Insights · Strategy
How to Run a SWOT That Actually Gets Used
Most SWOTs get filled in, filed and forgotten. Here's how to run one that changes what you do on Monday.
You block off an afternoon. The team fills four boxes with sticky notes: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Someone takes a photo, the deck goes out, and nothing in the business changes. Three months later nobody can find the file.
The SWOT wasn't the problem. The way it was run was. A SWOT is only worth the afternoon if every box ends in a decision with a name and a date next to it.
Why do most SWOT analyses get ignored?
Because they stop at the list. Terry Hill and Roy Westbrook of London Business School reviewed 50 companies in a UK government manufacturing planning program. Twenty of them ran a SWOT with outside consultants, and in only three did anyone use the output again (Hill and Westbrook, Long Range Planning, 1997).
The lists all looked alike:
| What they found | Why it kills the SWOT | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Over 40 items per SWOT on average | Nobody can act on 40 things | Keep the top three per box |
| General, often meaningless wording | “Good people” can't drive a decision | Write each item so someone could disagree with it |
| Nothing ranked | Everything looks equally urgent | Rank before you leave the room |
| Nothing checked against evidence | Opinions get treated as facts | Name the proof next to each item |
| Output used later in 3 of 20 companies | The plan never touches the SWOT | Turn every box into a decision with an owner and a date |
Findings from Hill and Westbrook (1997). The fixes are ours.
Why I always run a SWOT
I run one every time, because it forces two different kinds of looking.
Strengths and weaknesses look inward, at what you control: your people, process, technology and data. Opportunities and threats look outward, at what you don't: customers, competitors, the economy, the rules. If you only look inward, you plan in a vacuum. If you only look outward, you chase every trend without asking whether you can deliver.
The value is in putting the two side by side. A strength matters only if there's an opportunity to use it on. A weakness becomes urgent when a threat is about to hit it. That pairing is the step most teams skip, and it's the step that turns a list into a plan.
How do you run a SWOT that changes decisions?
Start with the decision, and end with an owner.
- Name the decision first. “Should we open a second location?” makes a sharper SWOT than “Where are we as a company?”
- Look inward, then outward. For the inside, walk through people, process, technology and data. For the outside, look at customers, competitors, the economy and regulation.
- Have the team write weaknesses and threats privately first. People working alone and then pooling their lists come up with more ideas than a group talking it through, mostly because in a group only one person can speak at a time (Diehl and Stroebe, 1987). Writing alone also keeps those two boxes from becoming one more page everyone nods at.
- Speak last. If the leader goes first, everyone else answers the leader, not the question.
- Cut, rank and check. Keep the top three in each box, rank them, and write down the evidence behind each one.
- Pair the boxes. Heinz Weihrich's TOWS matrix asks four questions: how to use strengths on opportunities, use strengths against threats, fix weaknesses by using opportunities, and protect weaknesses from threats (Weihrich, Long Range Planning, 1982).
- Give every answer an owner and a date. Then put the SWOT back on the calendar each quarter, because the outside world won't wait a year.
A SWOT nobody acts on is just a nicer looking to do list.
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What is a SWOT analysis?
A SWOT analysis is a planning tool that lists an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal, the parts you control. Opportunities and threats are external, the conditions you have to respond to (Mind Tools, on Weihrich 1982). It works for a whole company, a single product, a department or one decision.
Where did SWOT come from?
The popular story is shaky. Richard Puyt, Finn Lie and Celeste Wilderom went through archives and interviewed people involved, and credit Robert Franklin Stewart and his team at Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s (Puyt, Lie and Wilderom, Long Range Planning, 2023). It started as SOFT: Satisfactory, Opportunity, Fault, Threat, later relabeled SWOT. In the original method, every manager first wrote down 8 to 10 key planning issues for their own unit. Small groups then discussed them with the needs of every stakeholder in mind, and their proposals went to the executive planning committee. In my view, that makes writing privately first less a new trick than a return to how SWOT was designed, before it shrank into a grid on a whiteboard.
What is the TOWS matrix?
TOWS is SWOT turned into actions. Heinz Weihrich introduced it in 1982 in Long Range Planning. It crosses the internal boxes with the external ones to produce four kinds of strategy: strengths with opportunities (maxi maxi), strengths with threats (maxi mini), weaknesses with opportunities (mini maxi) and weaknesses with threats (mini mini) (Ghazinoory, Abdi and Azadegan Mehr, 2011). Each cell should hold a specific move, not another observation.
Why have people write alone before the group talks?
Because groups lose ideas. In brainstorming research, the same number of people working alone and pooling their lists produced more ideas than people working as a group. Diehl and Stroebe's experiments traced most of the loss to production blocking: only one person can talk at a time, so ideas get forgotten or dropped while people wait (Diehl and Stroebe, 1987). A meta analysis of the brainstorming studies found the same pattern (Mullen, Johnson and Salas, 1991). For weaknesses and threats there's a second reason, in my experience: people say less when the boss is in the room.
What did Hill and Westbrook conclude?
That SWOT, as those consultants ran it, was ineffective as analysis and as part of a strategy review, and arguably wasn't analysis at all because it never went beyond general description. Their title called for a "product recall" (Hill and Westbrook, 1997). Puyt and colleagues disagree with throwing it out. They argue the tool failed because it was pulled out of the participative planning process it was built for (Puyt, Lie and Wilderom, 2023).
FAQ
What does SWOT stand for?
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The first two are internal, the last two external.
How often should you run a SWOT?
In my view, at least once a year before your annual plan, with a quick quarterly check on the threats and opportunities, because the outside world changes faster than your strengths do.
Who should be in the room?
The people who will own the decisions, plus at least one person close to customers. Have everyone write their weaknesses and threats on their own before the group talks.
What's the difference between SWOT and TOWS?
A SWOT describes where you stand. A TOWS matrix pairs the boxes to decide what to do about it.
What's the most common SWOT mistake?
Stopping at the list. In Hill and Westbrook's review, the SWOTs averaged more than 40 items, nothing was ranked or checked, and only 3 of 20 companies used the output again.
- Hill and Westbrook, SWOT analysis: It's time for a product recall, Long Range Planning 30(1), 46 to 52 (1997)
- Weihrich, The TOWS Matrix: A Tool for Situational Analysis, Long Range Planning 15(2), 54 to 66 (1982), via Mind Tools
- Ghazinoory, Abdi and Azadegan Mehr, SWOT methodology: a state of the art review, Journal of Business Economics and Management 12(1), 24 to 48 (2011)
- Puyt, Lie and Wilderom, The origins of SWOT analysis, Long Range Planning (2023)
- Diehl and Stroebe, Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53(3), 497 to 509 (1987)
- Mullen, Johnson and Salas, Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: A Meta Analytic Integration, Basic and Applied Social Psychology 12(1), 3 to 23 (1991)