Flogging a dead horse for pleasure and profit
Every now and again when the ridiculousness of modern business and government has me throwing up my hands in disbelief – I enjoy reading this and it puts everything into perspective.
“The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, which has been passed down from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
However these days many organisations employ far more advanced strategies, such as:
1. Change riders.
2. Buy a stronger whip.
3. Do nothing: “This is the way we have always ridden dead horses”.
4. Visit other countries to see how they ride dead horses.
5. Perform a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve the dead horse’s performance.
6. Hire a contractor to ride the dead horse.
7. Harness several dead horses together in an attempt to increase the speed.
8. Provide additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
9. Appoint a committee to study the horse and assess how dead it actually is.
10. Re-classify the dead horse as “living-impaired”.
11. Develop a Strategic Plan for the management of dead horses.
12. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for all horses.
13. Modify existing standards to include dead horses.
14. Declare that, as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overheads, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line than many other horses.
15. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.”
Joe Perri founded his own company in 1995 after working for more than 22 years in the corporate environment. Since then, Joe Perri & Associates has grown to provide a wide range of communication, promotional and marketing relations solutions for clients in the corporate, SME and non-profit sectors.
