Introducing SOAR Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide (2024)

A company needs strategic tools beyond patching up holes in the organisation. Additionally, the company-wide vision must emphasise internal strengths—both recent accomplishments and aspirational prospects.

A SOAR analysis might be the ideal strategic instrument when creating goals with an eye towards the future. This framework may be used to match current market opportunities with goals for growth and desired results.

You will learn how to apply SOAR analysis in the strategic planning process and comprehend the idea behind the SOAR framework with the aid of this guide.

TL;DR

• Organisations can use a SOAR analysis as a strategic planning tool to develop a common future vision that builds on the organization’s existing strengths.
• Using a 2×2 grid, organisations may utilise a SOAR analysis to graphically represent their company’s key strengths and how to build on them.
• Advantages: A SOAR analysis is simple to use and a great tool for multi-departmental, cross-disciplinary strategic planning.
• Cons: A SOAR analysis does not evaluate competitive threats because it provides a prospective view of an organization’s goals.

A SOAR Analysis: What Is It?

A strategic planning framework is a Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results (SOAR) Analysis. This 2×2 grid-based strategy tool aids organisations in comparing and contrasting their present organisational capabilities with their potential for the future.

Outlining the business helps you come up with a common vision that effectively captures its distinctive principles. Your company may establish links between current business circumstances and targeted outcomes with the use of a SOAR analysis.

The fundamental vision and action-oriented plan for your company may be improved with a forward-looking and strengths-based perspective.

The SOAR matrix’s bottom row highlights your goals, while the top row describes the business as it is right now. While the right column highlights external circumstances, the left column concentrates on internal problems.

Now let’s examine each of the four matrix quadrants:

Advantages

You can make sure that all of the results align with your long-term goals when you identify what works, here and now. This SOAR analysis quadrant emphasises your strengths above your deficiencies (keep such observations for your SWOT analysis).

Questions you might pose to your teammates include:

• What does our company excel at?
• What are the strengths we now possess?
• What is the biggest accomplishment of our company?
• What distinguishing feature (USP) do we offer?
• What does our company accomplish better than any of its rivals right now?

TIP: Involve your clients in the process by finding out what aspects of your goods or services they find most enjoyable. You may find elements that previously escaped your notice. This will enable your company to build on its advantages and influence sales and profits. 

Prospects

You may identify which strategies can take advantage of the existing circumstances to get a larger market share if you have a clearer understanding of the opportunities that exist in the market. It is the strategy quadrant that, as opposed to stating vague and unproven aims as a last resort, concentrates on the observable external gains you can obtain.

Questions you might pose to your teammates include:

• Which contemporary developments can our organisation take advantage of?
• Which alliances or joint ventures may our company enter into?
• Exists a gap in the market that we might potentially close?
• Do our clients still have requirements or wants that are unmet?

Goals and objectives

You may decide what aims are feasible and where to focus your efforts when you outline your company’s future intentions and ambitions. Instead of settling for the same old dull routine, this area of the SOAR is meant to question the current quo and develop fresh ideas.

Questions you might pose to your teammates include:

• What motivates our company?
• What do we want to accomplish?
• What matters to our organisation?
• What is the future we want to see?

Outcomes

You may identify concrete strategies for enhancing your performance once you have defined quantifiable results. Instead of depending solely on assumptions and conjecture about performance, the SOAR model quadrant assists you in establishing your target goals to validate progress in your business model. Your KPIs, OKRs, or any other performance management system your company uses may fall under this category.

Questions you might pose to your teammates include:

• How is performance monitored by the organisation?
• How can we translate our goals for the future into quantifiable data?
• What does the company consider success to be?
• Are the appropriate instruments at our disposal? 

How to Conduct a SOAR Analysis and Convert Understanding Into Outcomes (In 5 Steps)

Boardrooms are generally where plans end. Comprehending the advantages of a SOAR analysis and completing the matrix is one thing; putting the plan into action is quite another.

Use these methods to drive real change inside your organisation and make the most out of your SOAR study.

1.Future output

First, arrange a brainstorming session for yourself, your coworkers, and any pertinent stakeholders. Conduct a thorough analysis of your company. List the raw data that illustrates or highlights your organization’s present situation using the first row of the SOAR matrix (Strengths and Opportunities).

Finding your ideal future state is the next stage. This entails completing the SOAR matrix’s bottom row (Aspirations and Results).

The brainstorming session can, for instance, enumerate important success elements (Results quadrant) like:

• Present-day client connections
• Trends of growth in emerging markets
• positive comments from the participants
• The deadlines for the assets of the company’s return on investment

Your SOAR analysis and decision-making will be stronger the more details you and your strategy team can precisely identify on the SOAR matrix.

Advice: Conduct workshops with all relevant parties, and if at all feasible, engage a cross-functional team of staff members and clients in the strategy meeting. Utilise internal and external stakeholder collaboration while developing your SOAR analysis since it is a crucial component of co-creation and organisational empowerment.

2. Create a strategy plan with specific areas of emphasis.

By its very nature, strategy brainstorming is informal. Combining and testing concepts from many angles and viewpoints is possible when you approach problems in an open-minded manner.

However, you must sift through and select from among the vast array of ideas to bring the imaginative concepts and thoughts to life. To bridge the gap between your present and future states, you must set priorities and create an action plan in stage two of the SOAR analysis.

It is not possible to take on every task at once. In your SOAR framework, you may have included several distinct company-wide goals. Now, eliminate the unnecessary details and choose the most important objectives that are reachable, pertinent, and significant. For this reason, Cascade provides a platform that assists in creating cohesive action plans precisely. Utilise the tools to simplify the way your business implements the concepts discussed at the SOAR strategy session.

3. Put your plan into action

Put the strategy into action. And posting a business memo isn’t enough to do that. Workers will revert to their regular routines if they don’t feel included in the organization’s larger goal or, worse yet if they are unaware of the new approach. This may cause a rift between the performance of the C-suite in their ivory tower and what the real workers are doing.

Disconnection can result in disillusionment, low morale, and disengaged employees, all of which are detrimental to the company’s bottom line.

Communication is the solution. Management must spend money on resources that encourage comprehension and support from all parties involved. Make sure you:

• Assign responsibility and establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
• Enumerate the intended results and strategic objectives.
• Invest in learning and hold review sessions.
• Display openness at every level of the organisation.
• Make use of interdepartmental communication software.

As a bonus, when you take the time to implement your plan, you create an accountable culture that raises engagement levels and boosts overall business performance.

4. Evaluate and assess your work.

Don’t forget to set it once you have. A SOAR study should assist in gradually changing the company’s whole course; it is not a one-time occurrence. It is far too simple to have a honeymoon period before reverting to outdated, unproductive behaviours.

Make an ongoing review investment to avoid strategy drift. You must compare your accomplishments to predetermined goals. And if you notice yourself slipping unavoidably back into old patterns of behaviour or thought, address the problem.

Nobody likes to report to the board on underwhelming performance targets and ineffective strategic initiatives that result from inadequate supervision or assessment.

We know the importance of monitoring your strategy execution, so WE ARE AS strategy dashboards. Consider us as a one-stop home for your strategy. If you have the right strategy execution team to track and review your organizational progress, you can discover data insights to act upon before it’s too late.

5. Make necessary adjustments to seize new market possibilities.

Finally, adjust to a changing industry. As internal and external market conditions change, your SOAR analysis will also need to alter. What could be effective now has to be reassessed later. Opportunities that you may take advantage of right today could vanish when industry trends change.

Furthermore, as your company grows, it will change, necessitating additional inspections. As needed, change your viewpoint, modify your approach, and go back over your SOAR analysis.

Soar Analysis Pros

The main pros of SOAR analysis are: 

• Easy to use and create
• Sets action and outcome-oriented strategic objectives
• Functions as a cross-discipline, multi-department strategic framework
• Creates a positive and realistic organizational forecast 
• Builds a flexible and scalable collaborative approach to strategic planning

Soar Analysis Cons

The main cons of SOAR Analysis are: 

• Does not explore organizational weaknesses or threats
• Can lack granularity and detail
• Can overlap and repeat elements found in other strategy frameworks (e.g. aspirations are often listed in your organization’s vision) 
• Bottom-row quadrants (Aspirations and Results) may offer limited analysis and data grounded in the current marketplace

When and Where Is SOAR Analysis the Best Option?

If you should perform a SOAR analysis depends on your particular strategic needs and the state of your company.

For instance, because a SWOT Analysis more accurately evaluates dangers, it is significantly more appropriate for a corporation to embark on riskier corporate projects. Furthermore, a SOAR study is not the best choice for a company that wishes to evaluate intricate components against market rivals because it offers more internal investigations and projections.

Because SOAR analysis’s strategic foundation is an appreciative inquiry, it works best for organisational learning, innovation, and corporate discovery.

Those who would benefit more from a broad, future-focused synopsis of the organization’s strategic ambitions should use a SOAR rather than in-depth threat assessments or investigative frameworks that uncover company weaknesses in need of correction.  

FAQs about SOAR Analysis

How Often Should I Update My SOAR Framework?

You should evaluate and update your SOAR Analysis on an annual basis.

How Long Does A SOAR Analysis Take?

SOAR analysis shouldn’t take more than an hour. But it depends on the size of your organization, the complexity of your business, and how well-prepared your team is for the brainstorming session.

Who Should Be Present In A Brainstorming Session?

You need a mix of employees from all organisational levels to better capture the current reality of your business and its future desires.

Can I use a SOAR Analysis Individually?

You can use SOAR Analysis individually, but it’s best suited for cross-department planning.

Who Created The SOAR Analysis?

Jacqueline Stavros, David Cooperrider & D. Lynn Kelley created the SOAR Analysis in their paper SOAR: A new approach to strategic planning.

What Is The Difference Between A SOAR Analysis And A SWOT Analysis?

The difference between A SOAR Analysis and a SWOT analysis is that the first one focuses on current strategic goals and how they relate to future desired outcomes, while a SWOT Analysis focuses more on identifying organizational weaknesses and ways to improve them.