SOAR Analysis vs SWOT: Which Framework to Use

Use SOAR when your main question is "where do we grow?" and SWOT when your main question is "what could hurt us?" SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results) builds on what already works and points the team at a goal, so it suits growth planning. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) suits situations where you need an honest look at risk, such as a turnaround, a new market entry, or a major investment.

What each framework actually asks

Both frameworks start with strengths and opportunities. The difference is what comes next.

SWOT asks you to list internal weaknesses and external threats. The output is a map of your situation, good and bad. If you want the full method, see our SWOT analysis template for small business owners.

SOAR asks two forward-looking questions instead:

• Aspirations: What do we want to become or achieve in the next 12 to 36 months?
• Results: How will we know we are getting there? What measurable outcomes prove it?

SOAR came out of appreciative inquiry, a method that argues teams change faster when they build on what works than when they fix what is broken. You do not have to buy the philosophy to see the practical effect. A SOAR session ends with a goal and a scoreboard. A SWOT session often ends with a long list and an argument about which quadrant matters most.

Side-by-side comparison

The weak spots matter more than the strengths here. SWOT tends to fail by producing a tidy poster that nobody uses. SOAR tends to fail by producing optimism that nobody tests.

When SOAR is the better choice

Pick SOAR in these situations:

• You are growing and not in trouble. If revenue is up, retention is steady and the question is how to use momentum, listing weaknesses first pulls the conversation toward fixing instead of building.
• Your team is stuck in problem mode. Some teams have a long history of post-mortems. A SWOT with them becomes a complaints session. SOAR changes the starting point.
• You need a goal, not a diagnosis. If leadership cannot say what the business should look like in two years, SOAR forces that conversation through the Aspirations quadrant.
• You are planning a growth bet. Expanding a product line, adding a sales channel or entering an adjacent segment all benefit from starting with what you can already do well. Pair it with the Ansoff Matrix to choose between market penetration, new products and new markets.
• You need buy-in. People commit to goals they helped shape. SOAR gives everyone a voice in the aspirations, which helps when you later build team buy-in around a new strategy.

When SWOT is the better choice

Stay with SWOT when:

• You are in a turnaround. If cash runway is under six months or a key customer just left, you need to look at weaknesses and threats head on. SOAR will feel like avoidance.
• You face real external risk. Regulation, a dominant competitor moving into your space or supply instability all belong in a Threats quadrant. For deeper outside-in scanning, add a PESTLE analysis.
• You are evaluating a big irreversible decision. An acquisition, a long lease or a major hire deserves a hard look at what could go wrong.
• Your team is overconfident. If the room already believes everything is great, a quadrant that forces weaknesses onto the page does useful work.

Worked example: a 28-person B2B software company

Here is how a SOAR session played out for a composite company based on engagements I have seen. It is a project management add-on for construction subcontractors. Annual recurring revenue was $3.2 million, up 22% year over year, with 28 employees and about 410 customers.

The leadership team had run a SWOT the year before. The Weaknesses quadrant took 40 minutes and listed 17 items. The Opportunities quadrant had six. The follow-up plan tried to address nine weaknesses and went nowhere, because the team had no shared goal to rank them against.

This year they ran SOAR in a two-hour session with eight people: the leadership team plus the support lead and one senior engineer.

Strengths (what we do well)

• Net revenue retention of 108%, driven by customers adding seats
• Onboarding takes 9 days against a category norm the team estimated at 30
• Support satisfaction around 94%
• Deep integrations with the two accounting tools most subcontractors use

Opportunities (external openings)

• General contractors are starting to require subcontractors to use shared compliance tracking
• Two competitors raised prices roughly 15% this year
• Inbound requests from electrical and HVAC trades, which the product barely serves today

Aspirations (what we want)

The group wrote and then voted on three. The winner: "Become the default compliance and scheduling tool for specialty trade subcontractors in the Southeast." That was narrow enough to act on.

Results (how we will know)

• Grow ARR from $3.2M to $4.8M (50%) within 18 months
• Land 60 new customers in electrical and HVAC, up from 11 today
• Hold onboarding under 12 days as volume grows
• Keep net revenue retention above 105%

What happened next

The team turned the output into four initiatives, each with one owner and a 90-day checkpoint: a compliance-tracking module (2 engineers, about 10 weeks), a trade-specific onboarding path, a partner pilot with one regional contractors' association, and a pricing review. They did not try to fix all 17 old weaknesses.

Then they did the step most teams skip. They spent 30 minutes on a mini-SWOT of just those four initiatives. That surfaced two real risks: engineering capacity (the compliance module would stall the integration roadmap) and a dependency on one association partner. They added a hiring decision for one more engineer and a second partner target. SOAR set the direction; SWOT stress-tested it.

Step-by-step: how to run a SOAR session

1. Set the scope in one sentence. Example: "Our growth plan for the next 18 months." Without scope, aspirations sprawl.
2. Invite 6 to 10 people. Include at least one person who talks to customers daily. Skip the 20-person version; it turns into a presentation.
3. Start with Strengths (20 minutes). Ask for evidence, not adjectives. "Great customer service" is weak. "94% satisfaction and 4-hour median first response" is a strength.
4. Move to Opportunities (20 minutes). Focus on external openings: customer requests, competitor moves, market shifts. Ask which strengths could capture each one.
5. Draft Aspirations (25 minutes). Have each person write one aspiration alone, then cluster and vote. Aim for one to three. If you want a clear measure of progress, a North Star metric can anchor this.
6. Define Results (20 minutes). Turn each aspiration into 3 to 5 measures with numbers and dates. Include at least one guardrail metric, such as retention or margin, so growth does not hide damage.
7. Pick initiatives (20 minutes). Choose three to five. Assign one owner each and a 90-day checkpoint.
8. Run a short risk check (30 minutes, same day or next week). List what could derail each initiative. This is where SWOT thinking comes back in.

For turning initiatives into schedules and owners, our guide on building an execution plan that teams actually follow picks up where this leaves off.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Mistake 1: Treating SOAR as permission to ignore risk

This is the most common failure. A team runs SOAR, feels good, and commits budget to a plan nobody pressure-tested. The fix is the risk check in step 8. Never skip it when money or headcount is involved.

Mistake 2: Writing aspirations that are slogans

"Be the best in our industry" cannot guide a decision. A usable aspiration names who you serve, what you will be known for and roughly when. Test it by asking whether it would make you say no to something. If it would not, rewrite it.

Mistake 3: Listing strengths nobody outside the room would recognize

Teams inflate strengths. Check each one against customer behavior: reviews, renewal rates, win/loss notes. If you want a rigorous filter, run your top strengths through the VRIO framework to see which are truly hard to copy.

Mistake 4: Results with no numbers

"Improve customer satisfaction" is not a result. "Raise 90-day retention from 84% to 90% by Q3" is. If you cannot put a number on it, you cannot tell whether you are winning.

Mistake 5: Using it once a year and filing it

Review Results quarterly. A SOAR document that is not touched for 12 months is just a nicer poster than a SWOT.

A simple decision rule

If you only have a minute, use this:

• Growth planning with a healthy business: SOAR.
• Trouble, big risk or an irreversible commitment: SWOT.
• Growth planning where the downside is large: SOAR first, then a SWOT on the chosen initiatives.
• Unsure about the gaps between where you are and where you want to be: after SOAR, run a gap analysis between your Strengths and your Aspirations.

Frameworks are tools, not loyalty tests. The best teams I have worked with switch between them based on the question in front of them.

Key takeaways

• SOAR asks where you want to go and how you will measure it; SWOT asks what your situation looks like, including risks.
• Use SOAR for growth planning in a healthy business, and SWOT for turnarounds, major risk reviews and irreversible decisions.
• The strongest approach is sequential: run SOAR to choose direction, then a short SWOT-style risk check on the three to five initiatives you pick.
• Good Aspirations are specific enough to make you say no, and good Results have numbers, dates and at least one guardrail metric.
• Back every strength with evidence from customers or data, not opinions from the room.
• Review Results every quarter, or the framework becomes a one-time workshop with no effect.