Tweet

Develop Your Personal Strategy for Success

Written by: Roger Ingbretsen

Article Overview: Accomplishing a few goals and doing something new is great, but having a strategy - a plan with objectives - helps you get the biggest bang for your effort while keeping you on track.

Develop Your Personal Strategy for Success

The development of an overall “strategy for success” can become one of the most potent weapons you can have in your career arsenal, as you attempt to become more successful than your competition. Having ideas, dreams, goals, and understanding concepts that can have an impact on your success are both good and important. Accomplishing a few goals and doing something new is great, but having a strategy - a plan with objectives - helps you get the biggest bang for your effort while keeping you on track. Developing a strategy is about determining your capabilities, documenting your basic life choices, and instituting a plan of how to achieve a higher level of success and purpose within a given time frame.

The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats framework is perhaps one of the best known approaches to defining strategy within a business environment. This type of analysis involves analyzing an organization’s internal capability - its strengths and weaknesses - relative to the opportunities and threats of its competitive environment. Using the information gained, the organization then puts in place strategic actions to preserve or sustain its strengths, offset its weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities and avert or mitigate threats. The strategic business plan, maps out key objectives over the long haul. It also helps establish the context in which daily decisions can be made to attain desired results. This same approach can be very effective in developing your own personal strategy for success.

An excellent approach to developing your personal strategy for success is to use the previously discussed business model. Start the process by making four extensive lists of your (1.) strengths, (2.) weaknesses, (3.) opportunities, and (4.) threats. Be brutally honest when making the lists. Write down as many things as possible for each category. I would suggest building your lists over several days. Show the list to a trusted friend and solicit their input. Once you have developed four long lists (quantity) then begin to refine the lists down to “three” things in each category (quality) that really resonate well with you -things you are truly willing to do something about.

The items you select should have the following four properties. They should demand specific action - what will be done, carry a high level of concern - this is very important to focus on, be clearly beneficial - when its accomplished success can be measured, and have an intended impact - this is what it will look like, feel like, be like, when you get there.

Once the three things in each category are identified, and the four properties satisfied, your next action is to develop a detailed game plan that supports the following questions. What can you do at every opportunity to capitalize on your three strengths? What can you do to overcome, mitigate, or turn into strengths, your three weaknesses? What can you do to use the three identified opportunities, to get closer to or attain your goals? What can you do to mitigate or avert your three weaknesses from preventing you from attaining your desired level of success?

The point of going to this level of detail is to formalize your actions, help paint a more complete picture of where you are, see clearly how all aspects are related and affect each other and help you develop an action driven plan for your personal success.

For your personal strategic plan to be most effective, it should be clear, simple, meaningful, and embedded in a process, which sets direction while remaining flexible. If you do not have a plan, you will not know where you are going. Your personal strategic plan positions you to move toward your goals. The plan should provide not only the destination but also the route.

Related Articles
  Do you manage your Finances like GM or Exxon?
  Twenty-one Hot Tips for Developing Your Winning Personal Success Strategy
  How to develop a European Social Media Strategy
  People with Goals and Dreams
  The Importance of International Tax Planning

Article Tags: arsenal, business environment, business model, business plan, competitive environment, desired results, developing a strategy, internal capability, key objectives, life choices, long haul, many things, overall strategy, personal strategy, plan maps, potent weapons, strengths and weaknesses, strengths weaknesses opportunities threats, time frame, understanding concepts



Related Forum Posts
Book: Secrets of Six Figure Women - Secrets of Six Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to up your earning and change your life Barbara Stanny, 2002 Jacket: Maybe you've noticed - a subtle trend is gathering steam. Quietly and steadily, the number of women making six figures or more is increasing, and it continues to rise at a rate faster than for men. From entrepreneurs to corporate executives, from white collar executives to free lancers and part timers, women are forging careers with considerable financial success. Through extensive research and hundreds of interviews, including dialogs with more than 150 high earners whose annual incomes range from $100,000 to 7 million, Stanny discovered that ...they all had certain traits in common: 1) a profit motive 2) Audacity 3) REslience 4) Encouragement 5) Self-awareness 6) Non-attachment 7) Financial knowhow She amplifies on these in the book itself. Table of Contents Intro: Welcome to the era of the six-figure woman 1. The Queen in the Countinghouse 2. The Lowdown on low earners 3. Raising the bar 4. Strategy 1: The Declaration of Intention 5. Strategy 2: Letting go of the ledge 6. Strategy 3: Get in the Game 7. Strategy 4: Speak Up 8. Strategy 5: The Stretch 9. Strategy 6: Seek Support 10. Strategy 7: Obey the rules of money 11. Claiming our power Appendces: Resources and websites Tips for getting out of dent Investing Basics: Wealthbuilding 101
Re: What can you do if your franchise is hit by a scandal? - GT - Brilliant Strategy... What can I add? I'm at a loss for words...so I'll shut up now...
Introducing a Learner - Hi everybody, It is really my pleasure being around so many Entrepreneurs and strategic minds. Strategy is something I always loved and eager over every new move. Being a newbie I would need your support and I hope I would get that. Thanks Stephen
And This is Handy Too! - [quote:31wl64vf]Develop Fingerprints! Place a small wad of cotton, saturated with tincture of iodine, in a glass tube; blow against suspected fingerprints, and they will appear. [/quote:31wl64vf] Must be of use to all you entrepreneurs out there!
Re: Kevin's Case Study #6 - Marketing an information resource? - "Blue Ocean Strategy" sounds like an interesting concept.... Anyone here care to share more on it?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Why Small Businesses Don't Survive

Quick Tips on Buying a Business

BUILDING A HIGH PERFORMING TEAM

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.