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:
1. Buy a stronger whip
2. Change riders
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment
10. Change the requirements declaring that "the horse is not dead"
11. Hire a contractor to ride the dead horse
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increase speed
13. Declaring that "No horse is dead, to dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance
15. Do a case study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper
16. Purchase a product that makes dead horses run faster
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" dead
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses
20. Say "This horse was procured with cost as an independent variable"
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position
22. Give the dead horse early retirement and rehire him as a consultant
23. Build a wagon to carry the dead horse and rider
24. Transfer the dead horse to a job in which movement is not required
25. Transfer the dead horse to a location where no one will notice he is dead
26. Transfer the dead horse to personnel department
27. Assign, ambitious subordinate the dead horse and then yell at the sub for lack of
progress
28. Assign the dead horse to lead a project that should not be done
29. Give the dead horse to someone who has a lot of horses because he will not notice
his condition
30. Assign the dead horse a temporary replacement until his condition improves
31. Tie the dead horse to your best horse so that you have two average horses
32. Loan the dead horse to a co-worker and tell the them that he was OK the last time
you rode him.
33. Assign the dead horse to the backup team
34. Have the dead horse declared a historical land mark and make it a public attraction
35. Donate the dead horse to a local college so that they can teach "how to ride a
dead horse."
