This worksheet teaches you nothing new: it makes you write down what the three open guides already showed you, with your decisions and your numbers. Two sides: the rule and the timing. The grey examples come from the guides and their figures are illustrative; yours are the ones that count.
Side 1 — The rule
The decision
Start with a decision your operation already makes. Not the biggest one: the one that comes back most often.
One concrete action, with a verb: prepare, lower, reschedule, bring forward.
Example: Prepare the ponds before heavy rain: drain the surface water, switch on aerators, have the lime ready.
How often do you face this decision: every week, every season?
Example: Several times per rainy season.
The two costs
The two numbers your company already has, even if it has never divided them.
What do you spend if you act and the event never arrives? Wages, supplies, machine hours.
Example: $300: pumping, aeration, a couple of day-wages, bags of lime (illustrative figure).
What do you lose if you do not act and the event arrives?
Example: $10,000 in shrimp lost weeks later (illustrative figure).
Divide: cost ÷ loss × 100. That percentage is the probability from which acting pays off.
Example: 300 ÷ 10,000 = 3%.
The rule, in writing
Write it out in full, with a name on it. A rule without an owner is an opinion.
If the forecast gives a probability of % or more of , then does with of lead time.
Example: If the forecast gives 5% or more of heavy rain, the pond manager prepares the farm that same afternoon.
If the probability sits close to the threshold, you can wait for the next run; write down until when: the last day the action still fits before the event.
Example: Until the next morning; after that, preparing no longer arrives in time.
What part of the action can you commit today, and what part can wait for the next run?
Example: Today the most loaded ponds; the rest, with tomorrow's forecast.
Your rule inventory
Repeat the exercise in short form with other decisions in your operation. The result almost always surprises whoever does it for the first time.
| Decision | Who does what | Cost of acting ($) | Loss of not acting ($) | Threshold (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Side 2 — The timing
The event and the five lead times
Now the other way around: start not from the decision but from the event. The exercise comes from how meteorological services work with whole sectors, and it produces your horizon map.
The event that has cost you the most, or the one you fear the most.
Example: A warmer season than usual, with the cutting date fixed.
| What would you decide? | What would you need to know? | |
|---|---|---|
| 3 months ahead | Example: Do I schedule the cycle counting on a warm or a normal season? | Example: How the season is shaping up against the usual. |
| 15 days | Example: Do I hire extra people for the cutting week? | Example: The trend of the coming weeks. |
| 7 days | Example: Which days do I cut, and when do I fill the cold room? | Example: The coming days, by name. |
| 24 hours | Example: Do I bring tomorrow's cut forward and reorder the blocks? | Example: Tomorrow, hour by hour. |
| 1 hour | Example: Do I lower the curtain tonight, with someone to lower it? | Example: What is going to happen over my greenhouse tonight. |
The rows where you wrote something are your horizon map: each one lives in a different forecast, and none replaces another.
For the conversation
These two fields do not feed the rule. They are what makes a fit conversation useful, or next quarter's internal exercise.
Where your activity operates: farm, ponds, greenhouses, assets, and in which area they sit.
What you have written down: logbooks, production histories, a rain gauge of your own, your people's memory. The format does not matter; that it exists does.
Closing the worksheet
A date to come back to this worksheet and compare the rule with what happened.
Only someone who left their rule in writing can say, on the day they acted and the event never arrived: this false alarm was well designed.
Bring us a real decision
Tell us what you decide under weather uncertainty. We review whether we can help and get back to you.
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