Who Am I (Continuation)

I am an entity of my own kind!!!

Have you ever been asked to draft a business plan? Or have you ever seen an example of one? What do you think why should each business have a plan? How is a business plan beneficial for a business entity? Those who studied business management know that for a business to have a plan, an entity first needs to have a unique purpose. In any business, a purpose plays a huge part to identify an entity. There is nothing in the world that would so effectively encourage one to wake up in the morning as knowledge that one has a purpose to wake up to that day. I never want to wake up if I don’t know what my purpose is for the day. It’s a torture, waking up and ending your day having accomplished nothing. It’s like living life with no meaning and a way forward.

Just as a business entity is in no way a business without its vision and mission statements, it’s easy for one to feel inferior without a purpose or an identity in life.

In the corporal world, strategic planning can be seen as an annual course adjustment to ensure that the business continues to proceed in the right direction, and that is also where the SWOT analysis comes in (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a business). The vision and mission statements, as the first step in the strategic planning model, qualifies an entity to determine its current strategic profile and posture in order to develop and implement a suitable plan that will lead to the fulfillment of the changing needs of consumers in a changing environment.

I’m not trying to teach an online business class here. But if a business is so important to its establishers that they had to spend so much of their time and resources to structure it from scratch to develop its own name brand and place in the economy, how important are you that you have a purpose? How important is it for a human who is capable of inventing such a business with to have purpose himself?

Like a business entity you too are also an entity who needs to determine his identity plan (who you are) and your purpose plan (what you do). And you can only do so by going through your SWOT analysis. Remember, as an in intelligent living creature you ought to have your own strengths, weaknesses, objectives and threats. Those are your SWOT analysis and are forming a part of your life’s strategic planning.

Your Strengths

Strength is a specific skill or talent. It’s a gift that you were either born with or matured since childhood. Knowing your strength can boost your self-esteem. In a business entity, strength is a skill that a business can use to exploit an opportunity or overcome a threat. Self-esteem is not a trait that remains constant on a certain level. It depends to a large extent on how you’re treated, how you’re labeled or censured, how you’re given attention or recognition, and how you’re permitted to feel. Therefore, knowing your abilities and positive traits, can help you overcome the many factors that influence the development of your self-esteem.

For instance, some people are talented in creative arts while others are talented in academics. Analyzing your strengths mean recognizing what they are so that you know what you’re capable of and use that as to your advantage of building your own success in life. If you are naturally a creative person, you’ll follow a career path which will allow you to make the most of your creative side all while at the same knowing that you’re actually making a living.

We have the example of Jamie Oliver, the famous cook, and our very own South African fashion mogul, David Tlale. Who said men have no taste of interest in food and fashion. Don’t let anyone or anything else or even what the society says what jobs should be done by people of which gender hinder you from identifying your own strength.

Your Weaknesses

Some people think that a weakness is something to be ashamed of and that you shouldn’t recognize it in yourself, otherwise you’ll forever feel inadequate. But the truth is that recognizing your weaknesses actually enables you to find alternative ways to build your success through the strengths you already have and without causing disappointments for yourself.

When management recognizes some weaknesses in a business, attempts are done to improve or eliminate such weaknesses. Let’s make this a little more practical. When you find a problem in the car that you use every day to drive to work, you are wise to immediately find a way to fix that problem or else stop using that car altogether lest you get stuck on the way with it and you become late for work.

So, by recognizing the weakness that is in car, you’re simply avoiding a bigger problem of getting stuck on the road and eventually receiving a warning for being late. This is the same. Knowing your weaknesses has nothing to do with letting them get your upper hand, but it has everything to do with increasing your self-esteem higher and higher by avoiding more and more disappointments.

Your Objectives

Objectives are the changing part of your inner self and broader to describe in just a line. What do you want to accomplish? When do you want to accomplish it? Today? Tomorrow? In the next five years? Just as patience is an active waiting and/or enduring, setting goals and achieving them is something you work on, hope on and exercise faith on every day while the bigger fruition of your efforts might take a while before you witness them.

An income a business generates today is a step in the right direction to making a lot of profit at the end of the financial year end period. It contributes to a net worth of a business itself.

What you do now should and must lift you a step up towards the top where you see yourself in five, ten years time. So, what you do now is a purpose today, which will result as an achievement tomorrow, all of that, in just a single word, we could say, is an objective.

Just because your long-term goal is set for five years or so that doesn’t mean what you do in every second of every minute from day one does not count. Five years will pass and you will or you will not see the fruition of your own goals depending on how serious you were on your daily purpose of working towards them. The objective of Costco or of Pick’nPay, for example, is not to sell everything that is on the shelves in its store and that’s it. The objective is to venture out, to open more and more of its retailers stores across the nation and probably across the borders too, and its indirect objective may also be to create jobs and help the communities in the process.

That’s how your daily efforts contribute towards successor unsuccessfulness of your own objectives or overall purpose. So therefore, this is the one part of your life where you can also test yourself whether you are the cause of what you’re accomplishing in your daily life or rather you are just the effect. “Shallow people believe in luck. Wise and strong people believe in cause and effect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well.

Your Threats

“Great are they who see that thought is stronger than any material, that thoughts rule the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What threatens your values? What shakes your self-confidence? What makes you think twice about a decision you know for sure that it’s the right one?

When threats such as technological change, entry of a competitor, shrinking market etc. enter, management must be able to make decisions that they can trust. Since decision making means profit or loss, failure or success of a business, and deals with the present and future probabilities and uncertainties issues of a business, the very same way, threats may mean a loss or strengthening of your own steadiness or self-trust to you. Without proactive management (without steady self-belief or confidence in you) a threat could lead to the insolvency of a business (you could end up devaluing your self and relinquishing your own purpose).

So, if you are insecure about who you are or are doubtful about what you want in life and keep peeping outside to see what others are doing so you could imitate them, or limiting yourself to do just what other tells you to be satisfied with, you’re allowing your threads to discourage your mind thoughts and disturb your purpose. You are allowing them to redraft your individuality life’s plan. Imagine if Pick’nPay suddenly started to sell cars in its stores with its grocery just because Mercedes is selling cars, who will go and buy a car at Pick’nPay? I know I wouldn’t because when that car starts giving problems, car service is not one of the strengths of Pick’nPay as an entity.

So, knowing yourself by studying your SWOT analysis thorough to understand it will prevent you from making mistakes of (1) comparing yourself to others, (2) trying to imitate others in their own area of expertise and only ending up failing yourself, (3) devaluing yourself, (4) not recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses, and (5) not being able to stand up to your own threats without losing your purpose.

The purpose of a business entity is its identity, and every entity I know of does not negotiate on its purpose. I can go to MacDonald’s right now with the latest washing detergent on the market in my hand and say ‘Hey, I think if you can put this as a prize when people order a Big Mac they’ll see how clean your waiters’ clothes are!’ I sure you, they wouldn’t even have to call the manager wherever he may be at the time. They’ll kick me out like they’ve gotta poker up their you-know-whats!

See to it that your own thought is stronger than the external perception of what others might think of you. See that your own purpose, your own identity, is more important than the ideas of others on what you should be or should not be. Study your own SWOT analysis and let it represent who you are.