RWL #259
Personal SWOT - part 3
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! It’s another cold morning - 6 degrees F. But you know what is amazing? Sitting inside the snug, warm LHH in my book nook this morning, drinking coffee and reading with the winter sunrise reflecting off the snow and in through the window. You guys know me well enough by now, so you know I couldn’t leave a perfectly good year alone. So instead of taking on one project - like my art 365, I’ve set a slew of weekly goals - cardio 5X/week, weight training 3X/week, reading something academically developmental 6X/week, reading something personally developmental 6X/week, and a couple of others. So that’s what I was doing this morning - reading the legendary Universal Economics by Alchian and Allen. This is one of the best expositions of price theory ever, so even though I know all the theory, it’s worth sitting with the masters and hearing how they explain it, with the goal that maybe it will make my own exposition better. I’m also reading Atomic Habits, which I will have more to say about in a week or two - but I will tell you I recommend it! (I also recommend Universal Economics if you are an economist - or if you have insomnia. For me, it’s exciting. For normal people… probably not so much.)
This is the last Friday of winter break - we start back to class on Tuesday. I have all my syllabi done and my courses are loaded in the learning management system. I am ready! Just need to go over my notes on Monday. That feels good. Usually I am scrambling to finish syllabi the weekend before.
So 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 accomplish his goal. 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, eithert. 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?
And now, on to the links!
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Read
What: Inc., With 7 Short Words, Tom Brady Just Taught a Dangerous Lesson in Leadership: Something can be really smart and really dangerous all at the same time.
Why: This is not the article you think it is. The punchline - you get what you pay for. Beware what you pay for.
(HT to my wife who gave me the link - she’s a big Pat’s fan.)
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What: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Projected openings in occupations that require a college degree
https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2021/article/projected-openings-college-degree.htm
Why: Looking for an Opportunity (or Threat)? Here’s a list, by field, by median income, produced by the US BLS. If you have kids, you might want to show them this. Fun to scroll through. Computer and information systems managers are still kicking butt!
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Watch
What: Conor Neill, Redefining Failure | "Living Safely is Dangerous" Nietzsche (9 min)
Why: Conor asks, “What is your relationship with failure?” He argues, to not fail means you are not trying big things - goals that are dignified. I love that he calls them “dignified”. He goes on to talk about how setting goals that force you to grow help you approach your full potential - which I think connects nicely to the idea of them being dignified.
I think this video combines well with the personal SWOT discussed above. A goal should be in the category of opportunity, too.
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What: TED Talk, Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper: The best career path isn't always a straight line (9 min)
Why: The speakers suggest forgetting about a career ladder and replacing it with a squiggly line. Careers are not linear, and we shouldn’t pretend they are. I like this notion. It fits with what careers researchers have been saying for the last 40 years - most people don’t work in one firm, loyally laboring their way up to their Peter Principle. Instead, we tend to bounce around in response to opportunities (and threats), and changes in our personal lives. They don’t get into it, but I think you should think of your resume as a portfolio of experiences, rather than a ladder.
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Listen
What: EconTalk, Lorne Buchman on Creativity, Leadership, and Art (69 minutes)
Why: Buchman espouses a philosophy in line with the Design Thinking movement - “make to know.” While he draws on the art world and artists’ processes, the argument really does carry over to leadership. He uses the specific example of Steve Jobs’ effort to develop the Apply Store. Buchman relates how Jobs had his team build a full prototype of the store so that they could really experience it before they launched. The experience of walking through it gave real insight. Other interesting points included how artists envision something one way, but something else emerges. Boy, I can tell you about that from personal experience! Lot of good stuff here. I’m interested in the book - I am putting it on the list. I have too big a pile right now to add any more.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next week!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Associate Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast:
http://healthleaderforge.org
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picaso