MENTHER STRATEGY
SWOT YOURSELF Finding your strength in every opportunity
O
ne of the first lessons learnt in business school about strategy is the idea of “fail fast succeed fast”. This is in fact a well-established model that forces the entrepreneur to quickly learn from her mistakes and restart. The model is premised on the logic that the quicker the failure, the quicker the lessons learnt and the quicker the turnaround time to developing a new business or strategy. This is not always true in practice. A quick fail can cause an entrepreneur to become disillusioned and she may never try again. Or trying again might take a bit longer the second or third time around due to lack of confidence or morale from the failure. There might be loss of finances, resources, partnerships,
Candice Pillay | Director Norton Rose Fulbright SA markets, reputation, etc. that was a consequence of failing fast. There is always a good time and opportunity to introspect. There is also a very good tool that can assist any entrepreneur to understand the failure process and recover if not better, but more insightful, from failure. The SWOT analysis is taught as a tool utilised to take stock of any opportunity. It is the first step in the creation of a business strategy, but it is also a helpful tool to do some really good introspection.
What is SWOT all about? The acronym refers to the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing any opportunity or business when looking at strategy. By considering and documenting each quadrant of SWOT, the entrepreneur is better
positioned to build a strategy that can easily spot opportunities and grow. The question is however, how do you SWOT yourself, and why is it necessary? It’s vital at any point in the journey that you stop to introspect and consider the direction of your journey. In failure it’s important to plot a course. It’s not enough to get up, it’s important to move forward.
The first important question is to consider, what are your strengths? These are defined by what you’re good at and what comes easily or naturally to you. The relevance for this is to map out what you’ll spend most of your time on. We tend to do what
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