SWOT or SOM
Imagine a blank piece of paper as the ideal metaphor for a successful, efficiently run business. Now imagine in the bottom left corner there is a small black dot, a blemish, a mark. I can guarantee most if not all of us will focus on the blemish, drawn to it as something that does not belong. For quite some time the modern business approach demands we focus on “let’s fix what’s wrong” and this has become so obsessive that we can spot a flaw in seconds and, seemingly some people, build a whole career around solving problems and faults, adjusting in-corrections and, my favourite, adding process for no reason.
I am sure, like me, you have listened to your fair share of presentations or speeches, formal or informal, work or leisure and found yourself attuned to the weakness rather than the strength in the delivery or message, when we meet someone for the first time humans are more attuned to evaluating what we dislike about them rather than what we like about them, it’s a fact. My point is we often miss what’s good by constantly seeking out what’s bad; this is best demonstrated on Instagram or Facebook.
Take the good old SWOT analysis (for all you MBA grad’s) Strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. I have been involved in so many SWOT business planning sessions in my time from business wide to process specific, always reviewed and considered, discussed and analysed and without exception, the case for change will always, and I mean always, home in on the weakness, taking precedent over what is strength every time. Every report developed on the back of SWOT will highlight weakness and not strength in the sincere, albeit misguided belief that what is wrong must be brought to immediate attention. This can, however, sometimes be folly and sincerely wrong. Colin Turner called this the “Seek Weakness Only Test”.
Sadly the boss will always focus the salesperson on the sales they did not close rather than the one’s they did, the administrator will be held to account over the errors rather than praised for the ideas they had. I could go on and on, in this current climate the drive for personal success and corporate efficiency will only go one way – up!
Rather than focusing on weakness and threat, change your view to strength and opportunity for a moment. It is in the nature of things that those talents used rarely are lost over time, yet we do not seem to want to focus on strength as something of value, it’s a given, we have it, let’s not waste time on it, it cannot be improved? Yet if we harness that strength and underpin it, support it and nurture it further, and in sales it is likely to repay you in kind many times over with good growth, stable client relations and a fully engaged sales team. Any change required in a business, whether small or large always has a ripple effect, it takes time to stop, adapt, develop and embed changes that, for the short term, will probably see performance drop or stutter before improving. It is always the senior operational management team’s task to take ownership of this and ensure it is delivered cleanly and efficiently, but to not include the wider team in the planning is folly, you won’t get the buy in you will need!
The only way to develop strengths and opportunities is to ignore anything else. Sometimes it is better to split teams into specific SWOT tasks, to better enable them to focus on each area, and in isolation. SOM or strengths, opportunities and merit will focus attention on what is, at the end of the day, the only element of any importance. After all if you run a business shouldn’t you focus only on those things that you can be the best in the world at? The next time you are involved in a business planning session just apply some time to highlighting what you do well.
The way we do business is changing, the larger the organisation the more pain and time will be required to adapt but small, agile and flexible will be the resilient model of the future. An ideal example is the recent demise of Carillion and Interserve who are, effectively, mired in legacy acquisition issues of lots and lots of smaller companies, very little organic growth and out dated public sector procurement methods. I remember sitting in a local authority head office a few years ago and a lady from the authorities procurement team insisting the “winning bid” will offer real value! When i probed for more detail i was told that, broadly, for every £1 spent they wanted to see £3-£5 of value? Yes me too, i could not quite fathom the process that arrived at that statement as a workable model. But here stands the truth of it, public sector do not value private sector and, importantly, do not get profit and loss – at all.
The times are changing and in the future a companies strengths and opportunities will drive growth, good, solid organic growth. Only when a business know’s what its great at can it really know what a really great customer looks like.
Watch out for my next blog on the principles of ethical negotiation…
NJA Consulting 