Dakota Indian tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a colloquial dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in modern organizations, we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
* Buying a stronger whip
* Changing riders
* Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse"
* Appointing a large highly-paid committee of experts to the study the horse
* Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses
* Increasing the performance standards to ride dead horses
* Appointing a special projects team to revive the dead horses
* Creating a training session to increase our riding ability
* Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment
* Passing a resolution declaring: "This horse is not dead"
* Blaming the dead horses' ancestry
* Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed
* Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat"
* Providing addtional funding to increase the horse's performance
* Do a study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper
* Declare the horse is better, faster and cheaper dead
* Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses
* Revisit the performance requirements for dead horses
* Say that this horse was procured with cost as the "independent variable"
* Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position
Enjoy!
Old No7
