Sunday, April 12, 2009

Strategic plan...part 2

Ok, so last Saturday I talked a little about the strategic plan, and the components of one of the ways to go about setting one up. We've covered Strengths and Weaknesses, so now let's move on to Opportunities!

In the business world, Opportunities are new products or new markets that can be maximized by using your strengths. For the sake of this conversation, Opportunities are the things that you have identified as viable, based on your strengths and weaknesses. What areas can best play up your strengths and play down your weaknesses? This is not the place for your self imposed constraints. Open it up. Sky's the limit. If a strength is getting people to open up to you and talk about their lives, one opportunity might be "life coach" another one might be "talk show host". Now there are those people who will tell you that "talk show host" is not a very realistic opportunity. That does not matter for this part of the exercise. We'll winnow it down later. Right now just honestly look at your strengths and weaknesses and make a list of where they might lead. The ones that you feel the most passionate about will make themselves apparent as you build thelist. After you have a good sized list, go ahead and line out the ones that don't resonate with you , and circle the ones that do. Keep doing that until you get the list down to 5.

When the list is down to 5, start on the threats. What are the external forces that will work to prevent you from doing any of the things that are on the list. Make a list for each of the 5 opportunities. This will tell you two things: 1. the most "viable" idea of the 5, as well as the obstacles that you will have to overcome to get there. Each of the threats will result in one or more action items.

If you feel like the exercise was good, and a direction has been set, start doing the action items that come out of the threats. If not - well, maybe it will serve to provide a look into opportunities that you hadn't thougth about before.

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