I've been cleaning out files in recent days (both physical and electronic), and I've been coming across a lot of interesting stuff. This one was sent to me five years ago, but I don't know its origin. It has many applications, not just for government and large corporations.
Strategies for Dead Horses
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount." However, in government (and in corporate America), more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than live horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
I can think of a few others:
Attacking the people who have pointed out the death of the horse as the reason for the dead horse's lack of performance.
Repackaging the dead horse with a better public relations strategy.
Advertising the dead horse's superior performance on carbon emissions.
Assuming the horse is powered by Microsoft and that one more boot will finally reset the dead horse.
Dividing the dead horse into enough parts that a forensic accountant couldn't find the horse in the budget.
Any other ideas?
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