The one fact that has remained unchallenged in the attacks on conventional strategic planning wisdom is that the external environment has a significant influence on the ongoing longevity of any organization. What has been challenged is the ability of planners to make long-term predictions of the convolutions and changes in that external environment. The closer to the state of certainty that the predictors are operating, then the more likely the assumptions on which the planning is based will be correct. So conventional strategic planning techniques can be quite useful in the short term. The time duration of this ‘short term’ will vary from industry to industry and from organization to organization within an industry. However, in today’s erratic climate one could not expect to foresee much more than 2 years at the most and, quite often, only a few months. Given this short time horizon, conventional strategic planning is critical to the operation of the legitimate system in two ways: