CREATE A HIGH PERFORMANCE CULTURE

SWOT is an essential strategy, team building, and business development tool.

What is SWOT?

​SWOT analysis is a powerful technique for understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses, and for looking at the Opportunities and Threats you face. It can help you uncover opportunities that you are well placed to exploit. Conversely, by understanding the weaknesses of your organization, you can manage and eliminate threats that would otherwise catch you unprepared.

Organizations large and small use SWOT as part of their discovery when developing strategy to support their long term plans. Incorporating SWOT early in the planning process is invaluable. To improve perspective and achieve greater results I recommend inviting cross functional team members, those having the skills and shared interest to advance business performance, to participate.

To learn more about SWOT and how it may benefit your organization, read below.

SWOT is ideal for companies at the beginning of planning cycles, in transition, or during periods of stress. This iterative process brings change in a way that strengthens individuals, empowers teams and overdrives performance.

By providing a safe environment where participants are allowed to share, identify company strengths and weaknesses, and have input on how to solve without judgement, has many benefits. This process addresses many top factors considered most important to job satisfaction:

HOW TO USE THE TOOL

To carry out a SWOT Analysis, let’s talk about the four criteria:  
1. List Your Strengths:
  •  What advantages does your company have? 
  •  What do you do better than anyone else? 
  •  What unique or lowest-cost resources do you have access to? 
  •  What do people in your market see as your strengths? 
  •  What factors mean that you "get the sale"? ​

Consider this from an internal perspective, from the point of view of your customers, and people in your market. 

When looking at your strengths, think about them in relation to your competitors. For example, if all your competitors provide high quality products, then a high quality production process is not a strength in the market, it is a necessity.

2. List Your Weaknesses:
  •  What could you improve? 
  •  What should you avoid? 
  •  What are people in your market likely to see as weaknesses? 
​  •  What factors lose you sales? 

Again, consider this from an internal and external basis: Do other people seem to perceive weaknesses that you do not see? Are your competitors doing any better than you? It is best to be realistic now, rather than face any unpleasant surprises down the road.  

3. List Your ​Opportunities:
  •  Where are the good opportunities facing you? 
  •  What are the interesting trends you are aware of? 

Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
  •  Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale.
  •  Changes in government policy related to your field.
  •  Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes.
​  •  Local events.

A useful approach for looking at opportunities is to look at your strengths and ask yourself whether these open up any opportunities. Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask yourself whether you could create opportunities by eliminating them.

4. List Your Threats:
​  •  What obstacles do you face? 
​  •  What is your competition doing that you should be worried about? 
​  •  Are the required specifications for your job, products or services changing? 
​  •  Is changing technology threatening your position? 
​  •  Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems? 
​​  •  ​Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your business? 

Carrying out this analysis will often be enlightening – both in terms of pointing out what needs to be done, and in putting problems into perspective.

CASE STUDY
Soon after accepting a new position within a company, I was given the charge to lead the Specialty Channels division. This $200MM division was reporting years of revenue and profit decline, and was at risk of being shut down altogether.

Being new to the team and not understanding the root causes for this division’s underperformance, we conducted a two day SWOT analysis. To improve perspective a cross-functional team from Marketing, Sales, Accounting and Consumer Insights was invited.
​
Key Takeaways from SWOT Analysis

Improve Focus    
Not all channels were of equal importance. We immediately exited three channels and prioritized others based on growth potential.

Simplify Product Lines          
Being over SKUd increased complexity and costs. We eliminated over 30% of our items.

Improve Trade Practices    
The lack of pricing and promotion discipline caused havoc within and across channels. 

Improve Reporting        
The lack of timely and accurate reporting was problematic.

Refresh Proprietary and Flagship Brands        
Several proprietary channel brands were outdated and several products needed reformulation.

Improve Insights        
We lacked essential customer and consumer insights to make   important brand and business development decisions.

Team Building            
To improve team morale and skills, every quarter we offered professional development and team building events.  ​

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Results
Within six months Specialty Channels had stabilized. Within one year we were profitable and reporting double digit growth. Within one and a half years, we were the company’s fastest growing and most profitable division.

Conclusion
Our turnaround success and company best performance was due to our collaborative approach toward discovery, problem solving, and planning. 

​SWOT was the basis for discovery, plan development, and our division turnaround.

Do you need help conducting discovery to improve business performance?
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If you need help discovering those issues which may be marginalizing your organization's performance, and identifying those strategies to best leverage your strengths, drop me a note or call for your initial FREE consultation. ​