Beating A Dead Horse

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Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

• Buying a stronger whip.
• Changing riders.
• Say things like, "This is the way we have always ridden this horse."
• Appointing a committee to 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 horse.
• Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
• Comparing the state of dead horses in todays environment.
• Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
• Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
• Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
• Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
• Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
• Do a Cost Analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
• Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
• Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
• Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
• Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
• Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
• Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.