Strategic Planning, Part V: Exploring Weakness

Strategic Planning, Part V

Exploring Weakness

Labor Day is upon us. With the traditional Fall budget season just ahead, many organizations see this time of year as an opportunity for renewal. It’s a fitting time to continue our discussion of strategic planning.

The strategic planning journey reveals much about the organization. A thorough planning program includes a critical, candid analysis known by the acronym S.W.O.T.: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Saving Weaknesses for last, a brief description of the other elements is as follows:

Strengths are key achievers, processes, products, services and intangibles such as goodwill that together are considered organizational advantages.

Opportunities are desirable outcomes as yet unrealized: an opportunity to be the leader in a market segment, for example, or to be the outstanding service provider in a non-profit community. Opportunities typically flow from Strengths though they can be discovered through Weaknesses.

Threats are actions or exigencies that could delay, inhibit or completely derail the organization’s plan for success.

The two elements of the SWOT analysis that we naturally enjoy discussing are Strengths and Opportunities. Those that take more time to identify and quantify are Weaknesses and Threats. This process yields valuable information about where the organization needs to improve, yet sometimes a planning team just can’t get there. Whether it’s an issue with one or more members of the team or someone’s pet project that hasn’t delivered results, some groups loathe confronting the demon for fear of upsetting a colleague or having to admit that something they worked on isn’t perfect. While understandable such ostrich-like behavior is dangerous.

Weaknesses, whether involving people or strategies, are no less an integral part of the community at large. Discerning the future requires that we see the present, for all that it represents, not just the parts we like. A strong commitment to strategic planning includes being willing to talk about in depth what isn’t working, what may be “gumming up the works.”

Acknowledging publicly what we don’t do well affords us a sometimes surprising corollary opportunity: seeing what the organization would look like when we tackle the weaknesses. Armed with knowledge and freed of the need to keep our weaknesses hidden, we can usually quickly design a workaround that gets us back on track toward meeting our strategic goals.

Be honest and be well.

Chuck-

Copyright 2008 by Charles A. Conine and Hospitality HR Solutions