SWOT for Me

Strategic Planning is a function for every savvy business that wants to survive into the future.  Of course “nowadays” it’s called SOAR – Strength, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results, while the old framework for a strategic plan was Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats(SWOT).  Pundits want us to believe that one framework is better than the other.  I disagree, both professionally and personally.  Here is the deal: every time you sit down to have a talk about the future, you are engaging in clarification of goals.  Every time you do that, you place a direction into your mind and the minds of those that you engage in planning with.  Setting that direction into place is a lot like how we use our value system.  On a daily basis, we do not think about our values, like -not stealing- we just do not steal, because we have set that value into our mind as a way of life.  By setting a value into our mind, we direct all of our future daily activity with that value.

For me, both professionally and personally, that is the function of strategic planning.  I want to engage in conversations with everyone who will be affected by a strategic plan.  There are several reasons for this, one is to get all of the feedback necessary for a thoughtful analysis, another is to ensure that all involved will be part of the new plan.  I want to guide not only my future actions, but I want my team’s future actions guided by goals.

I don’t need fancy words, nor do I need a business administration structure.  What I need is the following:  a clear picture of what I want to create in my future.  I need to understand, not from my perspective – but from many perspectives – what strengths I can apply to the challenges that may thwart the accomplishment of my goals.  I need to have long and deep discussions with anyone who is involved in my goals.  These discussions will create the buy- in and support that I need to help me accomplish goals.  These discussions also help clarify the direction that we all wish to travel in. 

From a business management perspective, guess what?  It’s same-same.  We identify our goals, we talk about them loudly and often.  We create discussions around those goals and we carefully analyze everything that will affect those goals.  From my perspective it is not a document, nor an essay, it is an ongoing discussion.  Words and thoughts create reality, so the process of strategic planning is just as important as the strategic plan itself.