IO‑LM SWOT (SWOT Done Properly)
Most people treat SWOT as a listing exercise.
Four boxes. A brainstorm. Then nothing happens.
That’s not strategy, nor is it operational execution.
That’s documentation.
Applying IO‑LM strategy and operational execution to SWOT is how operators actually think.
Strengths only matter if you deliberately IMPROVE them — strategically and operationally.
Weaknesses only matter if you actively OVERCOME them — not explain them away.
Opportunities only matter if they are real external forces you don’t control, and you deliberately LEVERAGE them.
Threats only matter if you MITIGATE them before they do damage.
The innovation isn’t the analysis.
It’s the forced translation from insight into action.
IO‑LM stands for Improve, Overcome, Leverage, Mitigate.
If a SWOT point doesn’t drive one of those four responses, it’s noise.
A four‑quadrant list on a page is juvenile.
This is how operators actually think.
Moon Lists
Moon Lists name the reality that every plan carries hidden mass.
The phrase comes from the old line — popularised by Steinbeck — that the best‑laid plans of mice and men often go awry. The distance between intention and outcome is not inches. It reaches from here to the moon.
Moon Lists are everything that sits in that distance.
They are the unspoken assumptions, frictions, dependencies, delays, second‑order effects, and human behaviour that never appear in the first model but always arrive in execution. Operators don’t deny them. They assume they exist.
Moon Lists are why early cashflow projections miss.
Why market uptake curves disappoint.
Why venture timelines stretch.
The mistake most planners make is pretending these factors can be fully itemised. They can’t. The list is always incomplete. New moons appear mid‑flight.
Moon Lists therefore aren’t about precision.
They are about calibration.
This is why Moon Lists are often paired with The Rule of Five — not as a formula, but as a compensator. A way of building room for reality without pretending it can all be named upfront.
Moon Lists don’t make plans pessimistic.
They make them executable.
Ignoring them is how plans look good on paper and fail in the real world.
Purple Elephants
Purple Elephants is a thinking model for eliminating wasted thought.
The name comes from a simple observation.
When a client says, “What our logistics function does not manage is inbound consumables,” there is no more usable information in that sentence than if they had said, “What our logistics function does not manage is inbound consumables purple elephants.”
Both statements tell you exactly nothing about reality.
Talking about what something is not introduces infinite noise. The brain starts filling in gaps, defending positions, and circling hypotheticals. Energy gets burned. Clarity disappears.
Purple Elephants calls that out.
We stop describing absences and focus on what is — specifically:
- what the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats are right now, and
- how we want those forces shaped into a future outcome.
That’s where thinking belongs.
On reality. On direction. On execution.
Purple Elephants clears the room of imaginary animals so real decisions can be made.
A Broader System of Thinking Models
The models discussed above are just three of many Thinking Models I deploy.
In practice, I work with a suite of over fifty Thinking Models, developed through original thinking, disciplined reinterpretation of established frameworks, and deliberate adaptation into domains where those models are rarely applied.
They are proprietary in three ways:
- they correct and clarify common misuses of familiar thinking tools,
- they adapt fragments of proven models for new applications, and
- they are applied beyond conventional business settings, including recovery, social systems, and mission‑driven organisations.
Some of these models are explored in my books.
Others are applied directly in client work.
I don’t catalogue them for show.
I deploy them when they’re needed.