Management Responses to Dead Horses
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 committee to the study the horse
- arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses
- increasing the standards to ride dead horses
- appointing a tiger 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 horses' ancestry
- harnessing several dead horses 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