Once you complete your SWOT analysis of your business, you need to turn what you learned into actionable strategies. One of the most important tasks that your business can complete as we enter the last quarter of 2020 is developing growth priorities for 2021. How can you use what you learned to have an even better year in 2021?
Look at Your Strengths, Opportunities and Threats
First, take a look at your strengths and see where you could leverage them to take advantage of new opportunities. Developing growth priorities isn’t just about looking for places to do better, it’s also about looking at what you already do well and finding ways to build them up. Next, look at your threats and think critically about how your strengths could help to minimize them. For example, if one of your biggest threats is the marketing savvy of another competitor and you have an experienced marketer on your staff and good brand awareness in your audience, ramping up your marketing could help minimize the threat and also build on one of your strengths.
Think About Your Weaknesses
When developing growth priorities, you should also carefully consider your weaknesses. Taking advantage of opportunities in front of you could help to turn weaknesses into strengths. It’s also important to remember that your weaknesses can be a threat, so any efforts to eliminate or lessen your weaknesses are also efforts to help you avoid threats entirely.
The Importance of Developing Growth Priorities
Using your SWOT analysis to help with developing growth priorities is a great way to increase the focus of your team and make sure everyone is on the same page. Our recommendation is to use a formula to craft your priority, X to Y by Z. Here are a couple examples:
- Increase revenue from __X__ to __Y__ by December 31, 2021.
- Decrease time to market with Widget A from X months to Y months by June 2021.
When everyone knows what the top strengths, opportunities, threats and weaknesses are, you can all work together for the success of the group. The time you invest in developing growth priorities will pay off in the long run when you have a refined vision, greater strengths and fewer weaknesses.
Get Help Developing Growth Priorities for 2021 with Zenith Performance Solutions
Zenith Performance Solutions wants to transform the ways that you and your employees learn. We offer a comprehensive range of training course design services, including updating existing courses and consulting. We work with companies of every size to create innovative and instructionally sound materials that boost employee performance and satisfy your objectives. To learn more, please contact us by calling (970) 409-4013.