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Dead horse

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

But in modern business (and education and government)
because heavy investment factors are taken into
consideration, other strategies are often tried with
dead horses, including the following:

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. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position

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