Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 20:14:54 -0700
From: Barbara Taylor <
btaylor@itstime.com>
To: BPR-L Mailing List <
BPR-L@TPM.TUDELFT.NL>
To members of the list, my son found this and I thought it
appropriate for this list...
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead
horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in managing any
business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the
following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a Cost Analysis Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
Barbara Taylor, The Institute for Management Excellence
e-mail:
btaylor@itstime.com
web site:
http://www.itstime.com
Author of "The Other Side of Midnight, 2000: An Executive Guide
to the Year 2000 Problem." Available via
www.amazon.com
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0964385392)
"If you can dream it, you can do it!" <Della Reese>
______________________
Great Optimism,
Dutch Driver
Abilene, TX
Hm. Telephone: 915.698.7217
mailto:
ddriver@cs1.mcm.edu