Quick Guide: SWOT ANALYSIS

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. SWOT analysis is an analytical technique that helps to develop insight and understanding on a particular subject. It is extremely versatile and can help answer questions on countries, hostile actors, your own business, business rivals, or individuals. SWOT is a great tool to present information as it is easy to read, easy to talk through and easy to understand.

In the SWOT you’re essentially asking two closed questions about the subject “Is it a good or a bad thing for the subject?” and “Can the subject control it?” The subject can be yourself, another party, or in some circumstances it can be more conceptual, like a question or an idea.

A simple break down of a SWOT can be seen here:

It is helpful to break each quadrant down and think of them in terms of the questions you need to ask to be able to answer them:

Strengths: What are they in control of that is working in their favour?

Weaknesses: What are they in control of that is working against them?

Opportunities: What are they not in control of but it is beneficial to them?

Threats: What are they not in control of that is working against them?

The initial look at a SWOT can provide some incredibly valuable information for planning purposes, for example, a threat to them is something outside of their control that works against them; is that something that can be leveraged by you or somebody else? Weakness is probably the most interesting category to explore as it works against the subject but is within their control. So why haven’t they fixed it? Are they going to fix it? What does it look like if they do fix it? Does it mean they will have to make sacrifices in another area?

As with any technique, starting from a blank page is always difficult, so brainstorming ideas before a SWOT can be an incredibly powerful way to develop this technique. Another way I like to approach it is to start with environmental scanning. STEMPLES works really well. Stemples stands for:

• Social

• Technological

• Environmental

• Military

• Political

• Legal

• Economic

• Security

Using each of these headings to guide your SWOT is a great place to start, look to each heading and see if there is anything within that that might fit into one or more of the categories.

Top tips:

1. Opportunities and threats will often be environmental factors, such as geography, population, and economy.

   
   

2. Comparing a current SWOT to a SWOT of the same subject in 10 years based on promises and predictions can be incredibly helpful to see what things move between categories. For example, current investments in cyber might mean that a countries navy is degrading, but in ten years it may mean that they are at the forefront of an AI dominated battlespace and tier one operators of hybrid warfare techniques.

   
   

3. Opportunities are only good opportunities if they are aware of them, is there anything that is an opportunity to them but only if they have a specific piece of information?