How to Use SWOT Analysis Made Easy for Managers
Effective SWOT for Strategic Planning to Solve Business Problems
Dec 12, 2008
The key components to doing it well are by selecting the right people to participate and using an effective process to develop a wealth of initial brainstorm ideas. Then focus on the few things that matter and work at the right level of detail to develop specific tailored business strategies from SWOT Analysis.
Select the Right People
The business manager needs to select the right people to participate very carefully; to blend knowledge, experience and expertise into a working team of people. The intent is that the whole is greater than the sum of parts and especially that the team work well together and can build on each other’s ideas. Some of the people should know the business or their part of the business and some should know competitors and the market. In particular, those with an external focus should have facts and/or figures rather than bland anecdotes or speculation.
Use an Effective Process
It remains a truism that interaction is best achieved face-to-face and so the right people should be gathered to the same location. An effective process can be anything that is agreed but must include the following elements:
- Preparation by participants especially as it relates to inputs
- Plan of tasks, inputs and outputs and scheduled time element
- Facilitator, someone who must facilitate the activities to manage time and discussions that are overly active, too detailed, too vague or off topic. [Facilitator can be a role of a participant but is usually better as an independent person focused on just that role]
- Flexible scheduling and some contingency, managed by the facilitator, that allows topics to expand or contract dependent on how much is needed and how well it is going but effective time limits to prevent the entire time allocation being excessive
Focus and Detail
A good brainstorm session of SWOT items will hopefully have resulted in a wealth of ideas and these ideas need to be evaluated and most of them eliminated. The key is to focus on the few that matter in each SWOT category. Importantly the ideas generated should be at a level of detail that for each item one or more of the following characteristics is true:
- Clear and specific – a non-participant can easily understand the output
- Actionable – specific business changes can be made based on the SWOT item
- Measurable – results are potentially tangible, especially in financial terms such as sales growth or profitability
Business Strategies
The SWOT Analysis should have generated a clear view of the business strengths and weaknesses and a useful market analysis of opportunities and threats. The key now is to use that to develop the specific business strategies that will leverage those strengths, improve the weaknesses, exploit the opportunities and minimise the threats. Those strategies should be easy to identify if the last step produced items clear and specific, actionable and measurable. The important part now is to consider the strategies and ensure that they are:
- The few things that really matter
- Focused on producing a positive result for the business
- Will not have unintended consequences
Ultimately the value of SWOT analysis is proportional to the effort put in.
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