Personal SWOT analysis: the business grid, turned on yourself

A personal SWOT analysis maps your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats on a simple grid of four boxes. The really useful part comes afterwards, when you cross a strength with an opportunity to find something worth going after, and a weakness with a threat to find something worth protecting. That crossing step comes from Heinz Weihrich's TOWS matrix, published in 1982, and it's how PiViva's Personal SWOT finishes.

Why do so many personal SWOTs end up in a drawer?

You've probably done one at some point, perhaps on a training course or the evening before an appraisal.

The strengths box says "good communicator" and "team player". The weaknesses box says "perfectionist", which is the answer most of us give when we'd rather not say anything too revealing. Opportunities says "growing market", and threats says "AI", because that's what everyone is talking about.

Twenty minutes later you have four boxes full of words that could describe almost anyone, and nothing in particular to do on Monday morning. So the whole thing goes in a drawer, and you feel a little as though you've done your homework without learning very much.

What is a SWOT analysis, and where did it come from?

SWOT started life as a tool for business planning. For many years it was credited to Albert Humphrey at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, but in 2023 Richard Puyt and his colleagues went back through the archives, found no evidence for that, and traced it instead to Robert F. Stewart's team at the same institute.

The two-by-two grid most of us recognise came later. In 1982 Heinz Weihrich, a management professor, published what he called the TOWS matrix in the journal Long Range Planning, and he added the step most people forget, which is to cross the boxes:

• strengths with opportunities, to see what you could go after,
• weaknesses with opportunities, to see what you'd need to improve to take an opportunity,
• strengths with threats, to see how what you're good at could protect you,
• weaknesses with threats, to see what needs shoring up before it catches you out.

Four boxes on their own give you a description of where you are, and the crossings are what turn that description into something you can act on.

How do you do a personal SWOT in PiViva?

One gentle rule makes all the difference: ground every item in something you've actually seen or heard in the last few weeks.

So, in place of "good communicator", you might write down what someone said to you after your presentation. You might note the meeting that went badly and why you think it did, or the job advert you saw last week and can't stop thinking about. A SWOT built on self-image tends to tell you very little, while a SWOT built on real evidence can tell you a great deal.

You fill the four boxes, and then PiViva asks you for two crossings at the end: a strength crossed with an opportunity, which gives you something to go after this month, and a weakness crossed with a threat, which gives you something to protect against. Each of those can become an action straight away.

The weaknesses box is where the most useful work happens. It's private to you, so you can be completely honest there, and being honest about a weakness is often the very first step to turning it into something you're good at.

What if you can't see your own weaknesses?

You're in very good company. In 2010 the psychologist Simine Vazire found that the people around us are often better than we are at judging some of our traits, such as intellect, so it's no surprise if a few of yours are hard to see from the inside.

It helps to gather other views. The Johari Window helps you think about what others might see that you don't, and 360 Feedback asks them directly and anonymously. If you've filed a 360 or a performance review in the Report Room, Viv can draw strengths and weaknesses out of it for you to consider.

A personal SWOT is lovely to do before an appraisal, a pitch or a job move, or any time you find yourself wondering whether you're ready for the next step. More often than not, it shows you that you're closer than you thought.