A SWOT analysis can be used to help determine what actions should be taken to meet a goal. This should be clear in the items identified in the SWOT, and the actions taken as a result.

The first thing to do is state the goal to be achieved. This could be an organization Vision statement, a Direction statement or a team objective. You can’t develop a strategy using a SWOT analysis if you do not know what goal you want to achieve.

The purpose of completing a SWOT chart is to identify the most important things upon which to build, avoid, make the most of, and counter (respectively) through the actions in the plan in order to achieve the goal. The items in the SWOT analysis should clearly relate to the achievement of the goal.

Similarly, the actions identified after completing the SWOT should clearly relate to the items identified in the SWOT. Otherwise, there was no point in doing the SWOT analysis in the first place.

Let’s work through an example.

Say that an organizational goal is: “To motivate 100 volunteers to do something specific with a product developed by your organization by the end of this calendar year.”

The strengths of your organization, weaknesses of your organization, opportunities coming up in your environment, and the external threats to succeeding in your goal can be listed in a SWOT chart as follows:

Strengths:

• We have a working prototype of the tool already developed.
• The tool is easy to use, so training of volunteers should be quick.

Weaknesses:

• We don’t currently know 100 volunteers.

Opportunities:

• There’s an industry conference in May that many of our volunteers could attend.
• An existing donor to our organization has said that they will provide the funds to use tools like the one that we have developed.
• The volunteers we know respect us and like to refer other people to us.

Threats:

• The best time of year for volunteers to use this tool is September, and it is already February.

Notice that the wording of the SWOT items specifically relate to the wording in the objective.

The action plan to achieve the objective could then directly relate to the items in the SWOT analysis as follows:

1. Fred to contact all known volunteers by March 31st to invite them to the May conference.
2. Jane to produce demonstration kits and promotional material by May 1st for volunteers to recruit further volunteers.
3. Arthur to contact the donor by February 28th to see if they will fund production of 100 tool kits by August 31st.
4. Algernon to build a Facebook page by March 31st describing the tool to allow known volunteers to share the idea with other potential volunteers.

Notice that the words in the actions directly relate back to the items identified in the SWOT analysis, which in turn relate directly to the goal.