Something that puzzles me is the so called SWOT (Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat) analysis from the time it had been introduced to my mind. Initially feeling of “Wow” soon turned into just confusions.
My brush with SWOT started all again when someone in his gyan session asked me to do my own analysis. I ended up with almost similar entries in all the columns and hence Strength was a weakness and so it was a threat and occasionally it figured in opportunity. The fun was that it also almost ran similarly in opposite direction. Probably an example will give you a better insight into where I was.
Once on the weakness I wrote “anger” and almost immediately it became quite obvious to me that it should figure out in strength as I thought that some time it’s good to have that. Once I came to threat, I just can’t ignore the fact that it owes a space here too. On the opportunity column I wrote “Controlled anger”. Hence finally “anger” made its way to all the four columns.
Few months ago few MBA students wanted to do a marketing related project on our company. I knew that they will be doing a SWOT and was quite keen to see the result. Finally once they finished the draft project and showed it to me, I couldn’t resist going to SWOT page almost immediately. I can tell you that these people were equally confused like me but they had carefully and painfully tried to find different nomenclature for the same terms. I too started to further confuse them and took up some weakness and started reasoning out to be in strength column and then on threat and so on and so forth.
Finally my conclusion is that I am able to understand poet Kabir’s couplet finally now:
Nindak niyare rakhiye aangan kuti chhawaye;
Bin sabun pani bina nirmal karat subhaye.
(Keep critics near you in your backyard for they will help you cleanse yourself without soap and water)
Probably this is the best way to work on your SWOT analysis because once you make it yourself you are heavily biased, when someone who do not understand you does it for you knows nothing and makes it a futile exercise. Hence it’s important to keep a critic who understands you and gives his unbiased opinions. Not an easy job to find one, & certainly not easier to hear criticism but that’s what SWAT is all about.
