Entries Tagged 'Getting Things Done' ↓

A lot of people have checked out my article  on SWOT Analysis: Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats (amazingly, an estimated 300,000 people Google “SWOT Analysis” each month, according to Google’s own Keyword Tool).

If you want a variation on an exercise for strengths, opportunities, etc., there’s another simpler one called D.O.S.

DOS stands for Dangers, Opportunities and Strengths.

DOS Exercise

It’s very simple to learn DOS. Here are the steps:

1) Pick a new that you’re considering taking on.

2) List out the dangers of taking on such a project.

3) List out the opportunities of taking on such a project.

4) List out the strengths of taking on such a project.

I’ve been using DOS for a few years and I’ve learned it’s important you go in the order of danger, opportunity, strength because psychologically it’s best to end on a positive — this is one advantage the DOS model has over the SWOT model (in SWOT analysis you START positive with strengths and END on a negative with threats).

Here’s a DOS example on a new challenge a friend of mine’s business is having with fundraising (she needs to raise some money to fund her new startup).

Dangers (of raising money)

• She’ll take her eye off the ball of a new product launch.
• She’ll be distracted from managing her newest hire (an engineer)

Opportunities (e.g. what the opportunities for her to take advantage of to raise money)

• She has 100+ “friends and family” who might be able to invest
• She has a new advisor she could add to her advisory board who is well connected and has raised money for a couple of different startups.

Strengths

• This woman is very persuasive and can make a great pitch!
• She has a superb team
• She has an amazing product

That’s the DOS exercise.

I’m a big fan of using Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop strategy for reacting to events in business.

I’m so into the OODA Loop theory that I once chanted “OODA, OODA” (like “Toga, Toga”) at a strategy session!

OODA stands for:

Observe — As in collect the inputs/data of the situation.

Orient — Analyze the inputs/data to determine your position.

Decide — Determine your course of action.

Act — Execute your decision.

It’s called an OODA Loop (or OODA Cycle) because the event/situation taking place may be changing and so you may have to change your decisions as new data/inputs are gathered.

While Col. John Boyd’s OODA Loops were created in military situations, he made recommendations on their use in business (and OODA Loop Theory is widely used in business today).

For example, Boyd recommended that decisions/actions be distributed throughout a business organization so that decisions and actions are made by the people who are directly observing and oriented to a situation (as opposed to an isolated commander/CEO who is only indirectly involved).

Colonel John R. Boyd is no relation to famous businessman John Boyd Dunlop who founded Dunlop the tire company or peace nobelist Lord John Boyd (United Nations, nutrition).

I’ve been receiving a lot of attention to my articles on strategic planning tools such as SWOT Analysis, Fishbone Analysis and DACI To Get Things Done.

Here’s another one: PEST Analysis (by the way, there are many variations of PEST Analysis and so I’ve listed all of the ones at the bottom of this article with their definitions).

What is a PEST Analysis?

PEST is an acronym that stands for the following four Macro-Economic factors:

• Political — These include factors related to how a government intervenes in your business. It may include taxes, law, political stability, regulation and de-regulation.
• Economic  — These include factors such as interest rates, inflation rates, unemployment rates, income rates/distribution and tariff rates.
• Social — These include cultural aspects such as population growth, age distribution, career trends (attitudes towards work), lifestyle trends, etc.
• Technological — These include trends such as remote working (see my article called A Virtual Workplace), mobile computing, the Internet and other research and development innovation.

PEST analyses are best used to measure a market situation (this differs from SWOT Analysis as SWOT is best used to measure a company or business unit situation). A good time to do a PEST Analysis is right before a SWOT Analysis.  More PEST Analysis definitions and history can be found at PEST Analysis Wikipedia

The best uses for PEST Analysis are:

• Strategic Planning
• Business Planning
• Acquisitions
• Business Development/Joint Ventures
• Product Development
• Marketing Planning

PEST Analysis Example/Template

1. Identify the key trends related to Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors
2. Rank them on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of what type of impact they could have on your business
3. Pick the highest ranked items and dig into those using whatever tool you prefer (I recommend SWOT Analysis or Fishbone Analysis)

Here’s a good sample PEST Analysis of Yahoo

And, as promised here are those other variations of PEST with their definitions:

• PESTEL Analysis (sometimes misspelled “PESTAL” Analysis)stand for: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Law
• PESTLE Analysis is just spelled different than PESTEL (it stands for: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Law and Environment
• STEEPLE Analysis stands for: Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Law and Education
• STEEPLED Analysis stands for: Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Law and Education and Demographics
• PESTLIED Analysis stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, International, Environmental, Demographic
• SLEPT Analysis stands for: Social, Legal, Economic, Political, Technological
• PESTELI Analysis stands for: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Law and International
• STEEP Analysis stands for: Social, Technological, Economic, Ecological and Political

You can tell that some people are really into these things!

If you like my articles on SWOT, PEST, etc. then you might want to check out my posting on DOS Exercise.

My friend Ralph taught me how to do a Fishbone Analysis recently. It was invented by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa. 

You can use the Fishbone process to help you figure out how to best achieve an objective, including how to prioritize the individual items which together are needed to meet your objective.

Fishbone Analysis Example

Let’s say that you determine that you need to grow the number of visits to a Web site/page from 500 per month to 20,000 per month.

First, you go through the six things that prevent you from getting that objective done.  These are called the six “M’s” because each starts with the letter “M” to make it easier to remember. The six “M’s” that prevent you from getting anything done are:

1. Manpower — The people resources you need.
2. Methods — The processes you need.
3. Metrics — The measurements you need.
4. Machines — The automation or technology you need.
5. Materials — The material items (such as physical goods or marketing collateral) you need.
6. Minutes — The time you need.

Now, it’s called a fishbone because you draw a line (the fish’s spine) with three diagonal lines on each side (which look like bones) and it looks like a fish. I’ll try to insert an example of a fishbone diagram of one here after my friend returns my camera she borrowed while on vacation!

Example of The Six “M’s” of Fishbone

So, back to the Fishbone example of getting your traffic to 20,000 visits per month.  Go through the six “M” categories and for each one answer the question: “What things within each category is preventing me from getting to my goal (e.g. to 20,000 Web site visits per month).

• Manpower
  • You need a person on staff who can can be the driver of more traffic to your Web site (see my DACI article on the importance of a “driver.”
  • You need access to someone familiar with HTML.
• Methods
  • You need to understand how you will be increasing Web traffic
• Metrics
  • You need to know the definition of a Web site visit.
  • You need to confirm that you’re actually receiving 500 visits per month right now (because you’re confused about Web site traffic)
• Machines
  • You need analytics software to measure Web site traffic.
• Materials
  • You need content on your Web site to attract visitors.
  • You need to figure out if the Internet domain name you’re using is the right one.
• Minutes
  • There’s a real sense of urgency to getting your visits up higher.

Fishbone Ranking

You then take each of the sub-items (in my case I made it simple and there are only 9 (usually you’d have 20 to 30) and list them out and do a Fishbone Ranking of them.

The ranking approach Ralph suggested is to do a 1 to 10 on the impact, resources needed and time that each item will take where:

10 is high Impact (1 is low)

10 is low Resources Needed (1 is high resources)

10 is low amount of Time it will take (1 is a lot of time)

• You need a person on staff who can can be the driver of more traffic to your Web site (see my DACI article on the importance of a “driver.”
  • Impact = 8 (a new “driver” of this project will have huge impact towards reaching your goal)
  • Resources Needed = 2 (a new driver will require a lot of money to hire)
  • Amount of Time = 7 (you can hire a new driver of this project fairly quickly)
  • Total = 17 (8 + 2 +7)
• You need access to someone familiar with HTML.
  • Impact = 6
  • Resources = 5
  • Time = 5
  • Total = 16
• You need to understand how you will be increasing Web traffic
  • Impact = 9
  • Resources = 8
  • Time = 4
  • Total = 21
• You need to know the definition of a Web site visit.
  • Impact = 5
  • Resources = 10
  • Time = 10
  • Total = 25
• You need to confirm that you’re actually receiving 500 visits per month right now (because you’re confused about Web site traffic)
  • Impact = 2
  • Resources = 7
  • Time = 6
  • Total = 16
• You need analytics software to measure Web site traffic.
  • Impact = 6
  • Resources = 9
  • Time = 8
  • Total = 23
• You need content on your Web site to attract visitors.
  • Impact = 10
  • Resources = 1
  • Time = 2
  • Total = 13
• You need to figure out if the Internet domain name you’re using is the right one.
  • Impact = 5
  • Resources = 7
  • Time = 7
  • Total = 19

Priorities Come Out of the Fishbone Ranking

So, now you list them out in order of highest score first:

25 = You need to know the definition of a Web site visit.

23 = You need analytics software to measure Web site traffic.

21 = You need to understand how you will be increasing Web traffic

19 = You need to figure out if the Internet domain name you’re using is the right one.

17 = You need a person on staff who can can be the driver of more traffic to your Web site (see my DACI article on the importance of a “driver.”

16 = You need access to someone familiar with HTML.

16 = You need to confirm that you’re actually receiving 500 visits per month right now (because you’re confused about Web site traffic)

13 = You need content on your Web site to attract visitors.

And, voila, this may be the order you need to do those items.

For those who really like fishbone brainstorming, you can take any of those individual items and do an entire new fishbone JUST on that item.

If you want to learn more about the man behind Fishbones, click here for a Kaoru Ishikawa biography

If you like this article, you will probably also like this article I wrote on the SWOT Analysis tool.

I’ve been using SWOT Analysis for strategic planning lately and I thought I’d share the basics of it.

What is a SWOT Analysis

SWOT is a strategic planning tool. The acronym SWOT stands for:

S= Strengths

W = Weaknesses

O = Opportunities

T = Threats

The importance of a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT Analysis is a great exercise to help determine your tactics or execution of an objective.

The more you can prepare before you jump into your tactics (or execution), the better off your results will be.

How to do a SWOT Analysis

First, pick your topic (e.g. your topic might be broad such as on your business/company overall (a “Company SWOT Analysis” or something more specific such as a department in your business (e.g. a “Marketing SWOT Analysis) or it could be for yourself as an individual (a “Personal SWOT Analysis”).

Next you pick your objective. For example, if you’re doing a Company SWOT Analysis your objective may be to double the business within the next three years.

Now do the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats related to that topic or objective:

• Strengths — These are attributes that you or your company possess that would be helpful in achieving the objective.
• Weaknesses — These are attributes that you or your business have that are harmful to achieving the objective.
• Opportunities — These are the external circumstances that are helpful to you achieving the objective.
• Threats — These are external circumstances that could damage the performance of your objective.

Next, ask yourself if your objective is achievable given your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Is SWOT objective achievable?

If the answer is no, you have to revise your objective and do another SWOT.

If your answer is yes, then you can now move into discussing the tactics related to your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Specifically, you’ll want to ask yourself the following questions:

1. How can we leverage each one of our strengths?
2. How can we improve upon each weakness?
3. How we can capitalize on each opportunity?
4. How can we minimize each threat?

A SWOT Analysis Example

[Check out my SWOT Analysis Examples posting to see larger company SWOT Analysis examples]

Here’s a summary of a general Business SWOT Analysis I did on our start up Mojam about ten years ago.

Our objective was to double the revenue of the business within twelve months.

Strengths

• Amazing team
• Large quantity of product
• Well-connected investors
• Good at partnering

Weaknesses

• Low amount of capital
• Mediocre product quality
• Geographically fragmented team

Opportunities

• Yahoo is interesting in partnering with us
• Company can turn a profit with just a few more customers
• Smaller competitor is distressed and may want to sell
• New revenue sources such as merchandise sales are right around the corner

Threats

• A small new competitor has entered the space
• We may not make payroll if we can not raise more capital or grow our business

When we asked ourselves if the objective of doubling our business was achievable given these strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the answer was yes…so we moved on to answering the four questions on each SWOT.

E.g.:

• How can we leverage our amazing team?
• How can we exploit our large quantity of product?
• How can we grow our capital?
• How can we improve our product quality?
• How can we close the Yahoo deal?
• How can we start merchandising as a new revenue source?
• How can we combat the new competitor that entered the space?
• How can we buy more time to make payroll?

Now you’re into tactics and execution and that requires prioritization, time lines, business plans, etc….or, in other words, you just go do all the things you just said you shoud do in your answers!

Who should carry out the SWOT Analysis exercise?

Ideally it’s a cross functional team (e.g. someone in sales, marketing, finance, technology, etc.)

Who Invented SWOT?

Most people credit Albert S. Humphrey, a business and management consultant who also founded the Stakeholder Concept and Team Action Management (TAM) Concept.

note: Some people mistakenly call it “SWAT” Analysis (SWAT is an acronym for special weapons and tactics started by the Los Angeles Police Department around 1968 (coincidentally, Albert Humphrey began popularizing SWOT right around the same time (in the late 1960′s!))

A great definition of SWOT can be found at SWOT Analysis Wikipedia.

Good luck with your SWOT!