Worksheet: Write down the assumptions and give each an owner

Every strategy rests on beliefs about the market, customers, competitors and costs. Unwritten, they fail without anyone noticing. This sheet lists the five that matter and puts someone on watch. It builds the Competent step of the check:

The core assumptions are stated in the strategy and someone owns watching them.

Step 1. Find them

Read the strategy and ask of each choice: what has to be true for this to work? Write every answer down, then keep the five that would hurt most if wrong.

Step 2. Set the watch

Assumption	Kind (market, customer, competitor, cost, regulation)	What we believe today	Indicator	Source and how often	Trigger	What we do if it fires	Owner
e.g. The market stays flat, with a cyclical swing	Market	Volumes within 5% of this year	Industry volumes	Industry data, monthly	Two quarters down more than 5%	Reopen the capacity plan	COO
1
2
3
4
5

Step 3. Report on it

Each owner reports at the quarterly strategy review: indicator reading, trend, and whether the trigger is close.

Review date	Assumption	Reading	Trigger close?	Action

Done when: the five assumptions are written into the strategy, and each has a named owner who reports on it at every strategy review.

Adapted from our own strategy ghost deck (Forty 2, 2025).