Flogging the Dead Horse Theory

Tribal wisdom of Dakota Indians: when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, your best strategy is to dismount.

However, in business and in Government, more advanced strategies are often employed such as:

• Buying a stronger (and more expensive) whip.

• Changing riders.

• Appointing a committee to study the horse.

• Arranging trips to other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

• Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

• Reclassifying the horse as living-impaired.

• Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

• Harnessing several dead horses together to increase efficiency.

• Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horses performance.

• Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horses performance.

• Declaring that 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 some live horses.

• Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

…and of course:

• Promoting dead horse to a supervisory position.

Via Subbu