Taking SWOT personally –self-diagnosing to successfully reach feasible personal objectives

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 

" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

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

●     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

●     Humphrey, Albert (December 2005). "SWOT Analysis for Management Consulting". SRI Alumni Newsletter (SRI International).

●     http://ci.haifa.ac.il/index.php?title=%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%97_SWOT

●     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

●     http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/swot-example.htm

●     http://www.smartinsights.com/marketplace-analysis/swot-analysis/swot-analysis/

Visual thinking - What is it?

Visual thinking, also called visual learning, is a proven method of organizing ideas graphically - with concept maps, mind maps and webs. Scientifically based research demonstrates that visual learning techniques improve memory, organization, critical thinking and planning.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Simplicity is key for any Agile activity.

You’ve all heard about the KISS principle. How does it relate to Agile? Well, something which is easy to understand or explain is simple. Something that is hard to example, is complicated. Simple, right?

“KISS is an acronym for the design principle articulated by Kelly Johnson, Keep it simple, Stupid!  The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complex, therefore simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.”  

From Wikipedia

Kiss is also an awesome rock band

After all, Agile is a set of principle and practices collected over the years, proven to improve quality and efficiency. Now, as I’ve said about a million times before, I find that almost everything can be related to Agile. I mean, it’s just so fun! You have so many ways of using it, and improving on it, that you can adapt it to almost everything you do in life. Our home, our family and as a personal management method.

Of course, adapting Agile to your needs doesn’t mean that you can toss all the Agile rules and principles out the window.

One of them is the KISS principle – KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.

In my years as Quality Director, this was a key principle for me. It is so easy to complicate a software solution, to over analyze, and over test it, even when it’s not necessary. I learned that keeping things simple was much more efficient. Your boss likes to keep things simple, because, frankly, it takes less time and is cheaper to do. Your client likes to keep things simple because it’s easier for them to use.

The same goes for our kids. Start simple - and they will learn more, adjust faster, and understand the complicated issues better once they know how to keep them simple.

So how do we help our kids keep it simple?

1.       Understand your limits. (Spoiler) Superman isn’t real. Don’t expect to be able to do everything he does. You can’t do 15 tasks at once, and finish them all in 30 minutes. Don’t try.

2.       Visualize. Draw squares, put sticky notes on the board, whatever works for you. I’ve written about keeping thins visual before - it’s just that when we see things, we deal with them better, and it’s been well known for many years that visualization is key to success and better learning.
Imagine your child needs to be get ready on time in the morning. Simply visualizing the things he needs to do will make it much easier for him to understand.

Of course, you need to be careful of over visualization. Short and simple tasks may do the job. Don’t include too many details in each task, or over task.

3.       Divide large tasks into smaller tasks. For example, a big history exam can be divided into few small digested tasks every one hold only few hours of learning scope. Yes, adults and teenagers may use this as well. Instead of a ‘learn for the exam all week’ task, you have separate tasks. Choose simpler solutions to complex problems and break complex solutions down.

4.       Divide your obstacles and problems into smaller problems, so you can tackle one at a time.

5.       Understand the definition of done. It’s usually easy to see when small tasks are done. For example, the ‘Read Page 3-10 in the history book’ task is done when pages three through ten are read :). Bigger tasks are harder - so make sure you know what you mean by ‘Done’.

6.       Do one thing at a time. Work on the highest value work at all times .

7.       If you don’t have to complicate matter, don’t. Don’t over elaborate, don’t do tasks you don’t need to do, and if you don’t have to see how long a task has taken, just don’t.
We prefer to keep Agile at home as simple as possible. I have seen enough cases where it gets too complicated. Charts, reports, measures, too many principles to remember - this is where people get frustrated.

The Agile principle is easy to grasp. 1 whiteboard, 3 columns, 5 packs of sticky notes. That’s it. Sometimes Agile is presented as very complicated, even more so, when we talk about something we use to manage both software projects at work and our family lives.

I want my board to be simple, and my methods to be simple. In most cases I won't even use personal measures, personal cycle times and WIP. Those principles are all well and good in the industry, but can pose a big difficulty when I come to manage my own tasks and my children’s tasks. Use complicated reports and measurements when you manage that software project.

8.       Your family is the one who needs to understand the task board. No one else. I’ve seen task-boards for families with ten children that cover house chores, baths, shopping, and look like the plan for developing the next Facebook. But they understand it - and that’s what counts.

Bottom line? Keep it simple!

The Power of Sticky Notes

Agile@Home :

These small squares that we stick on a board or on a wall, have power.

When we are trying to manage our time, and deal with the fact that we need to get things done.

Or when a group is talking about a subject they have more than three things to say about.

You can find these sticky notes all over your house, your office, even your computer, but do we acknowledge their real power?

Long before I was introduced to Agile and Kanban, I used to write everything down on notes, especially small square ones. One day, when I was still in my quality management role, I was introduced to the sticky ones.

Small, colorful, stick-to-anything notes.

I was hooked.

For someone with “ADHD” like me, these sticky notes were incredibly useful for figuring out where I put what and how to remember everything I need to do.

Pen and paper have always been the fastest way for me to express ideas, much faster

than any computer software, and of course, "The opposite of forgetting is writing down”. Combining this with a pack of sticky notes brought order to my day to day schedule.

Of course, it wasn’t that before my day was chaos. I managed my day and my tasks without sticky notes, but there’s no question that they helped make it much easier for me, and freed up valuable time for other tasks.

So what makes the sticky notes so powerful?

The first thing comes to my mind when thinking about the power of sticky notes is visibility.

Visibly is not just about writing it down. Visual thinking is already well known to be a powerful tool. So with sticky notes, I can write things down, put them where I can see them, and see my entire wish list, or the list of things I need to do or realize.

This is the first step in organizing my day to day activities.

With sticky notes, it's easy.

Now, when I have everything visual in front of me, I can start making choices.

I can start decide what I want to do and when. I can start moving those sticky notes around and checking myself before deciding on the 'path' I wish to take. I can even free some space to add more few things into my wish list.

My ideas are right in front of my eyes, so why not play with them? Add some colors, change their order around, add notes, group or sort them. This helps get some sense of them, and it is a pretty easy way of making choices.

It’s also a simple way of sharing my ideas with other people. When you put your ideas on sticky notes as a group, it’s an excellent brainstorm visibility tool, as well!

This is an amazingly simple way to help get things done.

So we visualize the things we want to do , and play around with them a bit. Now, we just need to do them, right?

So the last step you can do now is place those stick notes on a simple three column board, and visualize your way through having those ideas become a reality.

Sound familiar?

Since you can now see your ideas and how the tasks are moving forwards with your sticky notes, you can add, change and get early feedback over your own progress, maybe even change your ideas to adapt to your needs.

With kids at home, there is a lot of fun using sticky notes to get things done, and it’s pretty much the same way. It's just that the content of the sticky notes is different.

You can manage almost any chore with sticky notes. Simple day to day activities, chores around the house, your children’s schedule, your family trip, personal tasks, and huge software projects.

The funny thing I have noticed, over the last few years, that even task management software looks more and more like a board with lots of sticky notes.

See?! It sticks!

Ho… and don’t forget to have fun on the way…