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One very effective way to take stock of past successes and challenges as well as begin to plan your company’s 2024 initiatives is to do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis of your company and its functional areas.

While a traditional SWOT analysis activity suggests capturing a long list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, I suggest that you go against traditional thinking to create a more productive session and output.  I typically limit the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to no more than four each per small group of people (2-3 max).  While there are certainly more items that could go on the list, the reality is that when you begin to act on the information gathered, four action items or initiatives in each area are just about all that a company can handle and act on effectively.

So what will limiting your ideas to four per section do to improve the outcome?  It forces the group to pick the most important topics.  Conversely, when the people are allowed to make an endless inventory of weaknesses, for example, the session can quickly turn into a depressing, nitpicking, morale-lowering experience.  By keeping the list short, people can’t lament or rehash topics over and over.

I also find that limiting captured items to five keeps people on task.  The session is shorter, more focused, more productive, and more engaging.

Once each group has captured the top four items for S, W, O, and T, it is recommended that they define the benefits or impacts the items have (or could have) on the company or department.

Having the most important items captured (in a workable quantity) and understanding the benefits and impacts on the business will open the door to some exciting dialogue, goal setting, and strategic planning for 2024.

If time allows, a creative way to spark even more dialogue is to have your management team generate a SWOT analysis of the company and then have a group of employees go through the same activity without knowledge of the management’s results.  With these two perspectives to compare, discussions get very interesting.

While gathering perspectives/information is valuable, it is only one half of the equation.  How you turn your ideas, direction, and strategic initiatives into goals, action items, metrics, and priorities take a planning activity from a one-time event to a strategic guiding tool for the year to come.

Benefits of doing a hyper-focused SWOT Analysis

1. Lower costs by aligning perspectives, priorities, and initiatives for the coming year

2. Increase productivity by making sure people are focused on the priorities and not wasting time on non-priority tasks

3. Improve morale by making telling your employees that you want to learn what they think about the company

4. Develop management by giving them a vehicle for creating a SWOT analysis over and over, as needed

Best Practices for doing your SWOT Analysis

1. Conduct a SWOT Analysis on the company at year-end to effectively position people’s mindsets for the coming year

2. Have different groups submit their own perspectives/versions for comparison and work to close the gaps

3. Use a facilitator from outside the department (or organization) to guide the discussions and help consolidate versions

Use the Conversation Framework OVERVIEW- High-Level SWOT Analysis Activity if you do not have a structured framework at your disposal.  Watch the linked video for an explanation of OVERVIEW. 

Moving into 2024, I look forward to sharing more information, strategies, and practical tools with you – providing you with innovative management solutions.  I would love to hear from you if you have specific topics that you would like to have covered in future posts.

In a future post I will kick off the year with a topic that has started to surface more and more in the media over the last year or so and will continue to pose challenges over the next 5 to 10 years.  I call it “The Perfect Storm.”

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Those days are gone. OVERVIEW – High-Level SWOT Activity is designed to be completed in as little as 90 minutes with hyper-focused results that can turn into immediate action items. Watch this video for a short introduction to this Conversation Framework.

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Looking at 12 areas where an organization can stand out from the rest, intentionally isolating itself from the competition, this Conversation Framework, DIFFERENTIATE, help you identify where you can make changes that will give you a distinct position in the market.

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Training new employees, setting priorities, eliminating confusion or duplicate responsibilities, and improved communication are outcomes of having these documents at the ready. If your organization hasn’t taken the time to create these foundation documents, now is the time to begin, using the two Conversation Frameworks, IDENTITY – Organizational Positioning Activity and IDENTITY – Departmental Positioning Activity.

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In another post, I gave insight into how to change people.  One of the seven points was to “define internal positioning,” which I also said was considered a “luxury item” by many people.  In this posting, I hope to explain why taking the time (guided reflection) to define and document internal positioning at two levels can benefit people throughout the organization.

In a nutshell, internal positioning is the process of documenting who and what the organization is at three levels – the organization as a whole and the individual departments.  Once the documents are created, they should be communicated throughout the organization and maintained as information changes.  

Level #1: The Organization

Most large organizations have an internal communication and positioning guide, while most small and medium-sized companies do not.  The communication and positioning guide is the principal repository for information that defines and describes who and what the organization is.  The wording is precise and deliberate since many subsequent documents are created using the text.  Items such as catalogs, press releases, website text, company presentations, and annual reports might contain verbiage from the communication and positioning guide (CPG).  The CPG often highlights products, taglines, and product benefits.  The CPG might also include information on the competition, company philosophies, and industry trends. 

An organization-level CPG gives everybody a single source of information and maintains focus and clarity.

Level #2: The Departments

The next level that merits developing and disseminating CPGs is the department level.  A couple of examples of how a CPG at the department level proves to be a helpful tool are as follows:

The New Employee: When a new employee enters a department, a CPG, including names, terminology, significant processes, special policies, workflow diagrams, org charts, internal customer information, and other topics, will reduce the employee’s training time.  For example, the new employee could read and digest the org-level CPG and the department-level CPG to get a global understanding of the two levels.  The terminology and acronyms that current employees use freely and without explanation would no longer be totally foreign to the new employee.  Having process flows on paper, and an org chart to refer to would provide a visual that many people need.  The CPG would also ensure consistency regarding information being presented to new employees.  

Department Alignment: For senior management, having department-level CPGs effectively keeps departments properly aligned and focused.  By comparing the CPG from each department, a senior manager can identify duplication of activity or resource, inefficient processes, conflicting priorities, or policy issues, all of which need addressing.

Outcomes of keeping things aligned: 

1. Keep everybody on the same page.
2. Communicate how all the employees and departments fit together to support the organizational goals and vision.
3. Reduce training time with new employees as they use the benchmark documents to learn various aspects of the organization, understand how their department fits into the overall organization, and realize how their position is part of the big picture.

Best Practices: 

1. Begin with the organizational level document – create the vision and framework for the departments.  Review and revise every 6 to 9 months.
2. Have each department create its positioning documents as a department, then have senior management review them to ensure all critical information is accurate.  Review every 6 to 9 months as the organizational version is updated.

In summary, people want to feel they contribute positively to their organization’s goals and future.  By developing and maintaining positioning documents at each level – organization and departments – understanding how and where employees add value to the organization become obvious. Need help with CPG document creation? Let me know in the comments section below

I hope you found this to be useful. Post a comment below, and be on the lookout for my next post when I begin talking about the three Ps at the root of both change initiatives and problems – People, Processes, and Planning. I’ll discuss the P nearest and dearest to your employees’ hearts – People (i.e., Themselves!)  

Until next time! 

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