A little about SWOT
SWOT …. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The SWOT analysis technique is typically used during strategic planning to provide a concise summary of a strategic analysis. Generally your strategic analysis will include an analysis of your three strategic environments, which are your
- Internal environment,
- Industrial environment and its
- Macro environment
In this article, you’ll learn all about how to identify weaknesses, and to help you get started, we’ve also provided a list of common weaknesses. We’ll also show you how to avoid common mistakes often made when categorizing weaknesses.
Now let’s start by defining the term weakness as it relates to your SWOT analysis.
Definition of weakness
Definition of weakness at the corporate level:A weakness is a core ability of your business in which your competitors have an advantage over your business, what your customers value, that is, you failed better than your competitors’ test.
During your SWOT analysis, you will consider a variety of weaknesses within your business. It is important to note that all of these weaknesses will be internal to your business and they are all found during your internal analysis.
The SWOT technique can also be used at the division, department, and team level. When completing a team-level analysis, you need to identify strengths and weaknesses from the eyes of your internal customers.
Understand the weaknesses of SWOT
Some possible weaknesses
There are two categories of weaknesses that you can identify in your business, both are equally valid and should have received the same consideration, these two categories are
-
Tangible Weaknesses – They describe characteristics of your business that can be accurately identified, measured, or realized. (You can usually touch them)
-
Intangible weaknesses, these describe characteristics of your business that cannot be physically touched or measured (cannot be touched)
Now that we’ve identified two categories of weaknesses, let’s take a look at some common tangible and intangible weaknesses that can be found in your business.
Some possible tangible weaknesses what can you find in your business
- Old or obsolete plant and equipment. Old plants or equipment are generally supported by equipment reliability issues or a general lack of competitiveness.
- Narrow product line
- Insufficient financial resources to finance changes
- High costs (not a high price, high costs refer specifically to the cost of bringing your product or service to market)
- Inferior technology or technology that has not kept pace with the customer or vendor’s preferred transaction methods.
- Low volume or restricted in its ability to scale
Some possible intangible weaknesseswhat can you find in your business
- Weak or unrecognizable brand
- Faint or unrecognizable image
- Bad relationships with your customers
- Bad relationships with your suppliers
- Bad relationships with your employees
- Marketing does not meet the objectives.
- Inexperience manager
- Low investment in research and development.
- Low industry knowledge
- Few innovative skills
Where people are often wrong
The most frequent error we see in a SWOT analysis with the categorization of environmental observations. This is particularly common when weaknesses are identified.
It is common for weaknesses to be identified as an opportunity to resolve the weakness rather than as a weakness, and sometimes as a threat of the damage that the weakness can cause.
For instance
A weakness from the bad relationship with your employee could be written as an opportunity to improve labor relations or as a threat to strike by militant employees. It is important to categorize it as a weakness. Why?
It is important to correctly categorize your weaknesses, as you will later look for opportunities that leverage your strengths, as these are your greatest strategic opportunities and threats that are exacerbated by your weaknesses, as these are your greatest strategic risks.
If you have worded a weakness as an opportunity, there is a risk that you will not identify your strategic risks and will not adequately prioritize actions to mitigate these risks.
Another common problem when identifying a SWOT weakness is allowing personal preferences to come into play. For example, if you are a big fan of Apple computers but the company you work for does not use them, it is not valid to say that the organization has a weakness that they use inferior technology. It’s only a weakness if your choice of technology platform prevents your business from competing with your competitors.
And the bottom line is that managers are often reluctant to be open and honest about the weaknesses of the business they are running. They see it as a failure on their part. It is best to encourage leaders to be open and transparent about the weaknesses of their business, only if it is open can you ask for help.
SWOT Council
By virtue of its name, the SWOT analysis technique is an analysis technique, NOT a solution technique. It is difficult to stay focused on the analysis, but it is important to do so. A complete analysis is the perfect basis for making strategic decisions.
Once the SWOT analysis is complete, the next stage of strategic planning is to develop possible alternative courses of action.