The Dead Horse Adage Applied in Government

Dead Horse Theory

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

However, in government more enlightened strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead
horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s
performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the
dead horse’s performance.
11. 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 than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And, of course…

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position