throwing bones and strategic planning

[Marei Kiele]

Paul Everett wrote in May:

...
I remember challenging our top management on this planning bit because they started in July for the following year.  Several thousand man-months were absorbed by what was really a financial issue.  I suggested that we throw bones and say that is what the markets were going to be like---bounded instability.  (I told them the story of the Canadian Indian tribe who's Shaman threw bones to decide where to hunt.  Worked wonderfully for some incredible reasons, too long to type).  Trying to say what reality was going to be never worked.  The variances between plan and actual were all over the map, from deep losses to huge profits, none of which were planned, which I pointed out.  I guess it would have been cooler if I had suggested something using stochastics or some other mathematical model but I thought throwing bones would do and then we could get on with the business of dealing with the emerging markets and realities as they arrived.  Needless to say there was pained silence all around and a few guffaws.  We didn't do it.

...

Paul,

this is one of the many mails that put a big smile out of pure joy on my face. (As I please myself today with reading hundreds of mails from this list which I saved in my "still to read folder" during the last three months, not having had the heart to delete them - and wise have I been not to! I am down from 681 to 146, uff..:) ) 

Back to your posting: I wish I had been there at that meeting.

And now - being given your little finger I want the whole hand! 
Please, share the story of the Canadian Indian tribe and why throwing bones worked. I am sure it's a great one.
What would I need to offer on this market place of conversation to make you start typing?

If you come to Halifax: I could pay with a ten minute massage (which you might need after a lot off typing). More of this I am going to offer there for the Acess Queen auction inspired by Koos who did it in Svenmark - with great sucess as I recall.

Interested?

Still smiling from one ear to the other, 
Marei

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