Sweating Over SWOT

There’s something quite satisfying about taking a blank piece of paper and listing what you (or your company) are good at. But we won’t get far at just looking at the positives. Competitors are always hard on our heels and in some cases doing better, so a SWOT analysis is a great way of bringing the team together and looking objectively at how well we are really doing and what could be improved.

I always find it very rewarding when I’m facilitating groups for process improvement, particularly when I bring together two teams, with similar jobs and they share thoughts on issues that are causing problems and ideas on what works for them.

When I was working at the Met Office, I remember bringing together a group of meteorologists from the Edinburgh Office with a group from Bracknell, in the months before the office was moved to Exeter. We were looking at how to improve communication between the departments – now that’s an interesting subject for any company to SWOT! At first the conversation was quite guarded, but it soon became clear as discussions developed, that there was quite a lot of duplication going on in the transfer of information. By the end of the session, the procedure and the communication process had been streamlined.

If you want to find out more about SWOT and how it can help you and your business click on our factsheet, SWOT Analysis for continuous improvement.