Riding a dead horse
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians—passed on from generation to generation—says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
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Modern enterprises, however, have found a whole range of far more advanced strategies to use, such as:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Declaring, “The boss told us to ride this horse.”
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Threatening the horse with termination.
6. Proclaiming, “This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse.”
7. Develop a training session to improve our riding ability.
8. Reminding ourselves that other companies ride this same kind of horse.
9. Determining that riders who don’t stay on dead horses are lazy, lack drive, and have no ambition – then replacing them.
10. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
11. Reclassifying the horse as “living-impaired.”
12. Hiring an outside consultant to advise on how to better ride the horse.
13. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.
14. Confessing boldy, “This horse is not dead, but alive!”
15. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
16. Riding the dead horse “outside the box.”
17. Get the horse a Web site, making a mobile dead horse App on iPhone and Android.
18. Killing all the other horses so the dead one doesn’t stand out.
19. Taking a positive outlook – pronouncing that the dead horse doesn’t have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the company’s budget than do some other horses.
20. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
21. Promoting the dead horse to a vice president position.
22. Name the dead horse, “paradigm shift” and keep riding it.
23. Riding the dead horse “smarter, not harder.”
24. Stating that other horses reflect compromise, and are not approved from the corporation.
25. Remembering all the good times you had while riding that horse.
