Tag Archives: Strategic Planning cycle

Strategic Assessments; Wrapping up the SWOTAR Model

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Hot air balloons soaring through the sky.
SOAR and SWOT are two strategic assessment models that are better together. The SWOTAR model allows leaders to get above the problems of SWOT to really see the landscape. Like hot air balloon, you start on the ground and then look higher returning to Earth at the end of the ride
-Photo by Mikka on Pexels.com

Over the last several months, we have explored strategic assessments using the SWOTAR model. The SWOTAR is a strategic assessment model helping organizations determine where they are, changing environmental elements, and a direction for their future. There are other models, and SWOTAR is a melding of two of those models, SWOT and SOAR. The SWOT model encourages organizations to analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The SOAR model focus on strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and desired results. While the two are very close, both miss important elements the other provides.

SWOTAR combines the two models and creates a better assessment of the environment, and the desires of the leaders. Both are required for an organization to determine what comes next. SWOTAR challenges leaders and stakeholders to assess their internal factors such as strengths and weaknesses; external factors such as opportunities and threats; and to voice their aspirations for the future and identify what results help them achieve those aspirations.

Each assessment is important to complete as an organization develops its strategic plan. SWOTAR identifies where you currently are internally and externally. Use the model to scans internal and external factors impacting change. Finally, it speaks important things necessary to achieve leaders and stakeholder expectations.

Conduct Parallel Assessments

While the SWOTAR model examine six individual areas, assessments of each are all related to the others. Consequently, leaders conduct the analysis of each area concurrently. Done this way, you will find when you identify an opportunity, you will also want to scan for threats, which in turn help evaluate the likelihood of achieving a specific result. As you move through the process, you are looking to match strengths, opportunities, and aspirations. Additionally, you want to identify how those positive attributes compensate for weaknesses and threats so you can achieve desired results.

Not too far from my home was a mill that was famous for making the best wooden cogs in the world. In the 1700s and 1800s, that was great for them. The company manage to stay in business until the 1980s because of the quality of their workmanship.. However, as more manufacturing transitioned away from the use of wooden cogs, demand shrank. A successful strategic assessment may have helped them diversify and skill exist today.

Loop around, but Don’t Swirl around

Colors swirling around representing the difference between looping back and getting caught swirling around the SWOTAR model.
Because the elements of SWOTAR are related, it is important for leaders to loop around again to each. Looping around a few times is okay, but do not start swirling around or you will get dizzy and fail to move forward.
-Photo by Landiva Weber on Pexels.com

One of the problems with the SWOTAR, or any strategic assessment model, is determining when you have completed enough laps. No plan is ever perfect. As GEN Patton noted, it is important to remember with any plan that the enemy always gets a vote. President Eisenhower said that plans were worthless, but the planning process was invaluable. What both of these leaders knew was that there is no such thing as a perfect plan. Likewise there is never a perfect assessment. Taking time to assess strategic issues allows leaders to think about possibilities. As a result, when a government regulation changes, the economy tanks, or your competition beats you to the patent office, your planning probably created some discussion about such eventualities. That allows you to adjust your plan as the world changes in ways you could not expect. However, it is also true that an 80% plan delivered on time is 100% better than a perfect plan completed ten minutes late. Recognize when enough loops of SWOTAR have been completed and move on to the next stage of the planning process. Many people and organizations get stuck in this loop and fail to notice they are swirling around without moving forward.

Selecting Strategic Direction and Goals

Use your assessments to pick a direction and establish goals. Now that you know where you are, and what aspirations and results you want to achieve, decide what direction and what three to five high level goals will help you move in that direction. Writing your plan improves the likelihood of achieving your desired results. Things change over time, so keep your goals and the task steps specifically general and high level.

When developing short term goals, one year or less, I encourage the use of the SMART model. However over the course of three to five years, enough things change and detailed specificity can cause more problems than general direction. So if you select three goals that build on each other to accomplish over five years, apply SMART to the first goal.

For example, a goal you seek to achieve for your nonprofit might be to increase available unrestricted funds by 30%. In the long term, you might have a series of task steps like:

-identify current amount of unrestricted funds

-add 30% to that amount

-identify two fundraising activities in the next two years that will help us raise that amount of money that can be repeated annually.

Future readers understand what needs to be done. When this goal reaching a point of action, increase the specificity of the task steps like:

  • Identify how much has our unrestricted reserve increased since the inception of our strategic plan?.
  • Identify how much more we need to raise to reach our 30% goal.
  • Conduct a key leader retreat on August 15th to identify two fundraising activities to meet these objectives in the next two years that can be repeated annually.
  • Appoint a committee of five members to each activity selected for fundraisers
  • Require each committee to report progress to the BOD each month.
  • Execute each fundraiser in the next twelve months, and follow up with a second event in the following twelve months.

Notice how the details are more concrete when it comes time to begin the action.

Writing your plan is important. There are a variety of ways to write a strategic plan. Use a format that is easy to understand, easy to share with others, and contains enough details so everyone will recognize success. Goals are only one part of your strategic plan. Other important aspects include:

  • Organizational vision
  • Updated mission statement
  • Guiding principles or if you prefer the term, values, and
  • Your timeline for completion.

Each of these elements should be part of your strategic assessment. For example, as the leaders discuss aspirations, you may realize that your past guiding principles and your aspirations are not aligned. Discuss and decide what changes are needed to realign principles and aspirations. In most cases, you may make no changes or small changes to your mission. Sometimes organizations realize the world around them is changing and they need to make major changes to remain relevant. An example of this is Kimberly-Clark’s decision to sell all their paper mills, leaving the coated paper making market, and competing in consumer paper products. When Kimberly-Clark changed their aspirations and desired results, they had to complete a new mission statement.

Change is hard. Without change, there would be no need for leaders or leadership. Strategic assessments help organizational leaders understand where they stand in the world, try and understand what the future looks like, and create changes so their organization remains alive, vibrant, and relevant to their stakeholders. Whether you lead a for-profit, non-profit, governmental, or civic organization, as a leader, you need to always be looking forward. If you drive always looking in the mirror, you will crash. Safe drivers look forward while remaining aware of their surroundings. Strategic assessments help leaders focus on the future and look forward. While there are a number of strategic assessment models. SWOTAR provides organizations the ability to look internally, externally, and examine their greatest dreams. Internally, assess your strengths and weaknesses. Externally evaluate your opportunities and strengths. Identify your aspirations and desired results. Withe these assessments, you can create an inspirational strategic plan that defines your goals, guiding principles, vision, and mission; and creates hope. Take time to dream a little, then begin bold action to move your organization into a bright future with SWOTAR.

References

  • Collins, J (2001). Good to great. Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.
  • Eisenhower, D. (1967) At ease: Stories I tell to friends. Doubleday & Co.
  • Morreale, S (October 21, 2009). Executive Strategic Thinking. [Training Presentation] Command Training Series: Executive Development Course. New England Association of Chiefs of Police. Held at Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI
  • Province, C. (1995). Patton’s one-minute messages. Ballantine Books

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(2025) Christopher St. Cyr

The Strategic Planning Cycle

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(Author’s note: this article is the second in a series on strategic planning using the SWOTAR model. This post also shows the importance of getting something done, even if it isn’t perfect. You might notice a spelling error, or perhaps a missing comma or double word. If I waited until this post was perfect, or even better, February might be half over. Given that an imperfect plan delivered on time is better than a late but perfect plan, and this series is about, perhaps an imperfect post delivered on time shows the importance of punctuality, if if the product is not perfect.)

Before diving into the SWOTAR model to collect information to develop a strategic plan, understanding the planning process is important so you execute your collect effectively, with the right people, so you end up with a workable plan in the end. If this is your organization’s first plan, SWOTAR is an great entry point to the cycle. If your organization has had one or more strategic plans that failed to achieve the desired results, this review improves your chances of success. Continuing with the map analogy, left in the glove box, a map is a useless tool to help you find your way. Likewise, a strategic plan set on the top shelf of the Chief Executive’s office bookcase is just as useless. Everyone, yes, EVERYONE in the organization needs access to the strategic plan. Execution of a strategic plan is an organizational, not an individual responsibility.

In the Army, units always attempt to get full size, full color maps for all their key leaders. Every vehicle driver has at least a strip map showing key points along the route and just off the route to help them reorient when, not if-when, they stray from the main route. Senior leaders in effective Army units know that unless every Soldier knows how to go from the current location, to their next objective, not every Soldier will arrive ready to execute the mission. Things happen. Soldiers become separated from the main body, enemy action makes the main route unusable, a driver makes a wrong turn and everyone else follows. If everyone has some access to location finding information, maps, they can find their way using alternative routes to arrive at the objective and provide the commander with enough troops to accomplish the mission.

Likewise, when orders are issued, commanders brief their followers with the objectives of their higher headquarters and tell all their units all the expectations of each with the leaders from each of those units present at the same time. By understanding the whole operation, junior leaders rapidly adjust to changes. Strategic plans work the same way.

Strategic plans are an organization’s military operational order (OPORD). Leaders at every level understand the overall strategy. This helps them create effective plans for their teams to support the big picture. Each individual knows the part they play in helping the organization succeed.

Too often poor leaders justify holding such information from their followers with such arguments as, “they don’t need to know; it will only confuse them,” or “they just need to do what I tell them to do.” Those leaders then wonder why they fail to get results. Remember, few people come to work daily with a desire to fail. Most people want to be successful at their job. They want to know their work has meaning. Helping workers understand what work must be accomplished to make the organization successful, and what quality work looks like enables them to better prioritize the tasks and find ways to improve the execution of those tasks.

Because strategic planning is a cycle, there is no first step, just a next step. However, if your organization has never planned for the future, assessing where you are and where you want the organization to be in the future, is a good place to enter the cycle. SWOTAR is nothing but an assessment model.

Everything else in the strategic planning cycle, figuring out what to do to make your vision of the future a reality. The strategic planning cycle continues with creating a mission and vision for the future. Next you develop steps to enable action that begins to make the vision real. Along the way, measure the success of processes to ensure they are working correctly, and the effectiveness of those processes to move you toward the vision. Because strategic planning is time-bound, the last step before assessing for a new cycle is to evaluate your successes.

In this assessment, determine what you achieved? Ask if your achievements resulted in the end state you envisioned? If your organization made the progress desired, what does the next level look like? All these questions create the data you will need for the next SWOTAR process.

Strategic planning is a continuous process. Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, aspirations, and results desired. Next create actions plans to determine what actions you need to take to make your aspirations and desired results reality. Take action based on the action plans. Assess your processes and effectiveness. Finally, evaluate if you landed where you planned, then begin again.