Across this great land campuses are embarking on the mystical and dangerous mission of strategic planning. They may have launched similar endeavors as recently as last year - but it's a bright new day with different students, new buildings, and probably a change in administration.

What is this planning process? As exemplified with today's corporate debacles and subsequent senate hearings, procuring the true meaning of a highly complicated mechanized tool of modern society requires taking the wench (oops, Clinton flashback, I mean wrench) of common sense and tearing the sucker apart.

Organizations have been around since flat-free granite tires and wooly mammoth underwear were the rage. Egyptians provided early formal organizational documentation via ancient stone tablet hieroglyphs. Tightly clustered folks were crucial for completing incredible Egyptian structures including the Great Sphinx, pyramids, Parthenon, and Superdome. You were nothing without belonging to a group like:

• Brotherhood of Smashed Stone Pushers
• West Nile Hernia Survivors
• Alliance of Crushed Stone Carvers
• International Organization of Infidels
• National Brain Diggers Association

Organizations became integral to the social structure, creating revolts and religious cleansings - the likes previously unknown to man. Today's organizations follow suit while promoting equality and diversity for all.

From Webster's: Management \n: a loosely formed group of older people who like to hear themselves talk and are absolutely enamored with meetings.

Management uses the planning process as a tool for getting an organization on the stick, probing every nook and cranny for bits of insight - focusing the subordinates toward a common set of goals. Like those chimps that use a stick to pull ants out of ant hills in Africa. Those highly intelligent - meeting oriented - chimps scour the jungle for suitable sticks, poke them in their mouths to make them sticky, and then probe giant ant hills. The similarities are amazing except the chimps can grip things with their feet.

Management also involves controlling a multitude of people to arrive at the desired goal(s). Now this differs from mind altering chemicals or brain-washing techniques born out of military operations like the French and Indian War. George Washington - just a college senior - used kegs of Coors Light which the enemy mistook for water - to win The Battle of Great Meadows. Today's management is equally as sharp but uses a dark lager for winning most labor battles.

Strategic planning's piece de resistance is the acquisition of appropriate data. This truly beautiful French phrase was a mystery to early Norwegian immigrant suitors while ordering meals at fancy French restaurants in Muncie, Indiana. Like those immigrants, devising a valid methodology for acquiring data is quite a mystery for many a strategic planner.

The process couldn't be simpler than purchasing your next set of studded snow tires. Duck tape your target audience to chairs in a basement with weeping walls and spiders who have a predisposition for crawling up pant legs. Then hand out surveys consisting of questions like the following:

These techniques might actually work, but who cares? The primary objective is getting answers or, as statisticians tell us, increasing the size of n. Get a bigger n and your findings are more valid - kind of like Viagra for statistics.

As for data from your target population sample (the folks in the basement), just let loose the spiders. You'll have a pile of responses stimulated by a heightened awareness of self preservation and healthy bowel movements.

Mathematics is a key element of statistics and plays a major in strategic planning. We derive some of our formulas by Euclidian means. Euclid was a very popular toga party animal back in Greece - and here's what his buddy Proclus had to say about him:

You can't say that about present-day convoluted intellectuals like George W. Bush. Delving into this topic with the internal fortitude it richly deserves is beyond my bladder capacity. So let's focus on the foundational formula for manipulating strategic data - a product of Pythagoras, the illegitimate child of Euclid. Simply put:

A work of wonderful simplicity with cultural ramifications still being unraveled by archeologists. Sad that forgetting n in his calculations drove Pythagoras insane and he was institutionalized - wandering his cell in a triangle fashion mumbling something about side opposite.

When it comes to planning there are two types of people. Me and my wife. I'm spontaneous and she's more, "Would you still love me if you cleaned the cat box after the toilet, not before?" After years of marriage, I still don't get it. Why ask tough questions late at night when my brain is functionally dead and anything I say is incongruent with my life in general. Oh, don't think I'm not a thoughtful man of the new millennium. I'm sensitive - I cry - I close the lid after I'm done, but I just don't have late night stamina. I just say, "Huh?" and go clean the cat box.

Foreseeing the future is a dominant force behind strategic planning even if variables of time are numerous and hard to define. Like a crystal ball without mystical connotations but the same essence of provocation and sense of humility. You might ask, "Why not simulation software for seeing into the future?" Microsoft has heard, sending forth Crystal Ball 7, which helps you perform Monte Carlo simulations on your spreadsheets while in the comfort of your own home. Incredible!!! All this time I was performing my Monte Carlo simulations with a plastic Spanish Armada while in the bathtub.

We've come a long way on our journey through the mysteries of strategic planning. Dislodging unfamiliar idiosyncrasies that scare the woolies out of common folk. But let's face it - strategic planning is not as complicated as it sounds. Why, fifth graders in North Korea conduct such projects daily. Yep, the same kids growing the plutonium stock.

So your campus' strategic planning process yields results - really. Motivating administration to lick the stick and probe the vast prospects facing their organization. It's nothing to fear but embrace as one would a well marinated turkey before jamming it in the oven. One thing is for certain - if your campus' CEO asks you to step into the basement of the admin building, be certain to tightly tie your pant legs.