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
often force management to try other strategies, including:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Reclassifying the dead horse as "living-impaired."
8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
10. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead
horse's performance.
11. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve
the dead horse's performance.
12. Declaring that the dead horse carries lower overhead and therefore
contributes more to the bottom line than some other horses.
13. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
14. And, one final strategy: promoting the dead horse to a supervisory
position and conducting a workshop to change dead horse culture.
Please note: Absolutely no animals, horse or other, were injured in the making
of this webpage. It is merely a humorous attempt to parallel an event from the
circle of life with today's modern beaucratic environment. We certainly do not
advocate attempting to ride a deceased animal, nor do we advocate working in an
environment that attempts to replicate said state.
