NERD! What are your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Is your organization equipped with a SWOT analysis? If not, maybe it’s because you’ve never heard of it!

A SWOT analysis is a basic technique often used in strategic planning, improving business success, organizational development, and identifying competitive advantages. Evaluating these four factors will help you make better decisions and keep your business on track for success.

Start by brainstorming with a group of people within your organization who are charged with the same or similar goals. Remember, a good SWOT analysis takes effort and the more you put into it, the better you will understand your business and how it works today.

STRENGTHS: First, write down your company’s strengths. What do you do well? What makes you better than your competitors? What do you have or do that differentiates you from your competition? Here are some things to consider:

• The size of similar companies in your industry.

• Customer perception of your products or services

• Perception in the industry of your “brand”

• Advantages you have over your competitors

EXAMPLES:

Accountability, integrity, strong staff loyalty, strong management team, innovative problem solving, flexibility, camaraderie, sense of urgency, communication, constant pursuit of best practices, mobilization of employees to play on their strengths, respect for customers and by others. high energy, positive environment, high level of customer service and solid reputation in the industry.

WEAKNESSES: Now that you’ve determined how great your company is, it’s time to look for weaknesses. The same questions should be asked when looking for weaknesses. What are you doing wrong, or not so well? What are other companies doing better? What prevents you from being more successful?

It is important that you do not skip this section. Since a SWOT analysis is a brainstorming effort, don’t discount anything that comes to mind and don’t be afraid to point out a weakness because it may hurt someone’s feelings. If a weakness is perceived, list it. The weakness you don’t list could become the reason why some aspect of the business goes wrong or fails in the future.

Some areas of weakness to look for:

• Poor perception of your company’s brand

• Advantages that other companies have

• Lack of management or other employee talent.

EXAMPLES:

Lack of automation, getting bogged down in minutiae/cumbersome processes, managers doing staff level work, micromanaging, managers not asking for help until overwhelmed, need to measure employee work i.e. quota system, disgruntled employees or unhappy.

OPPORTUNITIES: Let’s shift the focus to external factors when looking at opportunities. Try to identify the business areas that you think your company should evaluate: opportunities to gain market share from competitors and/or grow your market to include new customers.

In addition to external factors, opportunities within your company must also be considered. Can you optimize for duplicate costs and/or move employees to different roles to play to your strengths? What kinds of things can you do better?

Some opportunities to look for:

• New service markets

• Financial or legal problems for competitors.

• New technologies you could adopt

• Internal changes to be more efficient

EXAMPLES: Empowering employees to reach higher, maximizing the use of technologies, optimizing cross-departmental activities, analyzing and repositioning employees to capitalize on their strengths, getting more business from existing customers, continuing to stand out for being different in your industry, train employees, build your brand to appeal to both employees and customers.

THREATS: Finally, consider the threats to your business. Once again, threats can be both internal and external. In fact, sometimes internal threats come first, which opens the door for external threats. Therefore, it is very important to do a good threat analysis.

Insider threats are not usually classified as such, which could be a mistake. Any internal issues that are a threat to the well-being of your company must be evaluated alongside external threats.

Some possible threats are:

• internal inefficiencies

• Cash flow

• Competitors

• Technological advances in the industry (are you up to date?)

• Employee/department weaknesses

EXAMPLES:

Leadership splits, fails to live up to mission statement, managers become territorial, teamwork gives way to individual agendas, managers get overwhelmed/burnt out, take over or continue unprofitable businesses , don’t understand the competition, fall behind in technology, keep employees who won’t contribute to success, don’t handle aggressive growth well, and don’t maintain competitive rates/pricing while still being highly profitable.

After you have completed these exercises, assign a leader within the organization to each category that will be responsible, along with your team, for maintaining it (such as Strengths); repair it (as Weaknesses); acting on it (as Opportunities); and protect against it (such as threats).

The group should then meet again every six months to discuss the SWOT and revise it based on the reality it is facing at the time.

Do you know what the SWOT of your company is? If not, now is the time to find out!