The Importance of a Team SWOT Analysis.
A team SWOT analysis has a become an essential element of envisioning and creating plans for the future of any business. One concern of mine, however, is that the simple process of a SWOT analysis – and the remarkable impact it can have on an organisation – is often under-utilised, or leveraged in the wrong way.
So, what is team swot analysis?
Firstly, a SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats. A team swot analysis is simply analysing the different teams within your organisation whether it be the marketing team, finance or operations and determining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for that team.
Some of the questions we frequently hear from our clients is why do a SWOT analysis of a team? and what benefits can it have to do small businesses?
Conducting a SWOT analysis or a team SWOT analysis can help with identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within your teams and team members, highlighting internal strengths and potentially presenting external factors/opportunities to expand your team into areas that could be improved. It allows organisations to create action plans going into the future as well as highlight some internal strengths that they can celebrate. They can be conducted through running brainstorming sessions and can even be made into a fun activity.
Today we’re going to briefly talk about how an internal team SWOT analysis can transform the way your organisation operates, allowing you to consolidate its strengths and improve upon its weaknesses. We’ll also discuss how to create a team SWOT analysis and the benefits of doing so.
‘Gathering the data is one thing, but using it to improve your organisation can be better facilitated with Best Practice Recruitment and the PXT Select software.‘
By running through your staff member’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, you’re able to gain a detailed picture of your team members, determine whether or not you’re deploying your organisation’s resources effectively, identify shortfalls and risks, and help underpin your organisation’s strategy and vision moving forward. I often talk about this in the context of a sport’s team, where a coach has conducted a SWOT analysis on each of the players, and positions them on the field accordingly.
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Another analogy is that of a high-paced restaurant pushing out hundreds of meals in a service, you can see the need for different skill sets, temperaments, strengths and weaknesses that combine into one highly-functioning team. Kitchen staff can be short-tempered, and lacking in the interpersonal social skills necessary to deal with customers and difficult situations. This, no doubt, is a weakness. Their strengths – dealing with stressful environments and of course, their cooking skills – far outweigh their weaknesses, purely because of where they sit inside the organisation. The same applies for the back-of-house staff, who might lack the barman’s knowledge of wine and cocktails, and the chef’s experience with food, but have training in the organisational logistics of running a business.
While this is a pretty obvious example, it can still be recontextualised into your organisation, where you’re positioning certain staff members with their respective skills and weaknesses into certain positions. If you’re not playing these positions to your advantage, you’re missing out on one of the most accessible, yet transformative ways of improving your organisation.
“A PXT Select assessment is one of the most in-depth forms of analysis you can possibly gather on your team.”
Accordingly, if you haven’t taken the time out to conduct a full SWOT analysis on your team, you’re missing out on the opportunity to determine exactly who should sit where, and how your organisation can leverage the strengths of your staff members, while possibly mitigating the risks associated with the weaknesses, through the implementation of new policies or procedures.
A SWOT analysis is a tool that allows you to minimise future risks. Committing to do the Team SWOT is one thing, but how can you gather the Best data for the job and take your team SWOT analysis from a good practice to Best Practice? Ensure that you are able to acquire the best quality swot framework or swot analysis template
That’s where Best Practice Recruitment steps into the equation.
A PXT Select assessment is one of the most in-depth forms of analysis you can possibly gather on your team. It’s an efficient, yet detailed picture on your staff’s strengths and weaknesses, and how you can position them within your team for maximum results. It covers key performance and behavioural traits that are essential to understand first, before you make changes in your organisation, and helps you to identify potential issues before they develop into a more severe problem.
The PXT Select Team Report examines far more than just your staff’s strengths and weaknesses by looking at things like a staff member’s independence, their decisiveness, outlook, sociability and pace of their work. A simple SWOT analysis will rarely discover the same traits to this extent, and leaves the organisation unable to make key changes that are necessary for the organisation to grow, pivot or consolidate its operations.
Thanks for your time, I’ll see you in the next piece.
Kelly-John Woods – Best Practice Recruitment.
