The Messenger Corps

A corps of messengers served the army. Each messenger could carry one dispatch per day reliably.

A general, planning a complex battle, wrote twenty dispatches and summoned five messengers.

"Carry four each. The battle depends on it."

Three messengers collapsed from exhaustion. Those dispatches never arrived. The battle was lost.

His successor planned differently: "How many messengers do I have? Then that's how many orders I can send."