| Team building exercises. |
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This is a very simple team building exercise and one that can involve the whole team. It’s called a SWOT analysis and is an excellent management tool for the practice. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s best to ask all of the staff at the practice to give their views. For the best results explain what the SWOT analysis is and ask each employee to think about answers to each letter (explained below) and bring their answers to the next meeting. By providing a draft SWOT, you can quickly transfer the answers onto a whiteboard, butchers paper, whatever your practice has to use for all of the staff to see (some answers will appear more than once!) As with your general meetings, establish some ground rules. Explain that the SWOT process is an exercise aimed at improving the practice and not about allocating blame. Assure all staff that their contributions are respected and appreciated, all staff members’ suggestions and ideas are important and no one idea is better than another. I recommend you read my tips on meetings before you participate in this exercise. Step One - S List the strengths of the practice: Examples of strengths are a good team, practice is in a good location, good return from vaccination reminders, good parking etc. Write down whatever you can think of – brainstorm. Step Two – W Identify weakness in the practice: Examples are delays in returning client phone calls, long waiting periods when admitting animals, slow response rates from pathology, staff holidays, leadership problems, decline in the sale of flea control, lack of staff knowledge in regards to nutrition. Step Three – O List the opportunities: Examples of opportunities could be a new pet store opening in the area which could refer to you, new computer software to be launched etc, internet, a chance to promote the practice at the million paws walk etc. Step Four - T List the threats to the practice: Examples of threats could be a new clinic opening up in the next suburb, a local vet cut pricing desexing procedures etc When you have completed the process, you will have a list developed for each letter (SWOT). Encourage group discussion about the four lists by asking:
1. How can we use our strengths to enable us to take advantage of the opportunities identified? 2. How can we use these strengths to overcome the threats identified? 3. What do we need to do to overcome the identified weaknesses in order to take advantage of the opportunities? 4. How will we minimise the weaknesses to overcome the identified threats?
It is best to set out the exercise in the following way:
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