With the advent of Winter sports, wrestling starts in earnest in the Hectic Household. Two of my six kids are boys [EDITORIAL NOTE: Hectic Dad has EIGHT kids. He’s so darned busy that he forgot to proofread this post and didn’t catch his mistake!], so it is a minority number who participate. None of my girls have ever wrestled, although given their physical abilities and mental toughness it’s probably a good thing that they didn’t. They would have made a lot of boys cry.
There is a business technique that I’ve adapted to wrestling that has worked really well, and it’s a fun way to discuss this sort of analysis. Bear with me, I think you’ll learn something.
When two wrestlers have been around a while, they get to know each other. They know what works and what doesn’t work against the other guy. They can even sometimes tell when somebody is having a bad (or good) tournament. Usually it appears to be all subjective things, but I believe that it’s possible to objectify much of the analysis of your opponent using a SWOT Analysis.
SWOT stands for:
- Strength
- Weakness
- Opportunity
- Threat
From a quick Wikipedia search (SWOT Analysis) I rediscovered that this sort of analysis is credited to Albert Humphrey at SRI International (Stanford Research Institute) during the 1960’s. I know that by the time I heard about it, it had been around for a while and was pretty well recognized in business. I don’t know if anybody else has adapted it to sports. If not, it is something that every coach should consider adding to his toolkit.
In a SWOT analysis you look at your Strengths, not relative to any particular opponent, but rather in a vacuum. That is, if you’re really strong, that would be a strength. If you’re really fast, that’s another one. If you are in great condition, there’s a third. You make a list of those things that apply to you that give you advantages in competition.
Then you look at your weaknesses. This is hard. You have to admit to actually having weaknesses first of all. Then you have to list them out. Just like strengths, these are things that apply to you. Injuries often make it onto this list. Maybe something like “I don’t do well against left-handed pitchers” makes the list. Anything that is a disadvantage that you have against anybody, not just a particular opponent.
New you look at your opportunities. This requires some knowledge of the opponent(s). You have to know where you stack up against them. It’s not just your strengths and their weaknesses that you’re looking at. You have to look at where you have advantages over the other guys. Let’s say that you have a great defense, and they have a great offense. Is there something about your defense that will make them vulnerable? That’s an opportunity. Basically, it’s anything you can exploit to succeed.
Threats are pretty much the opposite of opportunities. Where do the other guys have a chance to succeed against you? What’s going to cause you difficulty in this contest?
After you’ve got all that figured out, then you need to figure out how to maximize your strengths and opportunities and minimize your weaknesses and threats.
It sounds pretty simple, but in practical application it can get pretty complicated. It’s hard to separate strengths and opportunities as well as weaknesses and threats. If you can manage to split those apart you’ll get a really thorough analysis that really is practical to use.
My older son, Jared, uses it on a regular basis. He is able to wrestle in a variety of styles, and sometimes just recognizing that his opponent is used to a particular style has helped him to change things up and do better than expected.
So think about it next time you have something that you’re trying to accomplish that involves any form of competition (whether it’s sports or in business). SWOT Analyses can be really powerful tools that can make a huge difference in the outcome of whatever endeavor you’re engaged in.
