Dead Horse Theory

You see dead horses being flogged almost all the time in the agency business. It is also a known fact that this disease is prevalent all around us, in every field.

I have copied below a brilliant satire based on this(via) You can share it with your client whenever they want to do ‘something disruptive’ or pin it alongside your agency's mission statement that talks of integration and brands or have a hearty chuckle when you realize that this is what your government has been doing all along. Here goes....

Tribal wisdom of Dakota Indians: when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, your best strategy is to dismount.

However, in business and in Government, more advanced strategies are often employed such as:

• Buying a stronger (and more expensive) whip.

• Changing riders.

• Appointing a committee to study the horse.

• Arranging trips to other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

• Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

• Reclassifying the horse as living-impaired.

• Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

• Harnessing several dead horses together to increase efficiency.

• Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horses performance.

• Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horses performance.

• Declaring that 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 some live horses.

• Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

         …and of course:

• Promoting dead horse to a supervisory position.