> Giant companies are giant. It is difficult to give each group/department/division its own rules, so they prefer one-size-fits-all approaches, even if they are more inefficient individually.

The myth of Procrustes was he welcomed all travellers to spend a night in his bed for free; however, if you were too short, you were stretched to fit it the bed, and if too tall, some of you got lopped off. We use the same Procrustean 'one-size-fits-all' approach in many places in the modern world, from grade school, to government policies, to goddam 'one-size' socks that are either too short or too loose. I suggest it's an artifact of the mechanical age, which we are in the process of leaving behind.

The assembly line that so tremendously increased material production was based on identical parts, assembled in an identical manner, to create identical products. Our new computer-controlled systems have the potential to create unique parts, uniquely assembled, to deliver a unique product to you. (No, we're not there yet) We may be leaving the Procrustean model behind.

I worked as a data analyst. I remember 'strategic planning' in 1980 - using 6 to 12 month old data to predict where you were going to be in five years, and what you should be doing to get there. Now we have real time data available, and the computing power to process it instantly. Presumably, the greater flexibility of this process will filter down to the budgeting system, but that will probably take the retirement of the Boomer generation, who are still stuck in the Procrustean paradigm.