Swat Your SWOT... Forever

Ask what would have to be true for your choices to be good ones

The more strategy development work I do with organizations, the more I’m becoming aware of a prevalent pattern, one that I find counterproductive, even detrimental. It concerns the starting point for their strategy work: In nearly every case, they begin with convergent thinking, the polar opposite of divergent thinking, which I believe is the kind of thinking true strategy demands.

To show just how embedded this pattern is in the corporate mind, take a moment to mentally fill in the blanks:
Strategic ______________
SWOT ________________

Invariably, the answers I get when I do this short exercise in workshops are “planning” and “analysis.”

Here’s the rub: Planning and analysis are convergent modes of thinking. But if strategy is about considering many possibilities and making critical choices, then divergent thinking doesn’t work. Perhaps that’s why so many people struggle with strategy.

…

Want to continue?

By logging in you agree to receive communication from Quality Digest. Privacy Policy.

Create a FREE account

Forgot My Password

Comments

I love this one: "No one

I love this one: "No one actually knows who came up with SWOT, which is a bit curious. Maybe whoever did wanted to remain anonymous for a reason." Ha!

"I now think it’s far better to think through various strategic choices: Ask what would have to be true for those choices to be good ones, and explore those hypotheses through valid experiments, before ever locking and loading on a strategy.”

This sounds an awful like risk-based thinking (ala ISO 9001).

RBT invites one to consider the consequences of potential viable actions before making decisions to take action, weighing the possible consequences (perhaps conducting experiments) and selecting the optimal action, all things considered. (Of course actions are not limited to corrective or preventive actions, but actions to raise a QMS in the first place, and actions taken to establish and document a QMS.)

In the context of this article, RBT is being applied pursuant to establishing a strategy. Per ISO 9001, the adoption of a QMS should be a strategic decision (presumably a strategy aimed at achieving the objective making a living by satisfying customers).

All-too-often, it seems, a QMS is raised as a tactical decision (supporting the objective of increasing or maintaining sales), rather than being raised as a strategic decision (in support of the objective of satisfying customers by providing quality product and services).

SWOT and Strategy Formulation

Although the SWOT Analysis has been used for a long time as a main tool in Strategic Analysis, it is unfit for correctly supporting our strategic decisions. Our goal is to determine which are our best Strategic Choices that will allow us to:

● Exploit the most significant Opportunities of the future period (the strategic horizon)
● Reduce our exposure to the anticipated most important Threats for our business

It would be highly misleading to analyze a current snapshot of Opportunities, Threats, Strengths and Weaknesses, before we have decided which are our best Strategic Choices and determined which are their supporting Required Capabilities. That is why our Strategy Analysis sequence should be:

● Evaluate the Opportunities & Threats of all our possible Strategic Choices
● Select the best Strategic Choices and identify their Required Capabilities
● By comparing the Existing and the Required Capabilities, determine our Strengths (the capabilities that already exist, as required) and Weaknesses (the capabilities that have to be developed, acquired, or changed).
.