SWOT!

March 6, 2007 at 11:26 PM

No, I haven't just smacked that annoying fly that keeps buzzing around me, SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and I'm supposed to hand in a one page dot point summary of mine by Monday. It's part of a "Communications" module - which is supposed to be basically teaching us skills for when we head out into the world. However, so far, I haven't been very good at doing this SWOT.

As is often the case, it's very easy to pick out the weaknesses and threats, but much harder to pick out Strengths. Thankfully, I've always been pretty good at picking an opportunity.

I think my biggest Weakness at the moment is not knowing where I want to go. Sure, I would love to be able to get into an orchestra, but I realise that that may not be possible right out of uni... in fact, more likely than not, it won't be. So I need to find a way to make some money, and still be involved in music, but that might not necessarily be performing.

In fact, I know it won't be. I've discovered that my strengths are much better suited towards something other than performance. Something more like Concert Promotion or Artist Management. I am very good at thinking up what I want to achieve, and then working out what I need to do to get there. I know that I'm charming, very good at networking, have a fairly logical mind and I'm technologically savvy (in fact, my website is being hosted on my home computer). I think these strengths would suit me well towards being a concert promoter and artist management.

So I'm going to head down this path. I'm going to complete my Bachelor of Music, because wanting to focus on Classical music artists and concerts, having a knowledge of Classical Music will allow me to work for them better. I'll know the sorts of things they'll want, and what it takes for a performance to go smoothly, as opposed to a contemporary music performance.

One of the best things of being a Concert Promoter, is that I can bring over the artists that I want to hear, and get to work with them, and hear them for free! Awesome!

From Terez Mertes
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 7:24 PM

Your ideas sound great - well SWOT (um, as in, rhymes with "thought") out. : )

From William Yap
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 10:11 PM

I thought they only teach SWOT in business courses. I find the hardest thing in analysing one self using SWOT is to be completely honest with one self.

Perhaps I should seriously do one for myself again.

From Ben Clapton
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 11:32 PM

Generally they do only teach SWOT in business courses, but since as musicians we're basically running a business (either as a solo performer, a chamber group, or as a teacher) my university thought it would be wise to give us some business skills before we headed out into the world.

From William Yap
Posted on March 9, 2007 at 5:19 AM

Here's another famous one by Porter used for analysing a company's issues faced in 5 perspectives:

P-olitical
E-nviroments
S-ocial
T-echnological
E-conomics

Have fun!

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