Dead Horse Strategies

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.    Appoint a committee to study the horse.
2.    Appoint a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
3.    Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
4.    Buy a stronger whip.
5.    Change the requirements declaring that, "This horse is not dead."
6.    Change riders.
7.    Compare the state of dead horses in today's environment.
8.    Create a training session to increase our riding ability.
9.    Declare that, "No horse is too dead to beat."
10.    Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
11.    Do a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
12.    Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
13.    Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
14.    Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
15.    Increase the standards to ride dead horses.
16.    Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
17.    Provide additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
18.    Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
19.    Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20.    Say things like, "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
21.    Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.