jacob-balslev Concept of the skill
What it is: SWOT/TOWS is a situational-analysis and strategy-option method. SWOT inventories strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; TOWS crosses those factors into SO, WO, ST, and WT strategic options.
Mental model: Separate the world into internal controllable factors and external conditions. Then do not stop at the list. Pair internal and external factors to create options: use strengths against opportunities, use opportunities to address weaknesses, use strengths against threats, and reduce exposure where weaknesses meet threats.
Why it exists: Agents often produce generic SWOT tables that feel complete but do not change a decision. This skill forces the table to become action hypotheses with evidence, tradeoffs, and next validation.
What it is NOT: It is not Five Forces, Seven Powers, Blue Ocean Strategy, Playing to Win, OKRs, PESTEL, VRIO, expected value, or a finished strategy.
Adjacent concepts: situational analysis, strategic fit, internal capabilities, external environment, strategic options, risk exposure, strategic planning, issue prioritization.
One-line analogy: SWOT/TOWS turns a four-pile inventory into candidate moves by crossing what the organization has with what the environment presents.
Common misconception: SWOT does not produce strategy by naming four lists. TOWS is the action step that converts the lists into options, and another decision method may still be needed to choose among them.
SWOT/TOWS
Domain Context
Use SWOT/TOWS for business strategy, product strategy, nonprofit planning, project planning, market-entry preparation, and review of an existing planning workshop output. Use synthetic, aggregate, or public examples only. Do not include personal data, customer data, payment data, secrets, confidential deal details, or private business facts in examples or evals.
SWOT is useful when the decision context is broad enough that both internal capability and external environment matter. TOWS is useful when a team already has factors but needs strategic options. If the user needs a method that analyzes one narrower mechanism, route accordingly: industry pressure to Five Forces, durable advantage to Seven Powers, value innovation to Blue Ocean Strategy, strategy integration to Playing to Win, execution goals to OKRs, or quantified choice to expected value.
Coverage
This skill teaches agents to:
- Define the decision context before filling quadrants.
- Separate internal factors from external conditions.
- Separate positive factors from negative factors.
- Attach evidence, uncertainty, and owner to each factor.
- Prioritize a small set of decision-relevant factors instead of keeping an undifferentiated list.
- Build SO, WO, ST, and WT options from factor crossings.
- State assumptions, risks, and validation needs for each option.
- Escalate to another method when SWOT/TOWS has reached its limit.
Philosophy of the skill
SWOT is easy to understand and easy to misuse. Its weakness is not the four labels; its weakness is that teams often treat labels as analysis. A useful SWOT/TOWS pass is disciplined about classification, evidence, and conversion into options.
The method is intentionally modest. It does not prove market attractiveness, competitive advantage, or financial value. It creates a shared map of internal and external factors and a set of strategy hypotheses. That makes it useful early in strategy work, especially when the team needs a common language before choosing a sharper method.
Workflow
1. Frame the decision
Before writing any quadrant, state the scope.
Decision or planning question:
Organization, product, program, or project:
Time horizon:
Market or operating context:
Stakeholders affected:
Evidence available:
Decision this analysis must inform:
Reject vague scopes such as "our company" or "AI market" unless the user is explicitly doing a first-pass brainstorm. Narrow by product, segment, geography, channel, or planning horizon when possible.
2. Classify factors correctly
Use the two axes:
| Quadrant | Axis rule | Test question |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | internal + helpful | What capability, asset, relationship, resource, process, brand, data, team, or position do we control that helps this decision? |
| Weakness | internal + harmful | What internal limitation, gap, liability, constraint, process issue, resource shortfall, or capability deficit hurts this decision? |
| Opportunity | external + helpful | What outside trend, customer shift, market gap, regulation, technology, partnership, channel, or timing factor could help us? |
| Threat | external + harmful | What outside competitor, substitute, regulation, cost shock, behavior shift, dependency, or uncertainty could hurt us? |
If a factor changes when the organization acts on it, it is usually internal. If the organization must respond to it but does not control it, it is usually external.
3. Add evidence and confidence
Do not let the quadrants become assertion storage.
| Factor | Quadrant | Evidence | Confidence | Decision relevance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S/W/O/T | observed / cited / inferred / assumed | high / medium / low | high / medium / low |
Low-confidence factors can remain in the table, but they should not drive recommendations without a validation step.
4. Prioritize factors before crossing
TOWS works badly when every minor factor is crossed with every other factor. Select the few factors that matter most to the decision.
Use these filters:
- Does the factor materially affect the decision?
- Is there evidence beyond opinion?
- Is the factor specific enough to act on?
- Does it change over the chosen time horizon?
- Would a strategic option change if this factor were removed?
5. Build the TOWS matrix
Cross internal and external factors into strategy options.
| TOWS quadrant | Strategy logic | Prompt |
|---|---|---|
| SO | Use strengths to pursue opportunities | Which strengths let us exploit the opportunity better or faster than alternatives? |
| WO | Use opportunities to address weaknesses | Which opportunities help us reduce, bypass, partner around, or learn through a weakness? |
| ST | Use strengths to reduce threats | Which strengths protect us from the threat or let us respond before others do? |
| WT | Reduce weaknesses and avoid threats | Which defensive moves, risk reductions, exits, simplifications, or staged tests reduce exposure? |
Each option should cite the crossed factors.
Option:
TOWS quadrant: SO / WO / ST / WT
Crossed factors:
Strategic move:
Assumption:
Evidence needed:
Downside:
Next method:
6. Convert options into next work
SWOT/TOWS outputs candidates, not final commitments. Choose the next method by the question still unanswered.
| Unanswered question | Next method |
|---|---|
| Is this industry structurally attractive? | Porter's Five Forces |
| Is this a durable advantage or moat? | Seven Powers |
| Can we create new demand by changing the value curve? | Blue Ocean Strategy |
| What integrated strategy should we commit to? | Playing to Win |
| How should the chosen strategy be executed and measured? | OKRs |
| Which option is worth most under uncertainty? | Expected Value |
| What evidence is missing or weak? | Epistemic Grounding |
Quality Checks
- The scope is explicit enough that factors can be judged as internal or external.
- Strengths and weaknesses are under the actor's control.
- Opportunities and threats are external conditions, not internal aspirations or fears.
- Each important factor has evidence or is marked as an assumption.
- The answer does not treat long lists as insight.
- TOWS options cite the factors they cross.
- The output names what method or evidence should follow.
- Recommendations do not overclaim certainty from a SWOT table.
Do NOT Use When
| Need | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnose industry profit pressure | porters-five-forces |
Five Forces explains structural profitability; SWOT/TOWS only inventories factors and generates options. |
| Classify durable advantage | seven-powers |
Seven Powers tests benefit plus barrier; SWOT/TOWS does not prove a moat. |
| Reconstruct market boundaries and value curves | blue-ocean-strategy |
Blue Ocean Strategy designs value innovation and new demand. |
| Integrate strategy choices into a cascade | playing-to-win |
Playing to Win turns strategy into five linked choices. |
| Turn chosen strategy into objectives and metrics | okrs |
OKRs own execution alignment after strategic choices. |
| Quantitatively compare options | expected-value |
Expected value owns probability-weighted payoff once outcomes and probabilities are modeled. |
Evals
This skill includes sibling eval files:
skills/reasoning-strategy/swot-tows/evals/comprehension.jsonchecks concept definition, mental model, purpose, boundary, taxonomy, analogy, and application.skills/reasoning-strategy/swot-tows/evals/evals.jsonchecks applied behavior on realistic SWOT/TOWS prompts and hard negatives.
Keep eval_state: unverified in audit-state.json until a grader run produces a receipt.
Verification
After applying this skill, verify:
- The response defines the decision context before producing quadrants.
- Internal and external factors are not mixed.
- Factors include evidence or are marked as assumptions.
- The answer creates SO, WO, ST, and WT options when the user asks for TOWS or actions.
- The answer does not claim SWOT/TOWS proves industry attractiveness, durable advantage, value innovation, or financial value.
- The answer names the next evidence-gathering or decision method.
Key Sources
- Heinz Weihrich, "The TOWS Matrix - A Tool for Situational Analysis", Long Range Planning, 15(2), 54-66, 1982. DOI:
10.1016/0024-6301(82)90120-0. - Australian Government business.gov.au, "Do a SWOT analysis".
- Michael D. Watkins, "From SWOT to TOWS: Answering a Reader's Strategy Question", Harvard Business Review, 2007.
skills/reasoning-strategy/swot-tows/references/swot-tows-sources.mdskills/reasoning-strategy/swot-tows/references/upstream-displacement-2026-06-02.md