SWOTting Your Therapy Practice


You’ll probably have heard the term SWOT Analysis. The acronym stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s a commonly used management tool for identifying where your practice is, and helping you to identify priorities and strategies. Sounds a bit over the top for a therapy practice? Maybe, or maybe not.

Often, when talking to therapists, I hear a lot about the blocks and obstacles that may be in the way of them moving their practice on. I’m not denying that these obstacles may well exist. Often, however, I hear quite a slanted perspective. Doing a SWOT analysis, which asks you to look not just at the threats and weaknesses, but also the strengths and opportunities, can help you to highlight positive aspects of your practice that that you may not have considered.

In order to see how this might work, let’s have a look at a SWOT analysis for a fictional practice, “Soft Shoulder, Counselling & Psychotherapy,” a two therapist practice in a small country town.

Strengths

  1. Our practice is well established in the town. We were the first therapy or counselling practice in the area. We have a good relationship with older GPs who know and trust us.
  2. We have a good spread of expertise within the practice. Both of us work with individual adults, one also works with children and the other with couples and groups.Strength
  3. We have a steady flow of work, mainly at full fee, some at a discount.
  4. We work from a lovely premises, well maintained, welcoming warm environment.

Weaknesses

  1. No online presence as yet.
  2. Paper based marketing material now four years old, and reflects an aging practice and client profile. Need to refresh to attract a wider clientele.
  3. Inadequate administrative support within the practice means that a lot of admin work gets done at weekends, and only sporadically. Major rush to write up books and records to prepare last year’s financial statements.
  4. We have poor facilities for parking.

Opportunities

  1. Dr XX, with whom we have a good relationship, is moving to new premises shortly and has excess space. May be willing to consider having a therapist on site. There’s an opportunity for us to create a stronger connection between local medical and therapy professions.
  2. A work colleague has put forward our practice to provide EAP work during forthcoming restructuring.
  3. The local secondary school is looking for a part time counsellor to work with students.
  4. The local community centre is running a series of free talks on health issues, and looking for presenters.

threatsThreats

  1. Two new practices have opened in the town in the last year. Both have good websites and one provides online counselling. The other provides weekend service for both regular clients and crises.
  2. The new holistic centre in town is providing a range of alternative services including EFT and other energy modalities. Quite openly and aggressively marketing holistic remedies as quicker and cheaper alternatives to traditional therapy.
  3. Both our practitioners are aging, and our contacts and referrers are of a similar age, leading to a reduction in new work coming in from younger clients who see us as unable to understand them and their lives.
  4. Unexpected costs for repairing the roof have left us with little cash reserves.

Carrying out this exercise allows you to see where you might focus your next actions. Strengths can be capitalised on, opportunities grasped, weaknesses compensated for, and threats addressed. Take some time out and try it for yourself. You might be surprised what you learn!

The above example has been prepared from the perspective of the practice, however, it would be just as valid to do it from the perspective of the practitioner themselves.

If you’d like to look at your practice with a view to making a plan going forward, I’d like to help you. Contact me here for your free 20 minute consultation or to make an appointment.

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