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Riding a Dead Hoss
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed off from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
In the modern corporate world, governments and development assistance projects, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies is often employed, such as:
Buying a stronger whip.
Changing riders.
Threatening the horse with termination.
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.
Re-classifying the dead horse as "living impaired."
Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.
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.
Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore
contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
Re-writing the expected performance requirements for all horses.
Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
Using project funds to set up an incentive payment scheme to encourage the horse to do what its job description says it should have been doing all along.
Sending the horse on a post-graduate study program in another country, in the hope that by the time it graduates the project will have been completed.
Hiring an expensive international consultant to write a long report telling you that the horse is dead.
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