In the previous article if you have identified yourself with the lion, it’s time to remove your sheep’s clothing of habit, find your purpose and listen to your calling.
Oprah Winfrey once said –
“There’s no greater gift than to honor your life’s calling. It’s why you were born. And how you become truly alive.”
Most people have no clue about what they want in life. So whether your quest is to-
- Listen to your calling
- Identify your niche
- Get clarity on your thought process
- Plan a road map to your success or
- Develop a personal or business strategy
you must dig deep to lay a strong foundation to build a happy fulfilling life on.
One such ways to achieve the above outcomes and to develop oneself personally is to use SWOT & TOWS Matrix.
SWOT & TOWS
SWOT - stands for strengths , weaknesses, opportunities & threats and is a tool to analyze WHERE you must focus your efforts to achieve the desired results.
This analysis helps you to capture information about your internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats so that you can develop personal and business growth strategies.
TOWS - on the other hand is SWOT spelled backwards and is a tool that helps you create strategies and device a plan of action.
Though both these tools are very helpful, people often forget to pay attention to creating a right framework to conduct the analysis.
Which is why we are now going to delve into a new perspective to conduct this analysis.
It is a 3 step approach to successfully achieve your desired outcomes.
1–2–3 approach for SWOT to TOWS
1- The foundation building for SWOT
2 – The actual SWOT analysis
3 – The TOWS analysis
In this article we will lay the foundation for SWOT and in the next articles we shall discuss the other 2 steps.
THE FOUNDATION BUILDING
This is the stage where we do the ground work before conducting the SWOT analysis. These are the 3 basic rather elements to keep in mind in order to start conducting a constructive analysis.
- Understanding your Purpose & Values.
- Setting the Context
- Using both Divergent & Convergent thinking
Start with UNDERSTANDING YOUR PURPOSE & VALUES
Defining and understanding your Purpose & Values is the fundamental step to SWOT to TOWS analysis. The better the understanding the clearer the bigger picture. Every goal that you set and every move that you make should align with your purpose & values.
PURPOSE — is THE very reason of your existence. Something that gives meaning to your life. Something that makes you happy and fulfilled and everything you do, revolves around it.
If this sounds philosophical I got another one for you.
Purpose simply means the reason for which something is done.
So, basically when you know why you are doing something , you do it with determination.
For e.g.
- Your purpose could be achieving financial freedom by doing something you love.
- Your purpose could be helping a massive number of people in the society with any of your skill set.
VALUES — These are your standards of behavior and the ways of doing things that you think are correct in the way you live and work. When your actions & decisions align with your values, you experience happiness & peace of mind.
For e.g.
- Your Values could be Honesty, Discipline, Commitment or Timeliness etc.
That means ,every time you make a choice or a decision it should fulfill or bring you closer to your purpose and match your values.
Now set THE CONTEXT
It is basically understanding why we are doing the SWOT analysis?
What is the reason behind doing this analysis, understanding the circumstances in which we conduct this analysis and what outcomes are we expecting?
For e.g. —
- Are you doing SWOT to get a dream job?
- Are you doing SWOT to develop a more successful business strategy?
So every time you make a choice it should be related to the predefined context only.
Remember to USE BOTH DIVERGENT AND CONVERGENT THINKING
When we do our SWOT to TOWS analysis we are coming up with different ideas and thinking to get an outcome or solve a problem . Convergent and Divergent thinking should be the fundamental elements of this process. It is like coming up with ideas and thinking what to do with those ideas.
Divergent thinking — It is getting new ideas and going out and exploring new possibilities. It is open ended thinking involving brainstorming, imagination, flexibility and creativity etc.
You will use DIVERGENT thinking while listing down all your relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats in context.
Convergent thinking — It is about choosing the best ideas, improving upon them and coming up with decisions. It is focused thinking involving intelligence, logic, rigidity and objectivity etc.
Once you have written down your SWOT, you will use Convergent thinking for TOWS analysis to focus on a few key areas to build on your final strategy.
Now you know your What and Why for your SWOT, Let’s see the HOW of SWOT in the next part of this article.
I would urge you all to attempt the 1st step to this approach to have a better understanding for the next 2 steps.