SWOT is Dead – and it Could Kill Your Business, too!

In business as in life, the only real constant is change. Teams use tidy little acronyms to aid in their discussions and the format known as SWOT has become a staple in the way organizations approach decision making. It has worked for decades, of course, but in this swiftly changing, technology driven world, everything that’s old must change.

And so it is with no Light Sword that I charge toward the Holy Grail of Decision Making and declare the SWOT analysis to be as dead and useful as the telegraph and Morse code. For decades, the simple and incisive acronym was the go-to safety net for making business decisions. Even then, it was only moderately better than a pros and cons list, or even a “check yes if you like me” note.

With the properly chosen wording, anything could be a strength or weakness - especially from inside the jar. When skillfully and honestly used, the old way can still be useful. But wielded with blinders, SWOT becomes a path to obsolescence.

Opportunities and Threats were next and generally dealt with in that order - these acceptable simplifications of the business pressures, when harnessed and understood and directed correctly, should lead to success.

Or so went the old school of thought that is now suffering from #hashtag #millennial #wasting #disorder. The ease for a new idea to come to market demands a new paradigm in business decision making. To be fair, many facilitators already jump to Threats before Opportunities, and their client list - and compensation levels - speak to that insight.

No matter the market -- be it AI replacing technical support staff and entire decision-making departments in supply-chain management, or MaaS supplanting the TAXI and becoming parasitic toward public transit – the old line of business decision making is leading a lot of dinosaurs to the tar pits of Chapter 11.

It’s not that these four traditional talking points are suddenly irrelevant in the “modern world” of smart phones and inter-connectivity of virtually everything, even your toaster. But like most holdovers from the old way, there needs to be an update.

If we just called it SWOT2.0 we’d only show our age and further irrelevancy.

Let’s begin by putting things in the right order. Strengths and Weaknesses continue to lead the way, but the most important consideration to follow is Threats. It is the strongly opposing forces in a crowded and evolving marketplace that push us toward the Opportunity Moment.

By considering threats to the decision before defining the opportunity in full, we can pull a Judo move and use that threat’s inertia to our benefit. Rather than seeing a wall to pound against, we instead seize a problem and steer it to a solution.

With this shuffle we now consider SWTO, which is clearly incomplete. Rearranging things without changing them was a hallmark of business in the 1990s, but is never going to suffice today. We need a new feature to consider – we need something special. And for that we return to kindergarten basics.

The root to success in the current business environment is the personal connection, the relationship you build between The Customer and The Brand. What is important to the players of market forces in the purchase decision is “U”, because You Are Special. (thank you, Mr. Rogers)

For our new and improved acronym, we add the letter U for Unique.

What is it that makes your solution - your answer to the same problem - Unique. There are many others trying to solve the profit answer to the SWOT question. But only the team with a unique answer has a chance of rising above the noise to become the Next New Thing.

SWTOU doesn’t bounce off the teeth so easily, nor interrupt a lengthy boardroom presentation with a direct demand for attention like the old way of doing things. It isn’t an allegorical reference to the “instant solutions” offered by special forces and other displays of brute power to fix things. 

But it will capture attention, and initiate a different round of brainstorming amongst your group.

What are the simple ways you will recognize SWTOU in your decision making? If you have some ideas for integrating it to your business - or can offer a way to pronounce it phonetically - I’d appreciate your comment below on the death of SWOT.

--EP Eich, IV