One of my favorite strategic planning tools is the SWOT Analysis. In one simple matrix it helps us identify for a given subject:
· key internal strengths and weaknesses;
· the most serious external competitive threats; and
· opportunities to eliminate weaknesses and overcome competitive threats.
You can do a SWOT analysis on just about anything…a company, your department or working group within a company, a product, yourself – even a country. So let’s do just that – let’s SWOT America.
As a general rule, the number of items included in each box should be limited to no more than half a dozen or so. This forces you to choose the most important, highest priority items. As part of the process you’ll realize that some contenders actually have lower levels of importance but can be part of a single more broadly defined item.
Of course, the choice of what to include in each box is subjective. The SWOT below includes my current choices and they reflect what I believe to be some of America's highest priorities at this time. But your views and feedback are always welcomed, so please send them along because we recognize that strategic planning is a process that can always be revised and improved.
Most of the Strengths and Weaknesses listed are fairly straightforward and self-explanatory, but a couple of them warrant further elaboration.
Immigration
Let’s start with our current immigration policy (a Weakness). Immigration plays a critical role in not only diversifying our population and culture but also generating a constant flow of innovation and wealth creation. Since reading Thomas Stanley’s “The Millionaire Next Door” I have come to appreciate how first-generation immigrants are responsible for a significant amount of new business ownership and wealth creation in America. Typically, after first generation immigrants establish a business their children assimilate fully into the population, attend college, and take corporate or other non-entrepreneurial jobs. So entrepreneurship in these families typically isn’t passed on to the second generation.
A constant flow of first-generation immigrants is responsible for
a significant amount of America’s new business ownership
and wealth creation.
But another round of first-generation immigrants follows the previous one to keep the flow of entrepreneurship going. Over and over this continues, and the constant injection of new risk-takers and wealth builders gives America an important competitive advantage.
Unfortunately, recent disruptions to immigration – and in fact the lack of a coherent, rules-based national immigration policy in general – jeopardizes this continuously renewing cycle of innovation and wealth creation, and the competitive advantage it has given us. So an Opportunity awaits us: to think bigger than just border security and establish standard rules for making immigration decisions that are guided by economic and social impacts for both the immigrant and the United States.
Education
One of America’s Strengths is its higher education institutions. For years our colleges and universities have attracted the best and brightest from around the world. Research universities in particular play a critical role in start-up business innovation – one link in a chain that also includes the U.S. government, venture capital resources, and investors in publicly traded stocks.
But most would agree that our primary and secondary education institutions are viewed less favorably than those of some other developed countries. I’d argue that just one improvement could change that and help transform our education system. That same improvement would also help overcome some of our most pressing Weaknesses such as economic inequality and racial inequality, injustice and crime. The improvement? Formally incorporating social and emotional intelligence learnings into the curricula, starting in elementary school and continuing through high school.
Supplementing our current cognitive intelligence-focused curricula
with emotional intelligence and other self-awareness learnings would
add a whole new dimension to our children’s educational experience.
This topic deserves, at minimum, a separate dedicated article so I’ll be brief here. Currently our pre-secondary education system teaches the basics of language and math and progresses to more comprehensive STEM topics, but the focus is on cognitive intelligence – things that are relatively easy to measure and especially teachings about other places, things, events or experiences. What’s lacking is learning about oneself. What are my strengths and weaknesses? How do I differ from others and how can I understand and appreciate these differences? Do I have particular aspects of emotional intelligence (e.g., self-discipline, empathy, social deftness) or perhaps musical or athletic intelligence? What is my Myers Briggs profile?
Teaching our children early on to understand themselves – and to recognize, understand and appreciate differences in others – would build a foundation of communication, acceptance and cooperation with others that would help to reduce future negative and even violent behaviors. And teachers who recognize each child’s temperament and their particular emotional and other intelligence strengths and skills could guide them early on into activities and even career paths where they can thrive. Doing so would add a whole new dimension to our children’s educational experience and give our pre-secondary education system a clear and meaningful competitive advantage.
Economic Inequality
Our growing economic inequality is another Weakness. Technology and globalization-related pressures have fundamentally changed what businesses require of American workers. In order to compete globally businesses have placed a priority on cost reduction, starting with their highest cost center: human resources. So when possible, they seek opportunities to reduce staff, and to replace full-time workers with lower cost part-timers or 1099 contract workers.
Also, the rapid pace of technological change now requires workers to adapt to new and evolving job responsibilities that demand continuous education and training. Workers who don’t keep up are left behind. And even those who keep up have less job security (short-term commitments, fewer benefits).
These disruptions have transformed us into a gig economy; and COVID has accelerated the disruptions.
Much like our long-ago investment in education (The G.I. Bill)
led to enduring transformations of our economy, a job training
and retraining investment could pay for itself many times over.
This is a problem that can be turned into an opportunity. Making job training and retraining a high strategic priority is an investment that can more than pay for itself in lower unemployment and underemployment rates and a more skilled, competitive, nimble and highly paid workforce.
In much the same way as our investment in transportation systems (Lincoln and railroads, Eisenhower and highways) and education (The G.I. Bill) led to positive and enduring transformations of our economy, an effective and well-managed investment in job training and retraining could generate sustained economic growth that would pay for itself many times over. And it would go a long way toward helping workers help themselves in narrowing the wealth gap.
China, Authoritarianism, Global Warming and more…Create a Strategic Plan! Rather than continuing to address each individual SWOT item and turning this into a thesis, I’ll close with one final all-encompassing Opportunity. Not surprisingly, it is for America to establish a strategic planning process. Doing so would by definition institutionalize a process of self-assessment, prioritization of problems, and identification of strategic opportunities. It would create a function and an ongoing process to rise above the trivial, to bypass partisan politics, and instead to focus on leveraging our strengths to address domestic priorities and ensure our continued global leadership position.
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