Templates
About these templates
These templates all do the same basic job. They give you a set of questions and somewhere to put the answers, so a conversation that could wander for an hour has a shape to follow instead.
Which one you reach for depends on what you are trying to settle. A SWOT analysis is the quickest way to get a shared read on where you stand right now, and it works well at the start of a planning session when everyone arrives with a different picture in their head. The business model canvas is a better fit when the question is how the whole thing actually works, from who you serve through to what it costs to serve them. The 7S framework looks inward at whether your strategy, structure and staff are pulling in the same direction, which makes it useful during a reorganisation or after a change in direction. A prioritization matrix is for the moment after all of that, when you have more good ideas than you can fund and need a defensible way to choose.
Filling these in as a mind map has a practical advantage over a document. Every section stays visible at once, so nobody loses track of what is already on the board, and you can drag an item from one quadrant to another as the discussion changes your mind. That matters more than it sounds. Most of the value in these exercises comes from the argument about where something belongs, and a layout you can rearrange in front of people keeps that argument moving.
Pick whichever one matches the question you are stuck on and edit it directly. Nothing is locked, so you can add sections, rename headings, or strip out anything that does not apply.