Most of us have probably taken part in a whole boatload of SWOT analyses. Indeed, in my time, companies and staff have shared numerous SWOT analyses with me. Unfortunately, they all seem rather basic, Marketing 101 stuff. Yet, even though SWOT analyses are fundamental, most companies still need to carry them out well or even get them right.
Most people carry out SWOT analyses very poorly, and they get them wrong, no, very severely. I’ll share why so many people mess up their SWOT analyses and, more importantly, how to get them right.
Getting SWOT Analyses Wrong
To explain why so many companies get SWOT analyses wrong, let me describe how most companies develop their SWOT analyses. I admit that what I am about to share with you is a parody, but it is only a parody…
Most people start their SWOT analyses with their strengths, which the participants in a SWOT analysis session typically feel pretty good about. However, they know they must admit to a few weaknesses, so they move on to that, but nothing that would be politically problematic. At that point, the participants feel somewhat tired, so they pull together a few opportunities and finish with a handful of potential threats.
It is close to lunchtime, so the group arranges for a junior staffer to type up the results. Finally, the staffer circulates the document and places it on a company server, promptly ignoring it until it is archived and deleted a year later. The result of all of this effort is, to be precise, nothing.
Getting SWOT Analyses Right
So, how do we get SWOT analyses right? The answer to that question is to remember that a SWOT analysis session aims to identify the opportunities we will pursue over the following year.
We should, therefore, start any SWOT analysis by focusing on opportunities, and by that, I mean only those opportunities that are likely to be substantial enough and doable enough to be worth pursuing. In practice, as we will see, we will spend the bulk of our time on opportunities and very little on anything else. After identifying opportunities, we should then list any severe threats. But, again, just as with options, we should only focus on those threats that are likely to be material enough and probable enough to be worth considering.
I suggest you spend little time on them in any SWOT analysis meeting. While identifying strengths and weaknesses may be an interesting exercise, it is rarely time well spent. We only spend time on either strengths or deficiencies in a SWOT analysis to ensure we can realistically attain our chosen opportunities and deal with serious threats. I emphasise in this context that strength means something if it enables us to pursue a sizable opportunity or deal with a significant threat. All other so-called strengths are not strengths at all but merely irrelevances.
At this point, we now have the raw material for a successful SWOT analysis. But we must take it deeper if our SWOT analysis will be helpful. First, we must remember that “we can only do three”…
We Can Only Do Three
Steve Jobs gathered together his lieutenants each year to lay out the opportunities Apple could pursue over the following year. Inevitably, the Apple management team would devise a long list of potential options that Apple could go after. Jobs would then say, “We can only do three, ” and he would list the three opportunities that Apple would focus on over the upcoming year. If that is true for Steve Jobs and Apple, then it is true for all our organisations. Realistically, we can only do three.
In a SWOT analysis meeting, we should select the Top Three opportunities we should go after and the Top Three threats we must deal with. However, because we cannot focus on everything, we should ignore the rest for now.
From SWOT Analysis To Actionable Results
As in any other project management meeting, we should finish our SWOT analysis by allocating responsibilities, milestones and deadlines for each of the three threats and opportunities.
My approach to SWOT analyses may not be what we have all learned in business school. But on the other hand, if we go through the process of SWOT analyses I have just laid out, our SWOT analysis meetings will be much more productive, producing focused and actionable results.
