A couple of weeks ago we looked at Micro and Macro factors that can affect your business. That’s all cool – but what about your ability to respond?
When working with clients one of the tools we use is a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. You have very probably done a SWOT analysis at some point – if not regularly – but today’s chat turns it into TOWS – where we look at Threat and Opportunities and see what Strengths we can play to and Weaknesses we can mitigate.
It is likely that you haven’t taken this extra step so thought it would be useful to go through it this morning.
A TOWS analysis is essentially turning SWOT around to become Threats, Opportunities, Weaknesses and Strengths! You begin with your standard SWOT but you take it to the next level. For example, what if a particular Threat exposes a weakness in your organisation? Or – how can you use a Strength to make the most of an Opportunity?
To do this we use a TOWS matrix. where Strengths and Weaknesses are Internal (we have control over these), and Threats and Opportunities are External (we have no control!).
I invite club members in their quarterly review just to take just one box each quarter and work on it.
So, for example, if you have capacity issues which limit your ability to produce a particular product then you need to work on a strategy for dealing with an upsurge in demand.
Working in this way to devise strategies will help us to address Threats and Opportunities in the future. We can also plan how we are going to enhance our strengths even further, or assess our weaknesses.
Why don’t you give it a go and if you need more help then please do Get in touch.