SWOT…or is it SCOT Analysis

Challenges vs. Weaknesses

    Most classic organizational strategic planning programs talk about “SWOT”—Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The Optimize Your Life! approach prefers the term “SCOT”—where “Challenges” replace “Weaknesses.” One’s limitations or shortcomings need not be viewed as negative; they are merely obstacles that challenge us to “think outside the box” and improve ourselves.

    The formation of your Values Statement addressed your past; your Mission Statement focused on your present; and the Vision Statement created your vision of your future. Throughout the process, you collected and sorted out a great deal of material: ideas, concepts, facts, thoughts, etc., which can now be applied to the formulation of your SCOT analysis. This is a prelude to defining and selecting your specific Goals.

Strengths and Challenges Analysis

            In addressing an organization’s Strengths and Challenges, the  process first defines a series of categories and then formulates thought-provoking questions in each category. The categories selected would be directly related to the mission of the organization, and may include generic categories such as: history and reputation, past successes and failures, leadership, ownership, governance, reward systems, technology, management practices, human resources (personnel), facilities and space, equipment, location, financial status, risk aversion or tolerance, and current and past strategic planning.

             While these categories have proved successful for organizational strategic planning and several may be inappropriate for personal planning, they do offer a stimulus for a range of possibilities. In addressing one’s personal strengths there are a range of  categories for one’s body, mind, and soul that can stimulate key questions: What are your:

Positive aspects regarding your body?

Talents or gifts you were given (genetic)?

Skills and competencies you have acquired?

Expressions of a positive attitude and humor?

Practices regarding proper risk management?

Resources such as finances and material assets?

Reputation and past successes?

Relationships with individuals and organizations?

Attitudes about spirituality?

Positive habits?

Strengths. On a blank sheet of paper write the title SCOT Analysis: My Strengths of Body, Mind, & Soul and list your strengths. You may to address the past successful use of your strengths as well as their uses in the future.             

Challenges. Addressing your challengesmay be a daunting task. It calls for the discipline of pure introspection and personal honesty. We all have foibles, shortcomings, and faults. Some can be minimized, some even completely corrected—if we are willing to try, on our own or with the help of benevolent individuals or professionals. The same categories, given above for addressing your Strengths, usually stimulate thoughts, questions, and answers about your personal challenges. Therefore create a separate sheet  titled SCOT Analysis: My Challenges: Body, Mind & Soul, where you can deal with your challenges and offer an opportunity to address their diminution or correction.

Opportunities and Threats Analysis

    During the SCOT analysis process, often an external threat may, on closer examination, be viewed as an opportunity. It is interesting to note that the Chinese pictograph for “crisis” is the combined pictographs of “threat” and “opportunity.”

    An organization must address its external world, gauging its opportunities and threats to acquire accurate information and facts. These are often difficult to obtain, trust, analyze, and incorporate (synthesize) into a strategic plan. A strategic planning facilitator may proceed by defining certain categories, such as: the economy (local, regional, national, worldwide); competitors and contemporaries; government intervention; demographics; marketshare andmarketplace;clients, customers, and suppliers; and organizational mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, and alliances.

    Again, in adapting to an individual’s personal strategic planning, many of these categories can be applied, even though, on an initial scan, they may seem inappropriate. The goal is to discover how you perceive your world and how you gain and process data about it. On a personal level, you can address categories that stimulate questions such as determining what your opportunities are. These may include:

Optimal use of your body and physical capabilities

Proper use of your mind, skills, and competencies

Application of your spirituality 

Appropriate use of your formal and informal education

Utilization of your practical skills

Seeking and maintaining satisfying employment or
professional life

Intimate relationship and a quality family life

Friendship and a satisfying social life

Avoidance or diminution of toxic forces and people

Economic and political trends

    Opportunities. On another blank sheet title it SCOT Analysis: Opportunities Body, Mind, & Soul in order to address these questions. Enter specific responses to be used next in defining and selecting specific goals. 

    Threats. Look at thethreats from your outside world. You can use the same categories and questions, but first look at the downside—the negative aspects that may be present or looming in the near future. Create a worksheet SCOT Analysis:Threats, that will assist you in focusing on threats.

Author’s Suggestions

    At this point, you’re covering material you’ve dealt with before. You are asked to address different questions that may well end up with the same answers. This process, albeit duplicative, can build on your previous responses and yield new information as you dig deeper into yourself and your world.

            The big challenge of the opportunities and threats phase for organizations is the difficulty in gaining and analyzing reliable information about the current and possible future external environment. The data sources may be as varied as newspapers and magazines, web sites, consultants, seminars and workshops, rumor, network resources, site visits (so-called scouting), and commercial  databases. The attendees during strategic planning will be forced outside of the “comfort zone” of their personal knowledge and organizational database and into the future world of change and chaos, the unknown and the feared. The same is true of the practitioner of personal strategic planning.

    During a free-flowing SCOT analysis, the database expands and there is a concomitant link between the external opportunities and threats and the internal strengths and weaknesses. This process of expansion and linkage usually generates a whole host of specific ideas that can augment the visioning process by formulating additional, specific goals.

On Seeking Your Comfort Zone:

“The data you have is not what you want.

The data you want is not what you need.

 The data you need is not available.”

—Finagle’s Law

©2005 American Author, a division of Cevado Technologies. All rights reserved.