SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis sorts what you know about your position into four boxes, internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats, so you can see what is actually inside your control and what is not.
A grid splits into four boxes, internal versus external down one side, helpful versus harmful down the other.
Reach for this when…
- A strategy conversation keeps mixing internal capability with external market noise.
- You need a shared starting picture before a planning session, not a finished strategy.
- Someone keeps calling a weakness a threat, or the other way round.
How to run it
- List your genuine internal strengths, what you do better than most.
- List your internal weaknesses honestly, not just the safe ones.
- List external opportunities you could act on, not just trends you notice.
- List external threats that could hurt you regardless of what you do.
- Look for pairings: which strength addresses which threat, which weakness blocks which opportunity.
A worked example
Situation. Moussa Diop runs a small freight brokerage in Dakar, Senegal, and called a planning day after losing two major clients in one quarter.
Applied. His team filled a SWOT matrix and found their strength, personal relationships with drivers, did nothing against their real threat, a digital freight platform undercutting on price.
Result. They stopped competing on price and repositioned around reliability for time-sensitive loads, the one place their strength actually mattered against the threat.
The catch
SWOT produces a tidy list that flatters more than it challenges, because most teams write down comfortable strengths and vague opportunities. It gives no weighting, so a minor weakness sits next to a fatal one with equal visual size. Use it to open the conversation, and immediately ask which entries actually matter before you plan anything.
A SWOT with no threats that scare anyone in the room has not been done honestly.
Origin: Often credited to Albert Humphrey; origin disputed