HOW TO RIDE A DEAD HORSE: bits of organizational wisdom

"Scooter covered in lavender" by Alejandro Gheorghe

Dakota Native Americans have a saying:
"When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount"
Many times governmental agencies and even corporations believe they can outsmart the Native Americans. Here are some of their "strategies"*:
1. Buy a stronger whip and use it more often.
2. Change riders. 
3. Appoint a committee to study the horse.
 4. Arrange to visit other countries, to learn how other cultures ride horses. 
5. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included. 
6. Hire outside contractors to try to ride the dead horse. 
7. Hire consultants specializing in riding dead horses.
8. Harness several dead horses together to increase speed. 
9. Provide extra funding and training to increase the dead horse performance. 
10. Perform a productivity study: would lighter riders improve the dead horse's performance. 
11. Declare that as the dead horse does not need to be fed, it is less costly, it carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy that live horses. 
12. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for all horses. 
And last but not least: 
13. Promote the dead horse to a supervisor position. 

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*(Adapted after Russell Ackoff's "Systems Thinking for Curious Managers")