Weaknesses - the silent part of SWOT
why people remain silent when they should speak
SWOT is easy to explain. It does not mean, however, it is equally easy to perform. The biggest challenge is the ability to admit weaknesses being fair to yourself and your co-workers. I’ll show why you need just culture to find the root cause of problems.
Let’s consider a couple of examples. European structural funds are set up to implement the European community's regional and structural policy pillars. Granting them involves formulating a formalised strategy to set objectives and key deliverables. SWOT is a logical way to conclude this task.
In 2014 in Poland, one regional government encountered a significant problem when carrying out such an analysis. When formulating the health policy strategy, it included among others the following weaknesses:
insufficient human resources,
emigration of specialist medical personnel,
low health awareness among the population,
insufficient public expenditures on health care.
The problems sound reasonable but let's think about whether they represent weaknesses. Insufficient human resources are a result of mistakes committed by the central government in medical education planning. Emigration is the result of unsatisfactory working conditions and wage levels and, at the same time, the aggressive inclusion policies of countries that also have unmet needs in this regard. Low health awareness is a global education challenge. And public expenditures on health are not decided at the regional level in Poland. All these are threats, not weaknesses, as they remain beyond the control of the local authority.
So why they have been classified as weaknesses? We have to guess it, however, at least two answers emerge. One likely reason for doing so could be a sense of responsibility for local problems. This would reflect an approach in which a responsible government would point to the factors technically originating from the external environment but would believe it could do more to mitigate them. Another answer would not be that favourable. Pointing to external factors could be used to hide real problems and not admit to internal weaknesses. There is also a third possibility in which the authors failed to distinguish between internal and external factors. I cannot exclude it. I would be curious to know your opinion on this.
In the above-described case, the errors seemed quite obvious. Let’s now have a look at a less clear example. Many universities are struggling with funding. In 2013 the University of North Alabama performed a SWOT analysis in which they formulated the following weakness:
Lack of Financial Resources — Reductions in state funding; the necessity to
update programs and services; and rising fixed costs contribute to the lack of
available financial resources.
I mentioned at the beginning the role of the root case analysis. It starts with the question ‘why’ — why did the university face a lack of financial resources? The given answer seems ambiguous. On one side we can read that there was a reduction in state funding and rising fixed costs. This is a pretty external factor and as such, it should be recognised as a threat. However, the authors point to the necessity to upgrade programs and services which suggests the university’s capability to adjust to market conditions was limited. If so, that would be a weakness indeed. But in such a case it should have been openly stated — the university was unable to adapt to changing external conditions, shouldn't it?
It is interesting to reflect on the wording applied and the wording missing. There might be another ‘why’ to answer. Why the university management did not take appropriate decisions? Why was it late? Did it not have the necessary resources, or did it take the wrong view of what needed to be done? Answering these questions could explain the reasons behind such an unclear SWOT observation. But such questions were not even asked.
Given this observation, we come to the following conclusion:
WHILE PERFORMING A SWOT ANALYSIS, ITS MOST DIFFICULT PART IS DESCRIBING WEAKNESSES. IT IS COMFORTABLE TO SAY WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT. IT IS SAFE TO POINT TO EXTERNAL FACTORS THREATENING OPERATIONS. HOWEVER, IT REQUIRES AN OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP AND A MATURE ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE TO ADMIT OWN WEAKNESSES AND FAILURES.
People are reluctant to speak about weaknesses. To encourage them, the presence of just culture is required. Just culture was born in the aviation sector in response to the growing number of catastrophic incidents. It creates a safe and transparent environment which encourages people to speak openly about the organisation’s problems. In such conditions, a question which people ask is what went wrong instead of who is guilty. Just culture is a challenge to implement. It starts with outstanding leadership and extends along a long learning curve of shaping mutual trust between the organisation and its employees.
When trust takes place in an organisation, the identification of the root causes of weaknesses comes easy. Final SWOT conclusions turn out then often different than superficial assessments. People start speaking.
PRACTICE
Consider the following questions:
Did you experience silence in the room when you asked the question?
From your practice, what is the root cause for avoiding calling a problem by its name?
How did people react when you named the real problem instead of them?
What kind of attitude from people was necessary to solve it and what you actually encountered?