CES SWOT How-To.pdf

Helping Those Who Do Great Work Do It Better

CES

SWOT How-to Guide

Introduction

A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis is a simple but

useful framework for analyzing an organization's strengths and weaknesses, and the

opportunities and threats it faces. The role of a SWOT in a planning process is to provide

an organizing framework for a large amount of information that can then be used as a

platform for discussion, group meaning-making, and, subsequently, goal setting. The

SWOT should not be viewed as dictating goals, values, or strategy.

It is also important to note that the language used to frame the SWOT gives it the feel of

a deﬁcit-based approach (e.g., the words ‘weaknesses’ and ‘threats’). We recognize this,

and think it is important to truthfully acknowledge any harmful unintended impacts that

programs or services may have and maladaptive practices an organization may engage

in. If you skip right by these things it can feel like gaslighting to people that have

experienced the harms in question. It is also important to think about the SWOT in the

broader context of a planning process. The main purpose for the SWOT is to support goal

setting, and the art of goal setting involves ﬁnding ways to view all of the entries in the

SWOT as opportunities. The question then becomes which among your many

opportunities should be priorities.

How to Understand the SWOT

The SWOT was developed using a wide variety of data sources described in more detail in

the slide deck and in the recorded presentation. After assembling and discussing the

SWOT with members of the strategic planning committee and the SJE platform, it became

clear that there are some signiﬁcant gaps. For a variety of reasons, not least of them

being the pandemic and the strains it has placed on staﬀ and other stakeholders,

engagement was not broad enough to ensure that the perspectives of important groups

were adequately captured. Rather glaring omissions, for example, are the views of

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