Doing It Right

A SWOT analysis is a valuable tool in business, but it’s a straightforward concept that can be easily mishandled. It’s important to allocate sufficient time for a thorough SWOT analysis to ensure you accurately capture the factors influencing your business.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Strengths and weaknesses are typically internal factors, while opportunities and threats are usually external. This analysis prompts you to ask, “Where do we currently stand?” It serves as a situational assessment, allowing you to evaluate your current circumstances before planning any future initiatives.

A common error in conducting a SWOT analysis is to adopt a broad perspective with vague statements. Professor Malcolm McDonald from Oxford Learning Labs suggests applying the SWOT analysis to each segment of your business individually, rather than trying to encompass everything at once. This approach enables you to gain a clearer understanding of each area and articulate it effectively.

SWOT Matrix

A SWOT analysis is often organized using this type of matrix:

SWOT Checklist

A SWOT analysis should consider the following types of issues. You can, in fact, complete a separate SWOT for each area:          

• Your company within your geographic marketplace
• Your company within your industry
• Your products and/or services
• The community and what is currently going on that may affect future planning
• Your primary and secondary target markets and what they want/need
• The competition and what they are doing
• External forces that will affect your business
• Environmental factors
• Human resources (including the availability of people as employees, your succession plan, safety issues, wellness, etc.)