While each person's situation varies, I believe that there are two basic things that everybody should do, and it is fundemental to one's success. Those are
- analyze and understand your situation
- analyze and track your priority and focus
For ordinary people, you may do above once a while, and only do it when you feel like it (triggered by whatever event at that time). However, if you look at the executives in companies, they do so periodically and it is a powerful tool for them to manage themselves. For example, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer reviews each other's focus and priority on weekly basis, and actively give each other feedback.
The way to analyze and understand your situation is to use SWOT analysis on yourself, which stands for Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats.
- Strenghths : list the key strenght you have and how you applies to your job. For example, you have good people skills. Have you used it internally to get help from others to reach your target faster, and have you used it externally to generate more revenue from your customer ?
- Weakness : list your weakness, and do so honestly (to yourself). The old thinking was that one should first focus on correct one's weakness. The new school of thinking, e.g. from Exceptional Leadership Program, is that one should focus on one's Strenght, instead of Weakness. You should further break your weakness into two categories : fatal weakness and other. Fatal weakness, by its name, means that you can not survive your current job w/o correcting such weakness. For example, your job is sales but you are a super shy person that you can not even speak confidentally in front of your client. One should always, and only, correct one's fatal weakness.
- Opportunities : the opportunities you need to list are the ones that would advance your career, and you need to be able to clearly articulate why this is good for your current and/or future companies. For example, you think you have an opportunity to get promoted w/in 3 month because there is a new line-of-business your company is persuing and it is expected to generate $10M additional revenue. In another word, do not list anything that only benefit you, but not your company (more on this at Section 3.2 Manage Up). Also, look both opportunity inside your existing company and outside.
- Threats : always think about things that will make you obselete at your current position. For example, your department is no longer the focus of your company, your company's revenue is going down or profit margin is getting thinner, or there is better technology in the market that post significant thread to your current job.
Once you have your list of SWOT, you need to look at which of your stregnth can be applied to which opportunity, and which of your weakness makes the threat fatal. You also should look at how to convert threat into opportunities (for example, as above, if your company's revenue is going down, maybe it is a good opportunity for you to initiate effort in new line-of-business.).
You should do SWOT analysis on yourself on monthly basis. You will be surprised how much it will reveal situation about yourself and the overall environment you are in.
SWOT analysis drives what you should focus on your work, which is the next thing we will talk about : priority and focus
