Let’s get one thing out of the way: It’s pronounced SWOT, like the Team.
And yes, doing a SWOT Analysis can be like calling in a team of highly trained, elite marksmen to identify and take down the threats facing your business.
It’s been around for decades, so it can get a bad rap as being dated or dusty. But the SWOT Analysis is as powerful a business tool as ever – if you know how to deploy it.
SWOT stands for
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats.
Strengths and weaknesses are considered to be internal factors related to your business, and opportunities and threats are external individuals or forces.
Completing a SWOT Analysis involves creating a list of everything you can think of under each of those columns. For most business owners, it’s easy to rattle off dozens. That’s the stuff keeping us up at night!
The real work, however, comes in identifying the relationships between each of those groups.
Where strengths meet opportunity, you can transform your addiction treatment business.
You might decide to try for an acquisition.
Or, you might want to roll out a new behavioral health marketing plan that capitalizes on your strengths – and is targeted at a segment of opportunity.
Where weaknesses meet threats, there is work to be done.
You might use your SWOT analysis to strengthen a facet of your service mix – or drop it altogether to focus on another area where you are stronger.
It can be helpful to work with an outside consultant to complete a SWOT analysis, because a fresh set of eyes will often see relationships between factors that you’ve missed for years.
Sometimes, business owners are too close to their problems to see the solution.
Especially in the crowded and volatile behavioral health industry, staying abreast of the problems within and outside of your organization is crucial if you want to adapt fast enough to survive and thrive.
For more ideas on how to grow better, help more, check our our blog.
