SWOT is a powerful concept that you need to keep front of mind. Whether you apply it to your business or your life, it will help you to clarify and overcome the obstacles to success.

I have used the SWOT techniques repeatedly in dealing with the growth of Spa Tech Institute.

SWOT stands for:

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: SWOT

This requires some work on your part but it can be a lot of fun as well. Be clear if you are doing it for your business, personal life, health, finances or relationship. By narrowing it down your questions will produce better results.

After you decide what category of your life you’re covering, make up a questionnaire for your friends and family to answer. It is really easy. Just make a heading for each of the 4 areas of SWOT and leave space for them to fill in their answers. Request that they be as honest as possible.

Once you receive the feedback, here’s how to use it.

  1. Remember that you asked for their feedback so do not get defensive or feel hurt or rejected. Be really thankful and positive about the help. Again, do not challenge or defend yourself. Learn from it.
  2. Anything that is not clear to you, ask for additional clarification or examples that may help you to understand what is meant. It’s not always possible to give that level of clarity.
  3. Compile the information into a report to yourself.
  4. Build a strategy for using the data to move that part of your life forward.

Now it’s time to use the information.

  1. Remember that your Strengths and Weaknesses probably are closely related. Try to understand how your Strengths contribute to your Weaknesses and how you can use one to help with the other.
  2. Threats are probably the hardest areas to address because it requires anticipation. This is where the feedback can be really helpful since it’s hard to see the problems that we may be headed for. It’s much easier to see an accident about to happen when you are outside the situation than when you are in the middle of it.
  3. Opportunities are also challenging because they are usually hidden in our blind spots. The same way Strength and Weakness are closely aligned, Threats and Opportunities are also very close to each other. Again, the help of your friends and colleagues can be very valuable.

Now that you have the information, it’s important to put it into an action plan. The key work is ACTION. The plan should describe specific ACTIONS that you can take to turn Threats into Opportunities and Weaknesses into Strengths.

I will address how to develop effective actions plans in future posts. For now, start working on getting the information. Clarity is the first step in action. There is no point to acting if you don’t know what you need to change.

© Copyright 2009, Kris Stecker – All Rights Reserved.

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