I always read Stuart Jones’ BusinessMatters blog so I’m not sure how I missed this post about the tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians which says that "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."
However, we can probably all think of examples from business and the public sector that are similar to these:
- Changing Riders
- Appointing a committee to study the horse
- Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses
- Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included
- Reclassifying the dead horse as "living impaired"
- Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse
- Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance
- Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance
- Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position
I’ve added one of my own:
- Giving the dead horse early retirement and then bringing it back as a consultant
Visit BusinessMatters to see the full list.
Tags: business, productivity, government, public sector
Excellent Stuart.