Bring Out the SWOT Team!
About a year ago I helped out the high school youth group in our church by facilitating some strategic planning. The group's professional leader was moving out of state, a new director was to be hired soon, and it seemed like an excellent time to take stock of the group's condition and prospects for being able to carry out its mission of helping youngsters develop and learn to practice their beliefs in the world. One of the steps in this strategic planning was conducting a SWOT analysis. It was an enjoyable and very productive exercise that resulted in a number of valuable insights into the group's future potential. Now the group has put into action several of the plans that grew out of this exercise and is flourishing.
Recently I came across my file from this exercise with the church group. As I glanced through the file, I realized that the project was unlike most similar ones I have done for businesses in that it had a narrower focus. Instead of looking at the church organization as a whole, we were looking at the future prospects of a part of the organization. That led me to ask if such a narrow focus could help my clients in some way. And I see a way that it can.
I'd like to suggest you try doing a SWOT analysis on just your staff of employees. Why? Because they are the guts of your business. And because taking advantage of opportunities to strengthen your staff - to improve employee performance overall - is one of the most reliable ways to improve your business results for the long term.
If you're like most business owners, you may have heard of a SWOT analysis like the one I did with the church group, but may have never actually done one yourself. Or you may have heard the term, but aren't quite sure what a SWOT analysis is. It's a fairly simple tool used to analyze the current state of a business in order to determine how to best move into the future. This analysis gets its name from the four characteristics that it examines. These are Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal conditions while Opportunities and Threats include factors that are outside the business.
- Strengths are characteristics that allow the business to take advantage of opportunities or reduce the impact of barriers to success.
- Weaknesses are characteristics that can stand in the way of the business taking advantage of opportunities or minimizing the impact of barriers to success.
- Opportunities are factors outside the business that allow it to attract more customers, operate more profitably, grow or strengthen.
- Threats are factors outside the business that stand in the way of continuing to make money or that may hinder business growth.
To conduct a SWOT analysis, you can work alone or with some of your staff members. I prefer to see these done in groups because of the benefit of having more than one brain at work on a problem at the same time. The process is simple: just list as many characteristics of your business as you can think of that fit into each of the four categories.
Here are just a few examples of the kinds of things that might turn up in a SWOT analysis of a work team.
Strengths:
- Diverse skills
- High level of camaraderie
Weaknesses:
- Tendency to expect the boss to solve all problems
- No go-to guy for tough diagnostic challenges since Randy left
Opportunities
- Excellent manufacturer training available
- Recent ownership change at a competitor may free up some talented people
Threats:
- Changing technology makes it hard to stay knowledgeable
- Fewer talented people are going into the business
When you're done, you will have before you, your collected insights regarding the assets and liabilities of your staff. These should give you several ideas about how to take advantage of your strengths to seize opportunities and ward off threats.
When was the last time you did some solid strategic planning for your business? Has it been a long time? If so, can you name a good reason to put it off? I didn't think so.
