making better decisions - 5. SWOT Analysis
Dealing with Difficult People
This email is one in a series on decision-making. The first one is an introduction to the series.
5. SWOT Analysis
While a pro/con analysis has minimal structure to help with evaluating a decision, the SWOT analysis takes this a little further, and directs the decision maker to look within and without their organisation.
You may already be familiar with the SWOT analysis - looking at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. I had been using this method for a long while, and being confused between strengths and opportunities (the good side) and between weaknesses and threats (the bad side).
It turns out there is a simple distinction: strengths and weaknesses are internal to an organisation, and opportunities and threats are external to the organisation.
So the decider starts to look at the internal structure of their organisation and see how its inherent strengths and weaknesses relate to the decision-making space.
Next, they look at the aspects external to the organisation. Thinking positively, what are the opportunities external to the organisation that this decision could help with. And then thinking negatively, what external threats need to be considered in reaching a wise decision.
Often the process of working through the SWOT analysis will lead to different insights into the problem - it may even open up different decision options that you hadn’t previously considered!
Have you used SWOT analysis before? What kinds of decisions was it helpful for, and where was it overkill? Hit reply and let me know!