SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and SWOT analysis is often used to assess a project, a venture or reflect on the organization’s relative forces compared to competition and business.
A SWOT analysis can be done on one’s self in order to get clarity about one’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, before a job interview or when facing an important decision.
“SWOTing” oneself can also be useful just to get clarity on one’s status, so to say. Being aware of these four dimensions helps to get clarity about thyself and to take decisions with more than just gut feeling. Let’s start with Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths and Weaknesses are very self-centered. It’s all about individual traits and how they compare to others. Of course, strengths and weaknesses are relative to the circumstances and the self-assessment should be done with a specific “use case” in mind.
List your distinctive strengths, what you are really good at, what makes you different from colleagues and other people, what makes you stand out of the crowd, and would be a real advantage over similar profiles. Be honest.
Strengths must be specific and difficult or long to acquire for your “competitors”.
Being clear about own weaknesses sets the boundaries about what you can do and what not. Awareness about your own limitations and weaknesses will probably prevent you to try something out of reach or likely to fail.
Weaknesses may be disqualifiers when applying for a job or when looking for a promotion.
It is also an indication of what to improve – if possible – and about what your competition is potentially better.
Now to the external factors. Circumstances and social and professional environment are changing constantly, providing new Opportunities but also exposing to Threats.
Circumstances and environment at large may provide personal development or new professional opportunities. Clarity about one’s strengths and weaknesses helps to decide to seize an opportunity or to get prepared for it. Sometimes the gap is too big and thanks again to clearly knowing one’s limits, the right decision can be made.
Everything is going VUCA, an acronym for Volatile or unstable, temporary, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. Threats are somehow the flip side of the Opportunities: what can be a real chance for one can be disastrous for another.
Threats can come in a form of a new “competitor” or a technology that trump your skills or make you as a contributor… unnecessary.
Threat can be the obsolescence of your knowledge, the decline of some abilities in time…
Threats can come in so many ways that it is wise to question them about being plausible and their probability. Take into account only the most plausible and likely ones.
Once clear about the exposure to risks, figure out how to mitigate or bypass them.