Step 9
An analysis evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, known as a SWOT analysis, is an important task when analyzing an organization’s situation, especially when the information is intended for use in strategy development and related decision making.
For the purposes of this report, however, your interest is in internal organizational factors, and you will therefore focus on strengths and weaknesses.
Review the elements of a SWOT analysis, concentrating on the S and W portions.
Then use the results of your analyses in Steps 2 through 8 to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of your organization.
Step 10
The last step before working on all your conclusions and recommendations for this report is to examine your organization’s capacity to learn and change. Learning organizations are organizations that systematically measure their performance against sound criteria and metrics and then take concrete actions to change and make improvements.
However, organizations—and people—vary considerably in their ability to decide upon, implement, and manage change. Therefore, managing change is extremely important and often goes hand-in-hand with the desire to improve organizational performance.
Think about your organization’s attempts to improve its performance in key areas. If the organization has tried to make changes in key areas, were the attempts a success or a failure? Explain the reasons you associate with the organization’s success in making changes or the organization’s failure to succeed. (If you cannot identify any attempts by your organization to make changes, think of a key area in your organization that could be improved and briefly explain the reasons you think your organization would succeed or fail if an attempt to make changes in that area was launched.)
Step 11
It’s time to wrap everything up. You will now finalize your situation audit report by making recommendations based on the conclusions and research that you’ve done.
In priority order, with one (1) being the highest rank, list and explain, in no more than a few sentences for each conclusion, your report’s 3 to 5 most important conclusions. Follow each conclusion with a specific recommendation that is expressed in no more than a few sentences.
Once discussed with senior management, these recommendations and conclusions may form the basis of future strategic plans and objectives for your organization.
strengths and weaknesses—1 to 2 pages; see Step 9
learning and change—1 to 2 pages; see Step 10
conclusions and recommendations—1 page; see Step 11