personal SWOT analysis: Opportunities, Threats, and the Value proposition

I introduced the personal SWOT analysis here.

I discussed strengths in this post.

I discussed weaknesses in this post. 

This week I wanted to close up the discussion by touching on the remaining three components of my version of the personal SWOT: Opportunities, Threats, and the Value proposition.

Having thought now about our strengths, and within strengths, really focused on the things we are drawn to, that we not only do better than other people, but also give us meaning and satisfaction, and having now also thought about our weaknesses as not only things that we have failed at, that we recognize we may not do as well as other people, but also as things we do not like doing and do not give us meaning and satisfaction, we can turn to the external world where the opportunities and threats lie. 

When I was in high school, I ran track. I was a fast sprinter. I loved the 100M and 200M. These were races that were all power and little strategy. You just dumped everything into the race. I thought by the time I got to my senior year that I would be the fastest. As it turned out, I was not. I was fast, but not that fast. My senior year, the fastest kid on the team was my friend Tony D., who was a sophomore. He was significantly faster than me. It was a bummer. I got a string of 3rd and 4th places my senior year. The coach tried to get me to move up to the 400M where I might have had room to grow, but I was pretty resistant. I ran it a few times, but never made it my own. With effort, I might have been a better 400M sprinter than a shorter distance runner. With several decades of hindsight, I still wish I had tried that instead of being stubborn and trying to chase Tony. 

Contrast my experience with another track friend, J. J joined the track team because he was applying to the military academies and felt he needed a varsity letter. I don't remember what other sports he had done, but he clearly did an analysis and decided track was the easiest place for him to make mark. J. wasn't especially fast, he was medium build, so he wasn't going to be doing shot, and there were lots of competitors in other field events. But there was one event no one wanted to do: the pole vault. So J. signed up to do the pole vault. He had no idea what he was doing, but it turned out that on other teams, no one else wanted to do the pole vault. For most meets, the other team would have one other guy who was doing the pole vault. As a result, J. got either a first or second place at EVERY meet. J. doubled down on doing the things no one else wanted - and pretty soon he was also running the 330M medium hurdles. There was a little more competition for this, but most meets it was J., and maybe one or two other guys. So most meets, he came away with at least two top-three finishes, whereas I was lucky to get one. 

What I hope these stories demonstrate is the alignment of strengths and weaknesses with opportunities and threats. I was fast - a strength. As it turned out, the threat I faced was the fact that I wasn't fast enough to be as good as I wanted to be. I failed to recognize that my strengths didn't align with the opportunity I was pursuing. My real opportunity was to move up to middle distance. My value proposition, had I chosen to take it, would have been to be a middle-distance runner. By focusing on an area that I liked, but was not comparatively good at, cost the team points I could have potentially earned. 

J. by contrast wasn't as fast as me. He evaluated his strengths - reasonably fast, reasonably strong, reasonably coordinated - and took a more realistic look at the opportunities and threats. There were a bunch of us on the team who were faster than him, never mind all the other teams. These were threats to him accomplishing his goal of lettering in a varsity sport. Instead, he took his strengths and looked for an opportunity - a space where not much competition was happening, but the rewards were just as good as if he ran the 100M. 

It's awesome when opportunities align perfectly with our strengths - especially the strengths we love to exercise. But as hopefully my stories above demonstrate, the opportunities available might not play to your strengths. Just because you have a strength does not mean you have an opportunity. I chose to go into the most competitive events where I was a marginal participant at best because the threats - the direct competition - overwhelmed my modest strengths. J. looked around and identified opportunities that had very little direct competition, where basically all he had to do was show up, and he would come away with a win. I don't think in the beginning he would have told you that the events he chose were strengths for him, but with his strengths, they were the best opportunities. 

Michael Porter (of Five Forces fame) defines strategy as going where the least competition is. Porter's advice is basically to be J. Consider your capabilities, and then look where in the market your capabilities will give you the greatest advantage (opportunities), while shunning parts of the market where your capabilities will bring you into head-to-head competition. 

When you can combine strengths and opportunities, you have a sustainable sweet-sport - the value proposition. For a personal SWOT analysis, you want to look for the combination strengths and opportunities. While J. found where he could add value to the team, I don't think track was something that really sang to him. He added value, and to be honest, more value than I did, but I don't think he was passionate about it. If you take the time to work through the personal SWOT analysis, you want to try to find the value proposition that allows you to bring together your strengths and opportunities. You aren't a company - winning isn't enough - you need to find the thing that makes your soul sing. 

Professionally, I was good at finance. It was a strength. I like analytical work, I like solving complex problems. I like communicating those solutions. The Army needed comptrollers. My strength aligned with the opportunity. It was a good run. I could see myself still doing that kind of work. On bad days (which are relatively few), I sometimes wonder why I am not still doing that kind of work. But working in finance didn't make my soul sing. Teaching does. Not every day, but most of the time. 

Life is too short not to find what makes your soul sing. What is your value proposition?