Dead horse - the classics

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

However, in government, education, 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 do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Dead horse strategies

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation , says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

Updated for the 21st century this could mean:

• Appointing a top advertising agency to promote the benefits of the reduced carbon hoofprint of a dead horse compared to the ridiculously out-dated and unsustainable notion of a living horse.
• Off-shoring the stabling and veterinary support of the dead horse to somewhere in the Indian sub-continent.
• Sending the dead horse on an outward bound weekend with other dead horses.

Dead horse strategies

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation , says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

Updated for the 21st century this could mean:

• Buying a computer program to enhance dead horse performance
• Declaring a dead horse less costly than a live one
• Forming a workgroup to find uses for dead horses
• Changing performance requirements for the horse
• Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position

Dead horse strategies

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation , says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

Updated for the 21st century this could mean:

• Bringing in a team of external consultants to focus on dead horse optimisation.
• Re-branding the dead horse a 'Fair Trade Horse', and affixing prominent Fair Trade insignia to its hind-quarters.
• Asking Richard Branson if he'd be interested in running a Virgin Dead Horse joint venture.
• Setting up an inquiry into the dead horse, preferably headed by a dead horse and answerable to other dead horses.
• Forming a task force to investigate the dead horse's positive benefits on social enterprise.
• Blaming the dead horse on the sub-prime credit crunch, thereby absolving (and enabling the obscenely generous rewarding of) those responsible for the decision to recruit an emaciated horse, starve it, and keep it in a frozen field (because the stables were sold to property developers years ago).
• Unmasking the dead horse to be in illegal immigrant, therefore author of its own misfortune, and to blame for a lot more than simply being dead on the job.

Dead horse strategies

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation , says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

updated for the 21st century this could mean:

• Nationalising the dead horse
• Re-aligning the organizational aims to better fit the needs of the dead horse. Giving dead horse and rider a good bollocking (a favourite in previous centuries too).
• Re-structuring the dead horse's reward scale to contain a performance-related element (obviously..)
• Suspending the horse's access to the executive grassy meadow until it improves its attitude and makes good all productivity shortfalls.
• Finding a mentor or buddy for the dead horse.
• Examining the cost-savings accruing from de-skilling the dead horse function.
• Outsourcing the management and/or the riding of the dead horse to a specialist dead horse management company