Put your brainstorm hat on (no bad ideas) and have at it. Strengths are the characteristics that give your business an advantage over others.
Weaknesses are the opposite, but help you identify areas of improvement. Opportunities and Threats identify elements in the environment you can either exploit or face up to adjustments.
So why do you do this? The answer is what you do in the beginning – Set an objective (or a small set of objectives) that you want your business to achieve.
The information you collect from your SWOT Analysis helps you determine the achievability of the objective you set for yourself or your business. Sometimes the result causes you to re-think your objective(s).
It’s sometimes helpful to reinforce a SWOT Analysis with a GAP Analysis (look it up), which helps clarify “what is” and “what should be”. The key reason to put yourself through this “cleansing” process is that you should never get in the rut of “changing dates from last year’s plan” and calling it “this year’s plan”. It’s more common than you think.
Need a good reason for “zero-based planning”? Ignore the constant changes in how we use technology at your own peril.
September is the month many of us take a look at the big picture of your business for 2019 and beyond. Good time to dust off and update your own SWOT.
View previous monthly morsels on our Free Marketing Advice page.
