1. Consider the issues that you as the Cedar Point manager are examining as part of this exercise.

What other issues should you examine? It couldn’t be a better day to be at Cedar Point amusement park. It’s mid-September, sunny, and 75 degrees, and there’s no one waiting in any of the lines. Passing by the Millennium Force roller coaster, you stop to get a slushee and then sit down at a nearby picnic table to start thinking about the annual environmental scan.

Since joining the management team of Cedar Point, a large regional amusement park located in Sandusky, Ohio, you’ve done this exercise 10 times. Each time, it is more diffi cult because the environment keeps changing, but doing the environmental assessment has kept Cedar Point viable. You think to yourself “We’ve just fi nished a tight season, but we managed to come out ahead. We are facing some big shifts, though both in the general business environment and in the amusement industry, so we need to build a plan to meet those environmental challenges.”