SWOT Your Team for Better Performance

I've been working with a client on creating a SWOT assessment of her company -- you know, an investigation of the business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats -- and it occurred to me that this sort of analysis could be pretty beneficial on the team level as well.

Taking a good, hard look at these areas can provide insights into your team and the challenges its facing. It can also assist you in setting goals and planning for improvements. Rob Redmond of The Struggling Manager agrees, and suggests three way to conduct a SWOT analysis of your team:

1. Brainstorm. Get multiple people together to bounce ideas around -- just make sure someone is facilitating.
2. Pick 20 ideas per topic. Start with strengths, then weaknesses, threats, and opportunities.
3. Vote. Have the group select the top 8 ideas in each category, and eliminate the others.

You can now follow up with a planning meeting that looks at your SWOT analysis and begins setting goals for the year based on your strengths, threats, and opportunities while avoiding attempting to leverage weaknesses. Remember that Drucker always recommended managing strengths. Do not set goals that attempt to turn weakness into strength. Instead, work around, compensate, shore up, and cover-up weaknesses, get them out of your way, and use your strengths to achieve your goals. It's important to know what your weaknesses are so that you do not try to leverage them - nothing more.