SWOT Analysis

[Phoebe]

I got so excited about potatoes I forgot what I came here for: to pick your collective brains. I am... not a fan of the SWOT analysis. That's a gentle a way as I can put it. SWOT analyses are, like many other conceptual schemes of their ilk, a crutch for people who can't think clearly enough to define their own categories or devise analyses that best suit a particular situation or organization. So the generic SWOT analysis is slapped onto everything.

However, people do looooooove their SWOT analyses. So what I'd like to know is, what are the newer trends in business or organizations that might be taking the place of or providing an alternative to SWOT analyses? Perhaps one of them would better match the categories I have in mind, and then I can point to this shiny conceptual crutch for validation and legitimacy, since "I came up with these categories myself because they seemed like the right ones to use" has little purchase in the world.

[Kyle]

I'm so fucking bummed to discover this wasn't about the greatest movie ever made that features Colin Ferrel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jeremy Renner. You've betrayed me, Phoebe.

I don't even know what SWOT analysis is. I'm guessing it's not where you have military-garbed police crash into a structure with violence to determine the nature of the crimes occurring inside?

[Phoebe]

Metaphorically it is like that, yes. But we don't always need that kind of assault on our structures to find facts and suggest actions.

[Stan]

It sounds like the sort of management thing where they pay a consultant thousands of dollars to do do a thing, which they are unlikely to well as they don't work there, then everybody has a to spend a day at some boring retreat so they get more behind in their work. The vast majority of the employees are frustrated that stupid management wasted time on this but some manager puts it on their resume and get promoted for evidence that they are innovative and working hard to improve company culture.

Consultants make up a new stupid thing every few years to keep themselves in business.

[Mike]

I'm with Stan. I had to look it up, and the moment I saw the four-color two-by-two matrix, I immediately figured it was some sort of feel-good, management-buzzword sort of thing for consultants to suck money out of companies with. Don't know if that's true, but it's what it felt like.

[akiva]

I for one embrace them. How else can we leverage our core capacities, embrace disruptive out-of-the-box thinking, create a truly customer-facing user experience, and combine all of these, in a data-driven paradigm, to create synergistic and dynamic solutions?

Maybe you need to take a deep dive into the matter before you judge.

[Kyle]

I looked it up and saw a more-complicated pros vs. cons analysis. I actually like pros vs. cons in the abstract- but find this to be unnecessarily complicated- and driven to be some silicon valley horeshit be-all-end-all. At the end of the day for all these types of analysis- it comes down to a gut check. And no matter how complicated you make it, you can't avoid that gut check. I feel like complicated things like this are trying to avoid the blame of a bad call on a gut check.

[Stan]

[Phoebe]

He is reaching out from his silo. Excuse me while I choke down my own vomit. Anyway, it seems I am among sane people who don't see the value-added outcomes of the SWOT, but I still need an artificial replacement to trot out flashily while smiling.

[akiva]

[Kyle]

I agree, akiva. Let's give him the test:



You know what? He checks out. Move along, now.

[Phoebe]