SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis

What is a SWOT Analysis workshop?

A SWOT analysis is a powerful tool for identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to your business or project goals.

With this tactic, you will evaluate your organisation or team’s current likelihood of success relative to an objective. Understand what’s impeding you, and what you can improve on.

This tactic works well with the goals from Newspaper Headline or Objective and Key Results. As well as evaluating a project or a team, it’s great for evaluating anything, such as ideas or business strategies.


SWOT Analysis Miro Template


How to run a SWOT Analysis workshop

Running a SWOT Analysis workshop doesn’t need to be complicated. Start with some preparation and follow the steps below to complete the SWOT analysis. Then, you can choose your next steps based on what you discover.

1. Before you start, ensure you have a desired end-state such as your Objective and Key Results or your team’s future vision from Newspaper Headline.

2. Put a visualisation of the desired end-state on a wall so everyone can see it.

3. Create a quadrant as follows on a large surface:

SWOT Analysis

4. On sticky notes, get the group to spend 5-10 minutes writing down all the Strengths in respect to the desired end-state.

5. Collect the sticky notes for Strengths and Theme Sort them whilst the group begin working on the next section: Weaknesses.

6. Continue this way until all sections have been completed. Then give titles to each group of sticky notes and Secret Vote to find the most important themes.

7. Discuss how the most important themes affect the desired end-state. Write How Might We… questions for the implications that come up.

Origin: Albert Humphrey, 1962

Next steps

Now you know whether success is imminent, or if you need to put some more work into meeting your objectives. If you’re in good shape, try using the OKR tactic to set clear, attainable goals and ensure you stay that way.

If things look a bit shaky, take a look at some problem-solving tactics to help you frame and solve the issues you’re facing.

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SWOT Analysis is one of 54 workshop recipe cards inside the Workshop Tactics card deck.

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