It’s not enough to set personal goals and objectives, even if they are targeted
at what I really want to reach in life. It’s also not enough to set out on our
journey based only on our vision. One of the most important things is to
understand what I have that will help me succeed and what I should avoid. And
that is also not always enough. For most
of us, it’s not easy to distinguish between our internal means and obstacles
and the external, environmental powers that have potential to help us grow or
get in our way. And more so, it’s important to align internal and external
forces to help us get things done.
This distinction, the ability to see all the pieces of the puzzle
and deduce a course of action is what the SWOT tool enables. In fact, with SWOT
as a preliminary tool and some agile guidelines, achieving our personal objectives can
become quite a simple task.
So what is SWOT?
SWOT is another of many tools
that lets us discover our strengths and abilities. It is used by organizations
around the world to asses strategic decisions, organizational capabilities,
possible directions, products and more.
Let’s take a look at the SWOT definition from Wikipedia:
"
Strength Weaknesses Opportunities
Threats
SWOT analysis aim to identify the
key internal and external factors seen as important to achieving an objective.
The factors come from within a company's unique value chain SWOT analysis groups key pieces of
information into two main categories:
1.
Internal
factors – the strengths and weaknesses
internal to the organization
2.
External
factors – the opportunities and threats
presented by the environment external to the organization
SWOT is not limited for use by business organizations. This wonderful
tool can be used on a personal and team level as well.
So the benefits of SWOT are that it can take all the factors - internal
and external, positive and negative - and use them to help us focus on a
realistic plan to achieve our goals.
So let’s get started:
1. Our initial assumption is
that we have a vision or end-goal we want to reach.
2. Creating the famous SWOT
matrix:
Draw it on a sheet of paper, or better yet on a whiteboard - and place
it somewhere that will be visible to you most of the time (maybe on the
refrigerator, or on a wall in the living room, or on the billboard in your
study?)
This is what it looks like:
3. Understanding: I’ll ask
myself questions relating to my end-goal or vision. I’ll write the answers
on post-its and stick them in the proper quadrant of my SWOT board.
The first part is questions about me - S, W
* S: Regarding my vision, what
are my strengths? What makes me unique and advantageous in this event? Is it
knowledge? Experience? Good physical condition, money, family support? etc...
* W: Regarding my vision, what
are my weaknesses? What do I lack that I need to go forth, that originates from
me? Lack of experience? Lack of knowledge? Low self-esteem? Lack of family
support? etc...
The second part contains questions about my external surroundings - O,
T
* O: Regarding my vision, what opportunities
exist? Is there a specific job opening that just opened up? Political
situation? Family? Financial? etc..
* T: regarding my vision, what
threats may there be? What will hold me back? Is it starting from lower
position? Income? Residents?
** it is recommended that you take those questions and get some
feedback from your soundings. Show them your SWOT and ask them what they would
say about you regarding these questions. I know it’s its not that easy, but
true outside feedback is something very important. It gives a different point of
view over the issues at stake for me. And you may be surprise how others see
your strengths , weaknesses and how they related to threats that may be
different from what you initially thought.
Let’s take a simple career change example as in the following image:
**few words on visibility: the probability to get things done increase
when I see the things I need to do. When I see it, I can relate to it, I can
relate to it more often and it will probably catch my attention more than other
things around. If you really want to take SWOT from theory to action, make it
visible. leave out the pen and paper and take it to the level where it is
visible where you most needs to see it.
4. The analysis: Examine, ask
ourselves few questions related to our vision.
·
Our goal at this stage is
to understand how we can use our internal straights toward achieving our
vision.
·
Furthermore, we would like
to get the full picture over the situation.
·
We would like to start
taking actions, set some goals as part of our journey toward achieving our vision
·
The answers we give ,
should be completely subjective to us (the owner of the SWOT)
So.. let’s ask them:
·
How can I take my straights
and take advantage over the opportunities in my journey toward achieving my
vision?
·
What is the best way to use
my straights so I can reduce the threat?
·
How can I make sure, my
weaknesses will not hold me back from the opportunities ahead?
·
How can I reduce the
threats and weaknesses so they will less influence me in my journey towards my
vision?
·
How do I overcome threats
in general
·
How do I use the
opportunities, and when?
5. building the most basic
building blocks for the journey .
·
According to what we’ve
learned in the previous steps, Create a list of all the tasks, goals you need to
do/archive.
·
Add this list to your task
board
·
Select few of the tasks to
take as action in the near time frame (or sprint)
Go...
A good execution may be that we take one or two actions, examine them
in our day to day reality and then go back to the SWOT and see if something has
changed.
Few important guidelines for the way :
·
SWOT as presented here is
not a judgmental tool. It is a personal and subjective tool therefore, it is
highly important that the SWOT owner will understand his board as it reflects his
own subjective reality.
·
Visibility – Make
sure you see what you need to do and where you‘re at. Place the SWOT board in a
location where you can relate to it frequently.
·
Since SWOT is not just a
onetime evaluation tool, make sure to revisit your SWOT and change it
accordingly. Did I gain some more straights? Do I have new opportunities? Did I
eliminate threats? Improvement will happen when we will create the routine of
continues change and continues improvement.
·
Pick your relevant
execution actions according to their highest value for you. There is no need to
take to action all the SWOT tasks at once.
·
Start small! Take one step
at a time. Sometimes it’s enough to understand something “just enough” and
start executing, instead of examining endless options and sides of the same
situation. Anyway, the most important feedback will start flowing once you
start executing your actions.
If you’ve taken to
execute an action related to weaknesses or straights, start small. Small tasks are
easy to get done, easier to get feedback, has a good impact over the feeling of
success and achievement and..if you fail, you fail small.
·
There are many ways to achieve
your goals and vision –SWOT is just one of them.
References and further reading
●
Humphrey, Albert (December 2005). "SWOT Analysis for Management
Consulting". SRI Alumni Newsletter (SRI International).
