Here is an excerpt from a recent blog post by Andrea Kates in which she explains why the SWOT analysis (of Strengths, Weaknesses/Limitations, Opportunities, and Threats) is inadequate to the challenges that await in 2013 and beyond. To read the complete article, please click here.]

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Please toss out your SWOT analysis and replace it with these easy to use new tools for strategic innovation.

‘Tis the season for evaluating our performance in 2012 and dusting off our strategic plans to refresh them for 2013.

I have a radical idea.

Please don’t start with a SWOT analysis.

For those of you who haven’t used them, the SWOT analysis is a tradition in many board rooms and break rooms. We analyze our companies based on our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and magically discover what our next move can be to grow our companies by 10 percent.

The problem with SWOTs is that they weren’t designed to automatically help us discover what to do next. As a matter of fact, I’ve sat through hundreds of strategy sessions that start with a big SWOT assessment on the wall and observed the glazed-over eyes staring at all of the data posted all around the room.

That glazed-over look always reminds me of my expression when I once walked into a science lab where lots of data was displayed all around me about how the rats had been responding to their mazes for the past week. I thought, “Well, I can see what the animals have been doing in the past, but it’s very hard to tell what might happen next.”

Don’t get me wrong—there is a time and place for SWOTs and rear view mirror metrics are exceedingly helpful in assessing where we are on many levels. But the problem is that no matter how long we stare at our present situation, we will be operating at a severe disadvantage when it comes to the future if we don’t upgrade and rethink our perspectives to include what I believe to be the new basic tools for figuring out what we should really do next.

[Andrea then offers four specific suggestions. To read the complete article, please click here.]

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Andrea Kates is the founder of the Business Genome® project and author of the bestselling business innovation book, Find Your Next: Using the Business Genome Approach to Find Your Company’s Next Competitive Edge (McGraw-Hill).