How to fill in the SWOT Analysis
Weigh internal strengths and weaknesses against external opportunities and threats. This guide walks every block in the recommended order — what belongs there, the questions that unlock it, and patterns from real canvases.
A SWOT analysis sorts everything you know about a situation into four boxes: what you are good at, what you are not, what the world is offering you, and what could hurt you. Two of those are inside your control and two are not, and keeping that line clean is the entire discipline of the tool.
It is the most widely used strategy framework in the world precisely because it is so cheap to run — and the most widely misused, because most SWOTs stop at listing. A list is not an analysis. The value appears in the last ten minutes, when you pair the quadrants against each other and turn them into decisions.
Commonly credited to Albert Humphrey's work at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, though the attribution is contested and the technique emerged from several strands of corporate planning research at the time. It has been standard business-school teaching since the 1980s.
Strengths
What do we do well that is hard to copy?
Strengths are internal and present-tense: capabilities, assets, and advantages you already have. The test that separates a real strength from a platitude is comparative — strong relative to whom? 'Great team' is not a strength; 'the only team in the region certified for this process' is. Be specific enough that a competitor would recognise it as a disadvantage of theirs.
Ask yourself
- What do we do better than our closest competitor?
- Which assets would be expensive or slow for someone else to acquire?
- What do customers consistently praise, unprompted?
- Which of these strengths actually matter to buyers?
Patterns that work
- Capabilities — skills, processes, or know-how competitors lack
- Assets — location, equipment, patents, data, cash reserves
- Reputation — brand, reviews, referral rate, category association
- Structural — exclusive contracts, licences, regulatory approvals
Weaknesses
Where are we exposed, internally?
Weaknesses are internal too — the gaps, constraints, and dependencies you could in principle fix. This is the quadrant teams sanitise, which is precisely why it produces the most value when done honestly. A useful rule: if nobody in the room is slightly uncomfortable, the list is not finished. Include the weaknesses you have decided to live with, and say why.
Ask yourself
- Where do we lose deals, and what reason do customers give?
- Which single person or supplier would hurt most to lose?
- What do we keep postponing because it is hard?
- Where are competitors visibly better?
Patterns that work
- Capability gaps — skills or processes you lack and have not bought
- Resource limits — cash, headcount, capacity, time
- Concentration risk — one client, one supplier, one channel, one person
- Structural drag — legacy systems, unfavourable contracts, high fixed costs
Opportunities
What is changing outside that we could exploit?
Opportunities are external — shifts in the market, technology, regulation, or customer behaviour that exist whether or not you act. The common error is writing your own plans here. 'Launch a mobile app' is an action, not an opportunity; 'two-thirds of our category's searches now come from mobile' is the opportunity that makes the action sensible. Keep the world in this box and your intentions out of it.
Ask yourself
- What has changed in our market in the last year?
- Which customer needs are currently served badly by everyone?
- Are any regulatory or technology shifts about to open a door?
- Which adjacent segment could we serve with what we already have?
Patterns that work
- Market shifts — growth, fragmentation, or a segment nobody serves well
- Technology — a capability that just became cheap enough to use
- Regulation — a rule change that creates demand or removes a barrier
- Competitive — a rival withdrawing, being acquired, or losing reputation
Threats
What could damage us that we do not control?
Threats are external risks: competitor moves, market shifts, input costs, regulation, technology that makes you irrelevant. Rank them, because an unranked threat list is just anxiety. For each one, note roughly how likely it is and how much damage it would do — the high-likelihood, high-impact entries are the only ones that should change your plan this quarter.
Ask yourself
- Who could take our customers, and how quickly?
- What would a 20% cost increase do to us?
- Which of our assumptions would be most damaging if wrong?
- What is the most likely reason we are not here in three years?
Patterns that work
- Competitive — new entrants, price wars, substitutes
- Economic — demand contraction, input inflation, credit conditions
- Regulatory — compliance costs, licensing, tax changes
- Dependency — a platform, supplier, or channel you do not control
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