The Decision Strategist

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Analysis is sort of all the rage in strategic planning these days, and is typically applied in a business setting to strategize about a certain objective. It is also this week’s new decision making technique, though it isn’t explicitly used in decision making as much as strategy. In this case I’m going to apply it on a personal level to analyze my own strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.

Part of the popularity of the SWOT analysis may come from it’s simplicity. Once an objective is defined, a list of each aspect is created. This list is used to create a strategy for achieving the objective.

Yet that simplicity is also the source of it’s criticism. SWOT analysis has been criticized because it leads people to think they have done an adequate job of planning when all they’ve done is list four categories of aspects. SWOT analysis allows you to consider the factors that are affecting a situation or objective, but doesn’t provide the strategy itself.

One key for a useful SWOT analysis is to make sure you have an explicitly defined objective. SWOT analysis in the abstract tends to contribute to the error of thinking SWOT is adequate and the analysis ultimately has little relevance. Since I’m doing this exercise on a personal basis, here’s my objective:

To move into more creative work based on idea generation and execution in programming and design.

Corollary: Given the tendency for businesses to reward status quo success over creative innovation, it is likely, though not necessary, that this means a startup or freelance work.

With this objective in mind, the first step of a SWOT analysis is to consider the internal factors: strengths and weaknesses. These should be things that are inherent to the person (or company usually) and not things that involve external factors.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The next step is to consider the external factors: opportunities and threats. These are things like political and economic factors, market trends, situational and environmental changes, etc…

Opportunities and Threats

That’s the complete SWOT analysis process, but I hardly have a strategy at this point. I’ll have to work on developing one and post it later. There are some key things to point out here though.

First is that I listed more positive than negative factors when talking about myself and less positive factors when thinking about the external situation. Is this a result of selective consideration of evidence as a confirmation bias, or is it just the truth of the situation? Something tells me that if I was someone else doing this analysis on me I’d find more negative personal aspects.

Second, there are some things I listed that need qualification or explanation. I should start by saying that I need to go back and revise my objective to explicitly say creative problem solving instead of just creative work. When I think of creative work I’m generally thinking of new approaches to problems, not things like art or poetry (not to dis on all you cool artists out there).

Another thing that strikes me is looking at the lists of strengths and weaknesses, I am much more capable of succeeding that I usually think. One of my perennial weaknesses is that I underestimate my ability to program, but as I work with code more and more, I am finding myself naturally learning and able to do stuff I would have recently balked at.

None of my weaknesses seem particularly strong or debilitating. Further, taking advice that I heard from somewhere (maybe The 4-Hour work Week), I’m going to focus on increasing my strengths rather than eliminating my weaknesses. Why? Because the return on investment for increasing my strengths is exponential, while the return to eliminating my weaknesses is (at least in the beginning) linear at best, not to mention demoralizing.

One the other hand, my biggest concern for any advertising-based revenue source (such as this blog) is that a consumer spending led recession, especially with the astronomically high levels of debt, will result in a significant decline in sales of all kind, including ad-based internet sales.

So that’s a SWOT analysis, and it gives me a basis for examining the variety of factors that will affect my failure or success in obtaining my goal. If you’re like me, you’re thinking that it’s rather similar to other decision making techniques like the Pros-Cons-Fixes method used in What am I doing with my life? and Plus-Minus-Interesting used in Buy vesus Rent Part II.

The only real difference is that instead of considering the pros and cons of each option in a decision, we’re considering the pros and cons of ourself or our organization with respect to an objective, and we’re explicitly separating internal and external factors.

If you’d like more information on SWOT analysis, Wikipedia has a nice SWOT Analysis page and businessballs has some good (though garish and terribly designed) information here.

On an entirely different note, why do so many decision making and strategic planning web sites seem like the digital version of a car salesman? There are only two real possibilities here. Either all these decision making techniques are snake oil, or the techniques are ok but the consultant is about as valuable as a car salesman.

Decision making techniques in general seem useful, but don’t do much to account for decision making errors. In a way they are merely the formalization of methods we do implicitly. Though I think there are real benefits to plotting things out explicitly, I’m not convinced of the usefulness of hiring consultants to do so. My suspicion is that there are a few really good ones and a whole lot of ineffectual ones, just like most other fields. More on this later.

-zot

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People spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. In a sense it’s a real luxury that we can approach that question with a relatively open slate. It wasn’t so long ago that we would only be doing whatever it was our parents did.

While I talked about the PCF method in What am I Doing with My Life? Part I and Part II, and a values-based method in the Follow Up, I also like to use a metaphor exercise in determining what I am doing with my life. The values-based method in the follow up article should probably be incorporated under this idea, but here I am focusing on visualization techniques rather than value techniques.

I suggested a broad method for this sort of thing in Thinking in Metaphors, but thought I would give a more explicit description of the process here.

What do you want to do?

Start out by listing the different options you are considering. Then for each one, consider what metaphors and stories you associate with each one. Here are mine:

Back to School

Thinking about going back to school evokes images of myopic professors who know a whole lot about a narrow field. I think the strongest metaphor is the absent minded professor, deeply involved in their work and rather oblivious to the outside world. The other prevalent image is the teacher motivating his/her students to do amazing things.

Ycombinator

Ah the dashing cavalier entrepreneur, living and dying on the excitement of risk. I’ve talked about how I think entrepreneurs are risk-seeking rather than risk-averse like most people. It seems like the primary metaphor associated with entrepreneurs is the charming swashbuckler.

That’s probably not a very accurate metaphor, as so far my attempts to start a business have all involved rather a lot more hard work that the story involves. Still, the excitement of being in control of your destiny and working on things you are passionate about seems to be holding true.

Peace Corps

Peace Corps volunteers seem a little overeager, but are generally socially conscious and interested in other people and ideas enough to consider living in a substantially different living situation for two years. The strongest metaphor is that of the bright-eyed optimistic student who is going to change the world.

This is another option where I suspect the metaphor doesn’t fit well with reality. The most successful Peace Corps volunteers are probably very hard working and enterprising people. Perhaps even slightly chiseled by life experience.

Status Quo

It’s hard to assign metaphors to your current life, because you are so much more aware of the reality. As a researcher I do some pretty interesting social research, but to be honest much of social research seems rather useless. It gets appropriated by whatever side the results support, and discounted by the other side. This lack of impact is one of the major reasons why I am not satisfied with my job.

Still, my story about researchers in general is that they are intelligent and interesting, but lacked a little initiative and motivation to really get out and make things happen, so they’ve retired to studying what happens instead. This is not to say that research is useless. I think it can be extremely useful in the right situations, just generally not political situations.

Consider other options

Using the collection of metaphors you’ve developed, brainstorm some other options that fit those metaphors. This is easiest if you visualize the activities and let your associations take you down unexpected paths. My list of metaphors and brainstormed options:

• Absent minded professor. There’s not really much else that fits this one.
• Inspiring teacher. This metaphor can actually be filled by any role that is primarily a mentor. A more experienced coworker, team leader, or martial arts teacher.
• Swashbuckler. Deep sea explorer, politician, scuba diving teacher in Mexico and other roles that involve high risk and exploration.
• Obsessed programmer. A martial arts teacher actually fits this role for me.
• Gandhi (Peace Corps). Philosopher, monk, or activist fits this role for me. Not sure what professions fit this. Perhaps director of a non-profit?
• Normal guy (researcher). Advisor, consultant, or something like would fit a similar role.

Beware negative effects

Metaphors can be useful and fun to look at in these kinds of exercises, but they hold a very really danger that I mentioned for a couple of my options, and that is that often a metaphor doesn’t correspond very well to the real experience. This is especially true in the case of cultural icon metaphors such as sports superstars, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other roles with a high public esteem.

This kind of exercise is great for uncovering professions or roles that you hadn’t considered at all yet. For me the one that really stands out is the deep sea explorer. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching Blue Planet lately, but it’s definitely something that is interesting that I had never thought of before.

-zot

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This week’s decision making technique is a little different. Problem restatement is a method designed to break you out of a situation that seems to have no solution. It avoids framing effects by shifting your point of view so that everything looks different. It forces you to think outside the box.

You can use problem restatement for decision making to clarify what it is that you are trying to decide on. Sometimes the decision we think we are trying to make is not the decision we are actually making.

I’ve found problem restatement particularly useful when considering future plans. Right now I am focusing on making What I want to Do With My Life happen, so this exercise is useful in helping me refocus energies.

What’s the current problem?

Start with a definition of the current problem. For me the problem is:

• How can I build this blog, work on decyder and complete applications to Ycombinator and the Peace Corps before the end of September all while working hard at my normal job?

Paraphrase

Paraphrase the problem. This is sort of like brainstorming with the question/problem as the focus.

• What can I do to make sure everything gets done?
• Why do I overload myself with so much work?
• Who would I have to be to accomplish my goals this month?

Reverse the Problem

Consider the reverse of the problem. This works by telling you exactly what things you can do to make sure you don’t solve your problem.

• How can I not get everything done that I need to this month?
  • be lazy (especially watching TV)
  • get distracted by less relevant tasks
  • become demoralized and quit

Narrow or expand the focus

Sometimes the reason a problem seems not to have a solution is that it is focused either too minutely or too broadly. Shifting the focus can give you the right perspective.

• How can I be more productive? (more general)
  • focus on the essential tasks
  • reduce distractions
  • emphasize productive time

• How can I build The Decision Strategist?
  • write quality articles with good information
  • be more active in the decision making community
  • see what articles people have found most interesting and emphasize those types of articles

Shift the focus

We adjusted the focus in the last step, now shift the focus. Often problems with no solution turn out to be not correctly focused on the true problem.

• How can I improve my writing?
  • practice
  • develop information resources
  • try writing in different styles
• How can I make my coding more efficient?
  • practice practice practice
  • take the time to understand tutorials
  • try to solve math puzzles
• How can I build income potential as I work toward starting my own business?
  • investigate advertising potential
  • work with potential clients
  • participate in the decision making communities forums (are there any?)

Ask Why?

The last step is to simply ask why. State the problem/question and then ask why. Continue to ask why until you feel satisfied. I usually start with a question updated by the four tasks I’ve just done. That way in incorporates the work I’ve done to try and make the question more accurate.

The question about building income potential is probably the most spot on. Income isn’t the only reason for wanting to do any of the things I am doing, but it is sort of the bottom line, because I need it to do anything else.

• Q: How can I complete the most necessary actions to develop opportunities to generate income?
  • why?
• Because I want to work for myself on the things I find interesting and useful.
  • why?
• Because life is more meaningful and fun when I am doing that.
  • why?
• Because it is difficult to be completely invested when working for someone else on uninteresting things.
  • why?
• Because it is hard to be passionate about work you don’t care about.

As you can see, by the end you can get down to some pretty philosophical statements. But these statements are good, because they help me focus on the real reason I am trying to do all these different things.

To ensure that I am focusing my energies where I should, I am going to examine each task in terms of how much it does to achieve my primary goals, which in this case are to start my own business and be working for myself on interesting things.

I fount a great (and slightly pink) example from a couple years ago of a student using this method to try not to procrastinate located here. If any of you have done this sort of analysis for anything, I’d love to hear about it.

-zot

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In it’s first (not quite whole) month, The Decision Strategist has posted 34 articles. Here are some of my favorites:

• The What am I Doing with My Life? series discusses how I am attempting to decide what to do in the near future.
• The Buy or Rent? series discusses the benefits and risks of buying a house versus renting, as well as providing a spreadsheet to calculate net worth for each option.
• How to Fight Advertising was my first post about the psychology of marketing and how consumers can turn that on their head. A strangely popular post.
• How to use Paired Comparison in Application Planning describes the process of deciding which task to tackle next as I move on with the application I’m trying to build.

Favorite missed post:

• Housing Pundits and the If-Then Fallacy describes people attempts to manipulate a simple human error for their own benefit. I really thought this post didn’t get the attention it deserved, mostly because these tactics aren’t just used by real estate agents, but also by spouses, parents, kids, and anyone trying to convince you of their point of view.

Thanks for all of you readers, especially those who took the time to leave a comment.

-zot

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