When Riding A Dead Horse...
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
But in today's modern bureaucracies heavy financial considerations ofter force management to try other strategies, including:
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Buying a stronger whip.
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Changing riders.
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Threatening the horse with termination.
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Appointing a committee to study the horse.
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Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
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Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
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Reclassifying the dead horse as "living-impaired."
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Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
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Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
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Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.
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Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
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Declaring that the dead horse carries lower overhead and therefore contributes more to the bottom line than some other horses.
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Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
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And, one final strategy: promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position and conducting a workshop to change dead horse culture.
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