Oh God, Not SWOT

SWOT analyis, not just a 'tick in the box' exercise

The annoying thing about people who’ve just completed their MBAs, some obscure certification or random training course, is that when they return to work they enthusiastically, but naively, want to implement everything they’ve just leant by next Thursday. Colleagues just back from the “Manage More Effective Meetings” course want to have agendas for any meeting including the one we had to decide what we’re wearing for Steve’s fancy dress party next weekend. I was chastised for not “speaking through the Chairperson” when I called dibs on Batman. Nervous, shy types just back from “Assertiveness Training” want to say no to everything to avoid being taken advantage of. I’ve just come up with a clever way to stop the nervous, shy types from coming to Steve’s fancy dress: ask them! They’re now obliged to say no! How assertive they are!

But recently, I’ve noticed that everyone back from training courses and MBA classes all want to do SWOT analyses. It’s as if they’ve run out of analysis tools to teach, so lecturers are just giving up after Chapter One and leaving it at SWOT. For those of you that don’t have a business degree, been to the company training facility or got your job as a result of nepotism, SWOT is an analysis tool, used to evaluate the relative Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of a particular strategy, situation or choice. So, armed with only this tool, every Huey, Dewey, and Louie wants to do a SWOT at every opportunity. If they could complete a SWOT analysis on the usage of Post-It notes in the office they would. When the only tool you have is a hammer…

So I’ve decided to do a SWOT analysis of doing a SWOT analysis:

Strengths Weaknesses
  • Ingenious way to waste an hour or two, under the guise of soliciting ideas and encouraging participation, even though you’ve made a decision already.
  • Great way to answer MBA assignments that specify the length of response required: draw a square that takes up a whole page and then fill in each SWOT heading as briefly as you please.
  • Volunteer the person with the neatest writing to record the analysis on the flipchart, leaving you free to nap at the back of the room. Ask them to use different colours for each section.
  • As with self-appraisals, the list of strengths is usually quite delusional but makes for a very entertaining read.
  • Not wanting to go against the group, preface anything that should go in this section with “I’m just playing devil’s advocate here…”
  • Everything’s anecdotal; the guests on Oprah could have produced a similar effort.
  • There’s always very little to say in this section…
Opportunities Threats
  • This is where the marketers go bananas.
  • Realism often goes out the window in this section.
  • Someone will try to equate the problem being solved with things Thomas Edison, Einstein or Helen Keller have overcome, even if the problem is drafting a new promotional brochure for the company’s medical aid.
  • It gives the office empty vessel an opportunity to sprout vacuous drivel for an hour.
  • Someone’s probably going to lose the flipchart paper, meaning we’re going to have make it all up again for the PowerPoint presentation to senior management.
  • Boredom. Are we finished with this yet?
  • On completion, you may need to go out and do some proper analysis.

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Posted by Jeetesh on Jul 19th, 2010 and is filed under Corporitis.

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