Administrative Memo
To all Employees: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
- Buying a stronger whip.
- Changing riders.
- Say things like, "This is the way we have 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.
- Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
- Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
- Comparing the state of dead horses in todays environment.
- Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
- Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
- Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
- Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
- Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
- Do a Cost Analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
- Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
- Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
- Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
- Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
- Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
- Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
The San Francisco Zoo has an elephant, named Calle. It seems that Calle has a chronic illness which requires daily medication. The zoo people couldn't get Calle to take her dose orally, so a pharmacologist developed a suppository for her. The 10-inch-long, four-pound, cocoa-butter bullets are crafted by the good folks at Guittard Chocolates in Burlingame, California. Administering the DAILY medication takes five zoo workers, including one person to distract Calle with treats and one person who wears a full-arm glove.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT ALL THIS MEANS?
It means that five people have jobs worse than yours!
Now stop complaining and get back to work.