"It starts with the Ambition"

Human potential is unlimited. Set the right ambition and build the capabilities you need to take on the world and you're half way there.

The same is true of Brand Planning. We face a complex landscape and need to build the right capabilities to win. After setting the Ambition, the first stage of Brand Planning is usually Situation(al) Analysis, a stage that is hampered by the tool we are given in 1.01 of Product Management school, the SWOT.

Developed over 60 years ago by Albert Humphrey at Stanford, unfortunately, the Traditional SWOT does not serve us well. It is too confusing, there are too many relationships and some of the instructions Albert gave us are actually wrong or misleading. He devised the SWOT from an existing model, SOFT (“Safeguarding the Satisfactory, opening Opportunities, fixing Faults, thwarting Threats”).

A bit like we've all experienced after assembling a flatpack wardrobe, we found s few strange components left on the carpet, I think he left a few bits out of the SWOT and maybe put some in that didn't belong.

The result looks like a solid piece of furniture, but really is not.

"If you can't tell your boss your strategy on the way to the car park with no slides, you don't have a plan, just a deck"

It's no wonder then, that people are confused when they look at the SWOT. Ever been in a room where everyone is staring at that well-known grid on the screen but nobody dares to say what everyone else is thinking - "This makes no sense!"

"SWOT - SO WOT?"

Sometimes people tell us they "do the SWOT last". They know it's needed in the deck, and so it has to fit with the strategy - hence, they leave it to the end to make sure it all lines up.

Quoting Albert's misleading and unhelpful mantra, "Opportunities & Threats are external, Strengths & Weaknesses are internal", colleagues fall out over whether something is an Opportunity, Threat, Strength or Weakness - "There is a huge opportunity to deal with this threat - we have an opportunity to educate nurses". and so it goes on.

Surely, this is no way to treat a strategy tool that brings together the landscape and the capabilities in developing a strategy to achieve the ambition. There has to be a better way.

Now there is!

The Directional SWOT® builds on the principles of the Traditional SWOT, but modernises it and makes it usable for the first time. The principles are straightforward and clients have already embedded the process in their own Brand Planning cycle.

It uses the same ingredients, but assembles them in a different way to create a clear Strategic Narrative

Straightforward to learn and use, the Directional SWOT® process enables the team to follow the end to end strategic brand planning process at their own pace. Full training is included, with options for single or multiple brands, multiple scenarios, full or partial facilitation and an enterprise level encrypted web application. To find out more, please contact Jonathan Dancer or book a discussion below.