Put your planning pants on, people! - Scott Stephenson editorial

Welcome back to The Chaff dear Chaff-olytes. Today we are getting right down to business and not wasting any time. Time wasting is not something that you are going to find here right now or later and that’s how it is always going to be for the next several centuries. No time wasting for hundreds and hundreds of years. There is business immediately at hand and we must get to that business immediately. Right now. It’s business time. Now and forever. Permanently, we here at The Chaff, are getting to it. It being the business that needs to be gotten to… very fast. RIGHT NOW!

 

The business on today’s Chaff-genda is simple. It’s a strategic planning session. The Chaff is looking ahead to the next four years and this exercise is going to set The Chaff tone. Yes, this strategic planning session is everything that we here at The Chaff will need to succeed far beyond our wildest and most strategic dreams. Let’s get this strategic planning session started, shall we? Time to seperate The Chaff wheat from The Chaff chaff.

 

On second thought, strategic planning sessions are a little bit overdone these days. Instead, let’s try a session of strategic planning. Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere. This is a session of strategic planning. That’s the ticket! Or rather this is the ticket. This being, of course, a session of strategic planning. Scrap all that stuff up there about how this is a strategic planning session. That was a waste of time. This is a session of strategic planning.

 

On second, second thought, maybe there’s too much sibilance coming off of a session of strategic planning. What is this? Strategic planning for serpents? Consider this session of strategic planning to be stricken. Save it for the snakes.
Instead, let’s do a planned session of strategizing. Starting with the word, plan, is good. It makes people think there is a plan. This planned session of strategizing was clearly planned. It’s not an unplanned session of strategizing, like some kind of jazz strategizing session. Actually that sounds pretty cool.

 

What we’re doing here today is a jazz strategizing session. We’re going to create several different strategies for jazz. We’ll talk about the history of jazz and the history of strategies. Some strategies will need to be jazzed up, while others will have to be jazzed down. There will be smooth strategies, acid strategies, improvisational strategies, bebop strategies, and many, many, many more jazzy strategies. Riff on, strategists!

 

Actually, thinking about it a little bit, jazz strategizing might be too niche for our needs. Perhaps a style of strategizing that is more broad is necessary. Maybe rock’n roll’n strategy? Or maybe this session shouldn’t even be musical at all.
(extended silence)

 

(whispering) This is a silent strategy planning session.

 

(loud and repeated honking of an air horn alarm system) SILENCE HAS BEEN INTERRUPTED BY WHISPERING. THIS SILENT STRATEGY PLANNING SESSION IS OVER. YELLING ABOUT PLANNING SESSIONS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW. ALL PLANS MUST BE YELLED. YELL YOUR PLANS! YELL YOUR PLANS! YELL YOUR PLANS!

 

We briefly transitioned into a yelling/chanting plan session, but that was not planned. Good chants can’t be kept down.
Now that we have gotten to the other side of that slight divergence, let’s get down to what we’re actually here for today. Straplasess. Yes, straplasess. It’s a combination of the words “strategic”, “planning” and “session”. These days, who has the time to say “strategic planning session”? No one. The internet has made everyone too busy to say words, so that’s why we’re here. Straplasess.

 

Turns out straplasess is very divisive. Some say it’s too stupid, while others say it is incredibly stupid. Straplasess is out. This is an S.P.S. Yes. We’re going back to basics and using an initialism of the original idea of doing a strategic planning session. This is an S.P.S. You down with S.P.S.? (Yeah you know me!) You down with S.P.S.? (Yeah you know me!)

 

It turns out that the 1990s hip-hop act Naughty by Nature is not down with S.P.S. and they have sent a cease and desist letter.
What we are doing here today is… what are we even talking about anymore? I’m confused and a little bit dizzy. (THUD! Scott Stephenson, the columnist writing this column has passed out and fallen to the ground. Several hours pass.)

 

GASP! (Scott Stephenson sits upright on the floor.) Guh! What the?!? What happened to me? Where am I? What is going on? Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you expect of me? Can someone please help me? I don’t know what’s going on and I am afraid. Please! Somebody! Anybody. Please help me.

 

And there you have it, folks. The next four years of The Chaff are planned out perfectly. Thank you for your attendance.