As the owner of your janitorial company, one of the key functions of your role in the organization is to think strategically. Specifically, to think about how to help your team and your company create a blueprint for growth and stability for years to come.
One of the most practical ways you can think about strategy is to do a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Evaluating these four areas in your business is a great way to identify where you are, where you should be, and how you can get there.
First, identify where you are strong, and be honest with yourself why you are succeeding in those certain areas. Whether it be a strong management team, successful processes you’ve developed, a good market share, or a solid niche you’ve carved out for yourself.
Second, pinpoint what the weaknesses currently are in your company. Maybe your management team isn’t very strong, maybe you are overly leveraged with a few customers, maybe your operational processes are flimsy, or maybe financially you aren’t as strong as you need to be.
Once you identify your strengths and weaknesses, you will begin to paint a picture of where you are at as a company. Based on this information, you can now locate the opportunities that may be available for the organization. Maybe you have growth potential in another market close by with very little competition. This is an opportunity for you to enter that new market. Maybe you don’t have a significant market share, but you have mastered a certain niche. This means you have a lot of room to expand in that niche. These opportunities will then be the driving force behind your goals and plans for the future.
Finally, you need to seriously consider any potential threats in your organization. A threat is anything that could have an effect on your company in the future. So, for example, being saturated in a market, in terms of growth and revenue, means you may be close to a ceiling in that area. This also means if you aren’t growing in other areas, at some point you might recede. Other examples would be competition in a market, key employees that may be quitting or retiring, accounts coming up for rebid, etc. There are many threats that could be imminent for the organization.
Taking the time to assess the company with your team in these four areas will give you a good foundation to creating a solid strategy moving forward. It will allow you to use strengths to your greatest advantage, find ways to resolve the weaknesses, successfully pursue your opportunities, and prepare the company for any possible threats. You will not only walk away understanding your company better, but you will be positioned to make better plans and execute those plans intentionally and successfully.
