Few questions to ask to yourself when you build a SWOT: Strenght and Weakness.

Do you like chess? I do! and you know what? I find a lot of similarities between companies and chess. To win in chess, you can be 1- lucky and play with bad players or 2- Have a real strategy. And when you are playing you need to think about your strengths and weaknesses but also your opportunities and threats.




When you look at a SWOT, the information provided seems so obvious that some people may think it is a piece of cake to draw it. Even though it seems simple, it is actually a very picky and detailed job that needs to be done carefully. We get the complexity of the task when we are in front of the white paper and asked to do this exercise.

Indeed it is complex because if you really think about it, the SWOT is a key element of a strategic analysis of your company or the market. So subsequently, the quality of information provided is fundamental, and finding the right information starts by asking the right questions.

So I decided to cover the SWOT and give you some few advises on how to do it. Those advises are based on my last experiences as I had to do this exercise myself. So they are based on a real case and I picked the tips that really helped me to make this exercise a success.

We are going to answer to 2 questions: What information to get and where to get the information from.
The SWOT provides details about Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat and this article focuses mainly on the  Strength and Weakness section. I will cover the other points in my next articles. So let's go!

These are few questions you can try to answer in order to define the strengths and weaknesses of your company. For each answer to those questions you will have to define if the answer is a weakness or a strength.

Where to get the answers?

• Internet: this will probably the most obvious source. But internet is quite big and you need to be carreful because you can find some great information as well as some WRONG information. And this last one is where the danger sits. Check and redouble check your sources as much as you can. Go on serious websites. Some of my favorites are: Gartner, Xerfi, Financial Times.

• Financial Reports: they can look boring but can be a real gold mine as they are supposed to contain information like the company strategy and financial situation. Only very few people from the company are reading them, which is a shame because they are where we can find a LOT of details about the company. Also think about the financial reports of your competitors. They can help you to understand your competitors strategy and what they were up to the last years.

• People: this is one that one of my friends that is also strategist suggested to me. And when I was told this, I was like: "actually why not?". Who knows better what is not going right in the company than people that drive it on a day to day basis?  Each individual in your company has a piece of information you need. Now: information from human is not always objective. They are there to be challenged and you really need to be open mind to take in consideration ideas / opinions that were not what you thought but don't take either every word that is said to you like granted. Basically: take the information for analysis and try to compare / challenge / validate them with real facts and figures. 

• Internal documents: if you are in a big company you will probably find a lot of internal documents that can help you to identify the company's weaknesses and strength. But let's be honest it is much much harder in startups where there is no internal documents or at least no official internal documents. You can maybe try to get some details from the company's CRM or the company's reporting system. 

Next time we will talk about the Opportunities and Threats and I will also try to give you a real example. See you soon.