in Dakota Indian tribal wisdom on project management Anders posts something I read some month ago in Tom Peter’s great book:

The tribal wisdoms 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 many companies as well as in the UN and NGO community a range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Changing riders

2. Appointing a committee to study the horse

3. Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses

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

5. Reclassifying the dead horse as ‘living impaired’.

6. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse

7. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed

8. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance

9. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance

10. 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 mission of the organisation than do some other horses

11. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses…