The Dead Horse Theory (Lean Management)

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

However, in modern business education and government, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed such as

·       Buying a strong whip

·       Change the riders

·       Threatening the horse with termination

·       Appointing a committee to study the horse

·       Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horse

·       Lowering the standards to that dead horse can be included

·       Re-classifying the dead horse as living-impaired

·       Hiring outside contractors to ride dead horse

·       Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed

·       Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the speed

·       Doing productivity study to see if lighter rides would improve the dead horse 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 that do some other horses

·       Re-writing the expected performance requirement for all horses

·       Promoting the dead horse to supervisory position of hiring another horse