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CHAPTER 3 • THE EXTERNAL ASSESSMENT 79

A sense of the future permeates all action and underlies every decision a person
makes. People eat expecting to be satisfied and nourished in the future. People sleep
assuming that in the future they will feel rested. They invest energy, money, and time
because they believe their efforts will be rewarded in the future. They build highways
assuming that automobiles and trucks will need them in the future. Parents educate chil-
dren on the basis of forecasts that they will need certain skills, attitudes, and knowledge
when they grow up. The truth is we all make implicit forecasts throughout our daily lives.
The question, therefore, is not whether we should forecast but rather how we can best fore-
cast to enable us to move beyond our ordinarily unarticulated assumptions about the
future. Can we obtain information and then make educated assumptions (forecasts) to bet-
ter guide our current decisions to achieve a more desirable future state of affairs? We
should go into the future with our eyes and our minds open, rather than stumble into the
future with our eyes closed. 15
Many publications and sources on the Internet forecast external variables. Several
published examples include Industry Week’s “Trends and Forecasts,” BusinessWeek’s
“Investment Outlook,” and Standard & Poor’s Industry Survey. The reputation and contin-
ued success of these publications depend partly on accurate forecasts, so published sources
of information can offer excellent projections. An especially good Web site for industry
forecasts is finance.yahoo.com. Just insert a firm’s stock symbol and go from there.
Sometimes organizations must develop their own projections. Most organizations
forecast (project) their own revenues and profits annually. Organizations sometimes fore-
cast market share or customer loyalty in local areas. Because forecasting is so important in
strategic management and because the ability to forecast (in contrast to the ability to use a
forecast) is essential, selected forecasting tools are examined further here.
Forecasting tools can be broadly categorized into two groups: quantitative techniques
and qualitative techniques. Quantitative forecasts are most appropriate when historical
data are available and when the relationships among key variables are expected to remain
the same in the future. Linear regression, for example, is based on the assumption that the
future will be just like the past—which, of course, it never is. As historical relationships
become less stable, quantitative forecasts become less accurate.
No forecast is perfect, and some forecasts are even wildly inaccurate. This fact accents
the need for strategists to devote sufficient time and effort to study the underlying bases for
published forecasts and to develop internal forecasts of their own. Key external opportuni-
ties and threats can be effectively identified only through good forecasts. Accurate fore-
casts can provide major competitive advantages for organizations. Forecasts are vital to the
strategic-management process and to the success of organizations.

Making Assumptions
Planning would be impossible without assumptions. McConkey defines assumptions as the
“best present estimates of the impact of major external factors, over which the manager has
little if any control, but which may exert a significant impact on performance or the ability
to achieve desired results.” 16 Strategists are faced with countless variables and imponder-
ables that can be neither controlled nor predicted with 100 percent accuracy. Wild guesses
should never be made in formulating strategies, but reasonable assumptions based on
available information must always be made.
By identifying future occurrences that could have a major effect on the firm and by
making reasonable assumptions about those factors, strategists can carry the strategic-
management process forward. Assumptions are needed only for future trends and events
that are most likely to have a significant effect on the company’s business. Based on the
best information at the time, assumptions serve as checkpoints on the validity of strate-
gies. If future occurrences deviate significantly from assumptions, strategists know that
corrective actions may be needed. Without reasonable assumptions, the strategy-
formulation process could not proceed effectively. Firms that have the best information
generally make the most accurate assumptions, which can lead to major competitive
advantages.