Summarizing the Analysis

Analysis produces a wealth of information. It is important to extract the most valuable elements, or those that will have the greatest effect on your strategy, and document them in a summary. Use this as the starting point for the planning process.

Assessing your SWOT

A SWOT summary details your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, often in the form of a matrix. The chart below highlights questions you can ask to help you decide which key elements from your analysis belong under which headings.

Table Understanding your team’s Swot

Strengths What is the team competent at? What is the team really good at?	Weaknesses Where is the team short of resources or capabilities? Where does it have competitive disadvantages?
Opportunities How could the team boost its sales to customers and improve its service? Where are there new markets?	Threats How might your products and services be overtaken? Which markets are deteriorating?

Creating a SWOT summary

Bring the mass of information you have collected during the analysis phase into a manageable summary using a SWOT matrix. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You have already listed external trends, studied your customers and competitors, and reviewed your internal capabilities. Now pick the key elements and group them under the SWOT headings. The SWOT summary is a structured exercise that helps to clarify the team’s views, acts as a powerful “driver” of the plan, and provides a way of measuring progress.

Cultural differences

Business people in Asia tend to fear “losing face” if they admit to deficiencies, so they tend not to list so many weaknesses. The British concentrate too much on their weaknesses, overlooking their strengths. The French have a reputation for original thinking during SWOT brainstormings.

Documenting findings

When compiling your summary, make sure that the strengths you have identified are truly of benefit to the customer. For example, if the customer wants a fast response to problems and you have set up a software-based help desk, then that is a strength. If you have highly skilled staff but no help desk, that is a weakness. By listing your weaknesses, you will be able to identify key areas where you could improve performance and service (which you document as opportunities). List as threats those issues in your analysis that, if ignored, may damage your ability to succeed.

Sharing the summary

Before you use the summary as a basis for your strategic plan, show it to your stakeholders. This allows them to point out any areas of misunderstanding or issues that are already being addressed elsewhere in the organization. It may also be useful to share your summary with key customers. You may choose to remove any sensitive information from the summary before showing it to them, but remember that most relationships benefit from openness. When you eventually produce the strategic plan, the summary will give you a number of drivers. Look for ways in which you can use your strengths, remove your weaknesses, exploit your opportunities, and avoid or overcome threats. Since you have spent time analyzing what is important to the customer, you can be confident that your final plan will be “customer driven”.

Questions to ask yourself

• Is it easy to see the main drivers of my business by looking at the SWOT summary?

• Is the language used in the SWOT summary clear, concise, and simple?

• Have I validated the summary with enough stakeholders by discussing it with them?

• Does the entire team agree to all the points in the summary?

Reviewing the SWOT summary

Use the SWOT summary as a tool to determine the underlying assumptions of your strategic plan. Remember that it needs to be reviewed regularly and kept up to date for it to be effective.