STRATEGY

SWOT YOURSELF

Finding your strength in every opportunity

One 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

comes naturally to us and what we enjoy. You’ll also identify and set out what is going to make you happy, because happiness is an important component of the journey of entrepreneurship.

The second enquiry is to list is your weaknesses. The third exercise considers what the personal threats that you’ll face are.

In strategy these would be external forces or influences that threaten your business. However, when it’s personal

This insight is invaluable. It demands complete honesty about what you can’t do or what you need to do better as well as what you will not do. Being an entrepreneur does not mean that you need to know everything and be able to do everything. Once these traits are identified you can then focus on finding the correct solutions and resources to suit your weaknesses or growth areas. A lot of people spend time on aspects of their business that are their weaknesses and are unhappy and soon end in failure. The value of this exercise is to turn your weaknesses into strengths. As an entrepreneur and leader it’s important to know what you need to be working on to improve your business. This will also give you insights as to who to employ and how to allocate resources to where you most need them. introspection, make room for internal influences. External forces, like lack of finances, potential litigation or disgruntled staff is important. However, lack of confidence, negative family and friends, untrustworthy business partners or stakeholders, is just as relevant.

From the first three enquiries you’ll notice that you’ve already commenced mapping out your opportunities.

By looking at your strengths you’re able to identity easy wins, low hanging fruits to get over the slump of failure or not starting.

From your weaknesses, you can now plan to fill the gap. The honesty tells you where you need to be spending your resources or finances to bolster your business or organisation.

Honesty, insight and strategy will help turn weakness into a strength.

Finally, threats will help you to change your environment.

Who are the people, events or circumstances preventing you from starting or restarting your dream? This is an opportunity to find new friends, find new business partners, find new environments, and look for opportunities to grow in a fertile environment.

Once that honest conversation is had, the future does look different, perhaps brighter and there is already a plan on how to start or restart – because you have given yourself the best opportunity to succeed.

You’ve found your strength in your entrepreneurship journey.