What are the pitfall behind swot analysis?

Answer 1

Pitfalls of SWOT analysis

Many organizations ask me if I usually conduct SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis during my firm's brainstorming facilitation or management consultation activities such as strategic planning. My answer is always the definitive "NO!"

Not that I haven't done it at all. When I started in 2003, admittedly I almost always scheduled SWOT exercise in my training or workshop retreat agenda, normally during the start of the first day session after ice-breaking. However, I began to realize that the session created negative energies amongst the participants - every time! I then decided to discard the exercise.

Heinz Weihrich (1982) may have strong motives for introducing TOWS analysis which later morphosized into SWOT, yet with all due respect to him, none of the two work anymore in this era of strategy canvas.

When participants who come as representatives from various departments begin brainstorming strengths and weaknesses of their organization, what started as a platform to open up and reflect became a vicious finger-pointing exercise.

When listing strengths (S), participants tend to hype up the achievements and capabilities of their own departments, to the dismay of participants who sense the braggings.

Worse, when discussing weakness (W) factors, many tend to go at great nuance to blame others. The worst scenario is when department heads start to play jury.

The subtle yet negatice aura brought about by this exercise prove too longlasting so much so the whole retreat program which probably lasts a few days becomes clouded with distrust and suppressed discontentment.

Subsequent retreat sessions become a near-futile effort to generate innovative planning ideas. People especially those most slighted by the weakness analysis normally tend to "retreat" after such wrecking exercise.

A more preferred and less-damaging method of analysing would be to study the set of organizational challenges expected to be encountered in the future. If you must go through it, then make sure strengths and weaknesses are clearly seen as a collective issue discussion rather than a finger-pointing discussion.