rubbish-can reflex. They just open their hands and let it drop. A fine example is New Years in Rio, where people that went to the beach to watch the fireworks display left amazing amounts of rubbish without even bothering to put it in bags or SOMETHING, and the nappies I have found buried in the sand on beaches in Bahia.

4. The pavement is the responsibility of the property owner. This means that if you fall in a hole in the street, the person who owns the shop or house that is facing that pavement is responsible. This means that pavements look like patchwork quilts, some good, some slippery and life threatening and some outright worse. On the other hand, the worse pavements belong to the town hall, who people pay tax to to keep the city in walking order.

5. The government lowers taxes and sticks their hands in people´s saving accounts to compensate the losses from tax.This give and take is constant, omnipresent in supposed “improvements”. Councillors are mostly unaware of their job description and rarely make any changes, but they are thousands of them and they get better salaries than a good teacher.

6. Most traffic accidents (Brazil is a record-breaker in that area) are caused by negligence and drunk driving. That means that they are not actually accidents but are treated as such (things are gradually changing because social security is tired of paying for the bill).

7. When (some/most) women use public toilets they don´t flush the toilet and sometimes wee all over the seat! (Yes, women can be nastier than men).

8. Private schools illegally charge enrolment fees (equal to one monthly fee plus the monthly fee so it´s two payments in January) EVERY YEAR even if your kid has been in the school for years and will remain there. In public schools, they just ask you if your child will continue next year, which is the only thing private schools should do.

9. NO ONE OUTWARDLY OR COLLECTIVELY OR EFFECTIVELY COMPLAINS

And that´s where thinking like a nation comes in. How can you eliminate corruption and bad administration if most people would do the same in their position? How do you get people to drive properly if they are always trying to get ahead, go quicker, be “smarter” than everyone else and get almost psychotic when they are behind a wheel? It all boils down to thinking as a whole, as a nation, rather than seeking only personal gain over everything you do.How are politicians expected to punish drunk drivers when so many of them have been caught in exactly the same situation?How are people expected to respect a disabled person´s parking space if these same politicians use it too, and too many non-disabled civilians, too. What right do you have to complain if you would probably do the same? The bottom line is, no one is worse than the other. It´s collective disrespect.

Thinking like a nation is picking up behind you for the next person. It´s that built-in reflex that people of more developed countries have of looking for that trash can and holding onto their trash until they find it. It´s that basic consideration and understanding that you are not alone, that the roads belong to everyone, that we are all pedestrians sometimes and we are all drivers. That if you complain you have to follow the rules also, and that effectively complaining is good for everyone. That our kids could be in that knot of a car that idiot crashed into because he was tapping an SMS and his car was basically driver-less, that we could be the victims or the idiot.

That sense of civility, of basic collective awareness and respect is desperately lacking in both countries and my question is, where do you learn that?

 

Lessons from Brazil – Friendliness vs. Kindness

These posts are the opposite of Lesson to Brazil. Here, I talk about personal experiences in Brazil that have actually taught me something and express its uniqueness.

When people talk about Brazil they always say that the people here are friendly. As my idea of friendship is a little more intense than just being “nice” to people, I have always thought that Brazilians are more informal and kind than friendly.

Friendly has many definitions, such as a) related to or befitting a friend; b) favourably disposed, not antagonistic or hostile c) showing kindly interest and good will.  From the experiences I have had, Brazilians fit perfectly in the 3rd definition.

a) Brazilians are not overly friendly in this sense because they find it hard to actually build a friendship unless there is a lot of emotional connecting involved. The term “this is just business” is very hard for Brazilians to truly understand. They have to feel 100% confident you like them BEFORE they invite you anywhere or closely work with you, contrary to people of some other countries, who try to build that confidence gradually BY inviting you or working with you until they decide you can be called a friend or partner. This odd approach makes it difficult to make friends in Brazil and difficult to be hired or respected for you talent and skills rather than likeability. When confronted with a friend-seeking gringo who has not established that painstaking emotional bond, most Brazilians feel they don´t really need new friends because they have such close family connections and childhood friends or work colleagues. Making a single friend can be too tough in those circumstances.

b) They are not hostile because they are 100% non-confrontational, which is not always a benefit and sometimes leads to gossip and lots of back talking. Sometimes it´s better to just be hostile and truthful than smile and back-stab. North Americans are the other side of this coin. They are tooo confrontational.

c) Here, Brazilians are masters. There are always bad people, those nasty buggers who refuse to give up their seat when you get on the bus with a sleeping baby and the allies who say nothing but in individual situations I have experienced the most beautiful side of people in Brazil and Brazil only. It´s difficult to pinpoint but when I have needed help or even just minding my own business, people have said things or offered their help in such as way that it truly made my day. Just an unexpected smile, a helping hand, a question, a comment when you are bored or waiting or stressed makes all the difference. The help I got when I lost my son in the shopping centre, when I fell in the street, when my mother´s sugar level dropped to almost zombie levels. In Brazil I have experienced true kindness without the ties of obligation or duty (like in the UK, the other paradise I once called home).

There is a common denominator that I find really interesting. In all the “civilized” countries and in the “civilized” (self-proclaimed) South of Brazil, people are less helpful when they feel something is not their obligation or duty. They are not as kind in other situations but are more willing to respect a queue or seat for the disabled than the rest. In less “civilized” countries and other states of Brazil, where no one is particularly eager to be “civilized”, you will witness a lot more scenes of heart-felt kindness. I will never forget the day a man in a wheel chair stopped a bus and EVERYONE at the bus-stop hurried to lift his wheelchair onto the bus. On the other hand, in Florianópolis or São Paulo, where they are lifts for wheelchairs, no one rushes to help if the lift is jammed, for example. The guy in the wheel chair has to wait for another one.

So anyway. Brazilians have much to teach the world in terms of kindness. They are, by far, the kindest people I have ever met.