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A situational analysis (SWOT) focuses on four areas of your client’s

business: Strengths (S), Weaknesses (W), Opportunities (O), and

Threats (T). Strengths and Weaknesses cover internal issues, and

Opportunities and Threats are external or environmental issues.

Effective strategic planning requires a careful analysis of all four areas.

The following SWOT analysis form provides you with straightforward

guidelines and questions to help your client through this process,

as well as the means to quantify your client’s current strategic position.

Once you have established a strategic baseline score for the business

or division, you can use this score at the next planning session (six

months or one year from now). This will facilitate measurement of your

client’s improvement and of changes in the external environment. Each

of the questions in the following form will have a different meaning

depending upon the industry your client is in, but all the questions

need to be answered when you perform a complete SWOT analysis. The

planning process will become simpler in the future, once you have

determined a baseline and can actually measure and quantify change.