I’ve recently been working with a group of managers who are finding it difficult to encourage their staff to evaluate their working processes in order to generate ideas for improvement (asking the question ‘what improvements can you think of’ was getting them nowhere fast).

My view is that it’s useful for staff to have a more structured approach for evaluating processes and that SWOT can help with that. Here is the outcome of the work I did with those managers (using the example of the evaluation of a new system).

Strengths

What do you think works well with the system?

What have been the benefits of using the system?

What does this system give the customers?

How does it help you reduce waste, increase efficiency, improve quality of service?

How has the system improved the way you work?

Weaknesses

Is there anything that doesn’t work well?

Are there any weaknesses in the system?

Have you encountered any problems or impediments?

Is there anything you don’t think adds value?

Are customers saying there’s a problem?

Opportunities

What needs to be improved?

How could we do that?

What are we missing that could work well?

How can we overcome the weaknesses?

Threats

Is there anything outside the team / unit that is having a negative impact on the effectiveness of the system – that’s threatening its effectiveness?

In what ways could we mitigate that threat?