Collaborative tools, services and training
Meet smarter, not harder!
Dead Horse Strategies
Friday, 02 April 2010
When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
This fairly well known piece of humour, contrasts “Dakota tribal wisdom” with what supposedly happens in the corporate/government/non-profit world. Instead, one or more of the following strategies (I’ve only listed a sub-set) are tried:
‡ Apologies to the original creator of this cartoon – I can’t find you credited anywhere.
So what is it with this flogging a dead horse? Why do we do this? What factors lead us to persist with an idea, a decision, a strategy beyond its use-by date? Two that occur to me are:
Go well!
David Jago
- Appoint a committee to study the horse.
- Blame the rider and hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
- Buy a stronger whip.
- Declare that since the horse is dead, we must now ride smarter, not harder.
- Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
- Kill all the other horses, so this one will look the same.
- Promote the horse to a supervisory position.
- Shorten the track.
- Threaten the horse with termination.
‡ Apologies to the original creator of this cartoon – I can’t find you credited anywhere.
So what is it with this flogging a dead horse? Why do we do this? What factors lead us to persist with an idea, a decision, a strategy beyond its use-by date? Two that occur to me are:
- Unwilling or unable to let go of what you’ve invested so far. This means you can’t step back and evaluate the situation objectively.
- Peer pressure. Other people seem to want to keep going. Either actively in what they say or do, or passively by being noncommittal.
Go well!

David Jago