What SWOT analysis actually looks like in the middle of a turnaround

We’ve all seen the classic SWOT slide - four neat quadrants, often with vague buzzwords like “agility” or “customer focus,” presented early in a strategic deck to show that the team has “done the homework.” But the most honest, high-impact SWOT I ever worked on didn’t happen in a tidy workshop. It happened inside a deeply anxious company in the middle of a failing turnaround, when people had stopped saying what they actually thought and started fearing for their jobs.

That was when the real strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats finally started to show up - not in a matrix, but in real conversations. Not in a document, but in decisions people were too afraid to make. And the process that unfolded taught me more about how people actually face strategic reality than any framework I’ve ever used.