Intentions - The Starting Line

"If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up somewhere else.” – Yogi Berra, American Baseball Great

At Possibilities Unlimited, we spend a lot of time working with people to create specific and measurable intentions for their businesses. Those intentions are the essence, if you will, of your business purpose. In the past several blogs, we have gone over all the different aspects of creating intentions that will propel your business to unprecedented results.

What we’ve done is map a very clear destination for your business. You know where you’re going and what it’s going to be like when you get there. You’ve analyzed your action steps and scheduled them into the calendar. You have taken out a map and highlighted your route. You have programmed your company’s GPS and you are ready to go.

The only thing that’s missing now is the starting point! Before the GPS can figure out the distance to your destination, it has to determine your current location. In business terms, you have to know where you stand and what you have to work with before you can deliver on your intentions.

A SWOT analysis is a great tool for taking stock of what is and isn’t working in your business. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s like an inventory of your competitive advantages and your challenges. Taking the time to assess what your company does well and where you need to focus more effort can eliminate a lot of the guesswork in your action plan. The SWOT analysis also clarifies where you have ample resources and where you may need to devote capital to become or stay competitive.

Our previous blog on SWOT analyses details the concepts and questions to ask yourself when assessing your “current location.” It’s important to conduct SWOT analyses on a regular basis because the external components, Opportunities and Threats, change with the economy, trends, competition and other factors outside of your control.

Once you’ve done your SWOT analysis, you are ready to start your journey toward the fulfillment of your business intentions. You will have a very clear picture of the path ahead, and exactly what it will take to get there. To win any race, you have to show up at the start.

Are you ready to win?

SWOT - How Do You Stack Up?

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” - John Wooden, Legendary College Basketball Coach

We spend a lot of time working with companies to develop their value messages. How do they differentiate themselves from their competition? What do they do well? Where can they focus their resources to become more competitive?

A helpful tool in this process is the SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis looks at your company from the inside out and can quickly paint a picture of what the company should be working on. We also encourage our clients to do SWOT analyses on their known competitors to highlight where they stack up.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are your company’s internal forces, things that are under your control. Ask yourself some core questions about your company’s performance:

What do you do well?
What are your advantages?
What are your competencies?
What do you do poorly?
Where are you losing money?
Where do you lack resources?

Opportunities and threats are external forces, things that happen in the larger world that will impact your company’s ability to do business. They are things you can capitalize on or mitigate if you are aware of them:

What are the new market trends?
Do you have a niche that your competitors are missing?
What are new technologies or customer needs?
What obstacles are standing in your way?
What are your successful competitors doing that you aren’t?
Are there government regulations or negative economic trends that impact you?

Once you have completed a SWOT analysis you can develop an action plan to turn weaknesses into strengths, and threats into opportunities. Prioritize your projects and determine the resources you need to devote to them. A periodic SWOT analysis will keep you competitive and position you to win the game of business.

Are you ready to win?