On Beating Dead Horses
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you
discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
However, in organizations like large companies, government, hospitals,
school districts, etc. we frequently try other strategies.
These can include the following:
Buying a stronger whip.
Changing riders.
Declaring, "this is the way we've always ridden this horse."
Appointing a committee to study the horse. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
Increasing the standards to ride dead horses. Creating a training session to increase riding ability.
Appointing a 'tiger team' to revive the dead horse.
Passing a senior management resolution that the horse is not dead.
Blaming the horse's parents and/or environmental conditions when it was a colt.
Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
Declaring that, "no horse is too dead to beat."
Providing additional funding to improve the horse's performance.
Doing a study to see if outside contractors can ride it cheaper.
Declaring that the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" dead.
Forming a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
Revisiting the performance requirements for horses.
Saying this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
Promoting the horse to a supervisory position.
Horses and Men in Rain by Carl Sandburg
LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter’s day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window,
And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys.
Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches—and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks.
Let us write of olden, golden days and hunters of the Holy Grail and men called “knights” riding horses in the rain, in the cold frozen rain for ladies they loved.
A roustabout hunched on a coal wagon goes by, icicles drip on his hat rim, sheets of ice wrapping the hunks of coal, the caravanserai a gray blur in slant of rain.
Let us nudge the steam radiator with our wool slippers and write poems of Launcelot, the hero, and Roland, the hero, and all the olden golden men who rode horses in the rain.
“There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones with riders on them. There is said to be a code in the number and placement of the horse's hooves: If one of the horse's hooves is in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that there's probably at least one other horse standing behind the horse you're looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
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| Neptune's Horses by Walter Crane |
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
~W.C. Fields
It was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Why did this animal that had prospered so in the Colorado desert leave his amiable homeland for Siberia? There is no answer. We know that when the horse negotiated the land bridge... he found on the other end an opportunity for varied development that is one of the bright aspects of animal history. He wandered into France and became the mighty Percheron, and into Arabia, where he developed into a lovely poem of a horse, and into Africa where he became the brilliant zebra, and into Scotland, where he bred selectively to form the massive Clydesdale. He would also journey into Spain, where his very name would become the designation for gentleman, a caballero, a man of the horse. There he would flourish mightily and serve the armies that would conquer much of the known world.
~James Michener
