Strategic Assessments is simply the exercise of placing market segments on a Market Attractiveness/Competitive Position matrix and considering implications for strategy. It's really just a tool for assessing the relative merits of your position in each of your core market segments. The strategic issues discussion is intended to capture any questions that remain outstanding regarding the course and direction of the company. These issues can cover anything, and need not be confined to the core market segments. Strategic issues often cover questions relating to management of people, suppliers, political situations, technologies, the economy, and financial strategy, which may not be adequately covered in other parts of the process. The strategic issues discussion is an especially important way to cover non-market issues and issues that may be very specific to a given company.

While the Simplified Strategic Planning process gives no specific recommendation that worksheets be updated during the year, you should at a minimum, review all of your assumptions on a quarterly basis as prescribed in the monitoring process. In addition it is prudent that you monitor your general business situation for significant change on an ongoing basis. Doing so is the only way to give your plan the flexibility it needs. This can be an informal activity such as making notes on worksheets in the planning book (or on a shared network drive) as useful information becomes available. This approach has the added benefit of providing a starting point for the formal updating of worksheets, which is done on an annual basis. If a major new event takes place or a significant new piece of information comes to light at any point during the year, an assessment of the implications should be done. Any applicable worksheets should be revised (or new ones completed) and discussed with the team.

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