The key to a good SWOT

So, following on from my last post some people have asked for more information on the management/planning tools mentioned. So let’s start by exploring the SWOT.

The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is possibly the most popular tool and – in my experience – the least understood. I’ve been handed reports, preliminary strategies, briefing documents, business plans (and cases) all with completed SWOTS or specific calls for conducting a SWOT – and seldom has the potential of the tool been understood or exploited.

So, how to use the SWOT tool.

First: if the SWOT analysis doesn’t end in a series of practical and specific actions it hasn’t been done properly.

Second: like all of these tools it’s simply a way of categorising feelings, data, and other information . It will not identify the feelings, data etc for you.

Third: it’s a relationship tool. It’s a way of capturing and understanding relationships between your organisation and the very specific environment it works in. Practically what this means is that Strengths and Weaknesses are INSIDE your organisation. Opportunities and Threats are OUTSIDE your organisation, in the very specific environment you operate in.

For example, a staff commitment to excellence is internal, and therefore a strength, but an audience with a passion for quality art is external, and therefore an opportunity. A staff indifference to excellence ( or inability to achieve it) is internal and therefore a weakness, and in this instance an audience with a passion for quality art is a threat.

Because the SWOT is a relationship tool (between inside and outside) we have to ask the question “if a strength has no corresponding opportunity, is it actually a strength or just a vanity?” And likewise, if what we perceive as a threat has no corresponding weakness, is it just an anxiety? This matching of threats with weaknesses and strengths with opportunities, allowing us to identify organisational vanities and anxieties is arguably the greatest value in a good SWOT.

Now, you’ve identified all your strengths and matched them against opportunities, and you’ve identified all the threats and matched them against the weaknesses. Fantastic. Now the real work starts: ask what specific actions can you take to exploit the opportunities, to maximise the strengths, to reinforce the weaknesses, and to defend against the threats. A list of practical, SMART, prioritised actions is the final output of a good SWOT analysis. (Such a list should be the output of EVERY analysis)

If you and your team do not leave the SWOT session with a clear idea of what needs to be done, by who, and by when, then the SWOT analysis is incomplete and a lot of time has been wasted. Likewise if you haven’t acknowledged some collective anxieties and faced some groundless organisational vanities, you haven’t completed the SWOT.

It’s much, much more than a list. Have fun!