How to Perform a SWOT Analysis

Hi, I'm Erica Olsen.

Today's whiteboard session is on putting together a SWOT analysis for your organization.

SWOT simply stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and the purpose

of a SWOT analysis is to create a synthesized view of your current state.

And great planning, whether a strategic planning, marketing planning, operational planning,

you name it, great planning starts with an understanding of where you are today, confronting

the brutal facts, as Jim Collins says, so you can build a future.

And a SWOT analysis is a great way to capture and frame up what your current state is, so

I'm gonna talk to you about what it is in a little more detail, how to put it together,

and then quickly how to put it to use.

Let's jump in.

Strengths, we build on our strengths.

Weaknesses, we shore them up.

The right-hand side of your 2x2 matrix, which is your SWOT, is your internal perspective.

On the other side, we have our opportunities, which we invest or capitalize in, and our

threats, which we monitor.

External perspective.

Tip number one, do not confuse your internal and external perspective.

We're looking for a holistic view of your organization, and it's important to be really

clear about what we can impact and directly influence, internal, and what we can influence

but not directly impact, external.

And I'll talk more about that in just a minute.

So this is the structure for your SWOT.

When you're done with it, you'll have maybe 10 to 15 bullet points in each of the four

quadrants.

So how do you figure out what goes in those quadrants?

The simple thing to do is to hop into a room with a whiteboard and brainstorm with your

planning team and fill out your SWOT.

Taking it to the next level is bringing data into your SWOT analysis.

There's tons of data in organizations.

Absolutely go pull in some data so you have more of a databased view of what's going on.

Let's talk about those data sources.

Internal, get perspective from executives, board if you have them, partners, vendors.

Gather that through one-on-one interviews.

Employees, employee perspective is super important to help understand what's working and what's

not working.

Customers, same thing.

You cannot have a great SWOT analysis without understanding what your customers are saying

about what you're doing well and what you're not doing well.