[OFB Cafe] Essay on Riding Dead Horses...

[Donald R Spoon]

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> The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
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> However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:
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> 1.  Buying a stronger whip.
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> 2.  Changing riders.
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> 3.  Threatening the horse with termination.
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> 4.  Appointing a committee to study the horse.
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> 5.  Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
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> 6.  Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
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> 7.  Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.
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> 8.  Creating a training session to increase the riders load share.
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> 9.  Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
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> 10.  Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
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> 11.  Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
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> 12.  Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
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> 13.  Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.
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> 14.  Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
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> 15.  Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.
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> 16.  Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
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> 17.  Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
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> 18.  Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
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> 19.  Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
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> 20.  Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.