SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) a tool well known to all of us, but many fail to use. It is a tool meant more to provide a general or detailed snapshot of a company's health. Every business needs a tune up periodically to diagnose and fix what's a bit worn, what's on the verge of breaking down, or what's already broken and needs replacement--so that you can keep the business humming--even better than it has in the past.
SWOT offers professional managers an effective evaluative technique to aid the decision making process. It may not find the solution for you, but it will ensure that issues are: identified, classified and prioritized clearly, showing the problem in terms of key underlying issues.
For any business, it is impossible that the business be its own critic. SWOT forces an objective analysis of a company's position comparing it with its competitors and the marketplace. Simultaneously, an effective SWOT analysis will help a business determine in which areas it is succeeding, allowing it to allocate more resources in such a way as to maintain its position and concentrate on its core competence. A systematic analysis using the SWOT framework will help you to focus your activities into areas where you are strong, and where the greatest opportunities lie.
Some might argue that when the economic situation itself is not good how any theoretical tool like SWOT can help a business from sinking. The guru mantra here would be that no doubt the current economic downturn is impacting business more traumatically then ever before. But look around. A high percentage of U.S. businesses are surviving the pain, and many are even thriving. Winners typically win not by sticking with their past game plans--but rather by focusing on some new thing(s) that are under their control. During depressed economic times, there are still lots of winners.
The reason for many companies collapsing is not restricted to the economic turmoil alone. Another very important factor was that all these giant corporations had a bagful of businesses out of which losses from a few bad ones eat up the profit of the rest of the profitable businesses thus resulting in selling the good businesses for peanuts whereas they were unable to find suitors to sell their bad businesses even by offering some peanuts.
The right strategy should have been to look at the organizations current performance (strengths and weaknesses) and factors in the external environment (opportunities and threats) that might have affected the organizations present & future. Once the attributes for each of the sections had been identified it would have been possible to determine the point of balance. Thus helping in eventually arriving at a position where the point of balance of strengths versus weaknesses and opportunities versus threats could have been plotted together.
You can develop the basic analysis of SWOT in a brainstorming session with members of your company, or by yourself if you are a one-person shop. The business of management today is characterized by complex issues and continuous change. Frequently the related decisions and actions are characterized by trying to understand the complexity of the issues involved so that an appropriate decision can be made. In doing so, ideas can be shared between managers and even integrated into a wider picture for subsequent analysis.
SWOT analysis is a dynamic process of decision making with many applications in organizations and other applied fields. The need of using this tool in our personal lives and our day to day activities is also as important as the uses illustrated above. Today, every recruiter wants to know from you in verbal your strengths and weakness more then your qualification and it is for you to analyze the opportunities and threats that you would face if you got recruited in that organization.
SWOT offers professional managers an effective evaluative technique to aid the decision making process. It may not find the solution for you, but it will ensure that issues are: identified, classified and prioritized clearly, showing the problem in terms of key underlying issues.
For any business, it is impossible that the business be its own critic. SWOT forces an objective analysis of a company's position comparing it with its competitors and the marketplace. Simultaneously, an effective SWOT analysis will help a business determine in which areas it is succeeding, allowing it to allocate more resources in such a way as to maintain its position and concentrate on its core competence. A systematic analysis using the SWOT framework will help you to focus your activities into areas where you are strong, and where the greatest opportunities lie.
Some might argue that when the economic situation itself is not good how any theoretical tool like SWOT can help a business from sinking. The guru mantra here would be that no doubt the current economic downturn is impacting business more traumatically then ever before. But look around. A high percentage of U.S. businesses are surviving the pain, and many are even thriving. Winners typically win not by sticking with their past game plans--but rather by focusing on some new thing(s) that are under their control. During depressed economic times, there are still lots of winners.
The reason for many companies collapsing is not restricted to the economic turmoil alone. Another very important factor was that all these giant corporations had a bagful of businesses out of which losses from a few bad ones eat up the profit of the rest of the profitable businesses thus resulting in selling the good businesses for peanuts whereas they were unable to find suitors to sell their bad businesses even by offering some peanuts.
The right strategy should have been to look at the organizations current performance (strengths and weaknesses) and factors in the external environment (opportunities and threats) that might have affected the organizations present & future. Once the attributes for each of the sections had been identified it would have been possible to determine the point of balance. Thus helping in eventually arriving at a position where the point of balance of strengths versus weaknesses and opportunities versus threats could have been plotted together.
You can develop the basic analysis of SWOT in a brainstorming session with members of your company, or by yourself if you are a one-person shop. The business of management today is characterized by complex issues and continuous change. Frequently the related decisions and actions are characterized by trying to understand the complexity of the issues involved so that an appropriate decision can be made. In doing so, ideas can be shared between managers and even integrated into a wider picture for subsequent analysis.
SWOT analysis is a dynamic process of decision making with many applications in organizations and other applied fields. The need of using this tool in our personal lives and our day to day activities is also as important as the uses illustrated above. Today, every recruiter wants to know from you in verbal your strengths and weakness more then your qualification and it is for you to analyze the opportunities and threats that you would face if you got recruited in that organization.
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