Presenting... The I.S.W.O.T. (Interconnected S.W.O.T. Analysis)

It dawned on me after I finished the last post that the logistics of getting the SWOT analysis onto the blog might be problematic. I can now add document conversion to my list of IT skills (though the quality leaves much to be desired). I hope the image gives a sense of what this analysis became. There were several other rows of course, but each organisation and project will be different so an example is enough J

You can see that the matrix- demonstrating the SWOT analysis- has been transferred to the columns and the strings- demonstrating interconnectedness- have been transferred to the rows. Microsoft Office 2007 has all sorts of ‘smart art’ graphics designed to help visualise this kind of thing. None of them, I mean it, none of them came close to the clarity this table gives. You read down to see our strengths, weaknesses etc and read across to see the connections between them.

The board loved it. They could see clearly what the problems were and where obvious solutions could be found. Which leads us to the real point and value of this way of doing S.W.O.T analysis: we can easily identify the problems we have which do not have simple solutions. These are, therefore, the areas on which we need to focus our attention.

This brings me to the end of my summary of this week’s strategic planning. I’m writing this on a Friday which is why all these posts are appearing in the same evening. In future, I hope there will be more of an ongoing update to this blog. Happy planning!